What We Fall in When We Fall in Love
Thoughts on what love demands: nothing.
“Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being ‘in love’ which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away...”
—Louis de Bernières, Correlli's Mandolin
I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that falling in love may be close to the opposite of actually loving. “Falling in love” is, if we dare to look at it clearly, a potent cocktail of narcissism and desperation. I need you!. You complete me. My life would be meaningless without you.
I. Me. My.
But actual “loving” isn’t about the loving one, it’s about the beloved. Object over subject. Love does not demand, it offers, it recognizes and celebrates. It’s an affirmation, not a request. Beware anyone whose love comes with demands and conditions. That’s not love they’re offering you.
We say we’re “falling,” to emphasize that our emotions are beyond our control, which provides the perfect cover for all the damage we do to ourselves and each other as we surrender to our romantic delusions.
“I couldn’t help myself! I was falling!”
Often, falling in love seems to be less about the connection we hope to make and more about the relationship we're desperate to escape. In other words, we project lots of imagined qualities onto someone because the frenzy we then create in ourselves provides a powerful lever to pry ourselves out of the jam we’re already in.
Looking back on my life, I can see where I've done this. I’ve used the prospect of a new relationship to extricate myself from one that was no longer working. Or maybe it wasn't even a relationship that was stifling me, but a dead-end job or a stagnant phase of my life from which this new relationship seemed to offer escape. But using someone as an escape pod is a mistake because then you're in a relationship with someone who has fulfilled their function, and your transactional passion is revealed as manipulation. The escape pod has become your primary residence.
Seek love. Offer it. Savor it.
But don’t fall in it.
The More Loving One
W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
"Fa lling in love again, what am I to do? I can't help it." So sang Marlen Dietrich in The Blue Angel But the song proved to ve true of the professor who FELL in love with her, and it led to his disaster.
God. Damn. This reminds me of a frequent guest on the minimalists podcast Peter Rollins who always says that when people search for "object A" and then they obtain it they just find a new object a. In other words, the thing we desire is never satisfied. Once we get that thing we just go on to our next thing that we're wanting. Desire is just a constant. This isn't directly related to what you wrote, but kind of along the same train of thought.