Thomas Fiffer takes the hammer to three myths about love that prevent us from entering and enjoying meaningful relationships.
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If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been burned by love. It’s a hot flame that can warm the heart or leave it a charred, smoking ruin. You may have seen the end coming, or it may have taken you by complete surprise. Either way, you stand there wondering, how did this happen, and where did I go wrong? You didn’t even see a fork in the road, much less a sign pointing one way to heaven, the other to hell. And now, from this unhappy place, there’s no going back. Just starting over and, you hope, not making the same mistakes with someone else—someone who might just be “the one.”
What I’m about to tell you may just unbind your heart from the chains that enslave it to a vision of love that can never be realized.
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I can’t truthfully advertise that I’ve found the only way of getting love right. If I did, Oprah would have already called. But I can, with confidence, show you how the stuff you’ve been sold isn’t working, explain why it will never work, and offer an alternative. What I’m about to tell you will change your way of thinking. It unravels the fairy tales, smashes the stereotypes, and dispenses with the notions that have been preconceived for us about love. And it may just unbind your heart from the chains that enslave it to a vision of love that can never be realized.
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Romance is the narrative we spin to ourselves and our prospective partners about who we are, why we love them, and what kind of life we’ll lead together. In other words, a mixture of hope, wishful thinking, and bullshit.
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Myth number 1. Love is romance.
The first thing we feel for someone we see and think we “love” or more accurately want to love is attraction. This attraction can be physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or all of the above. Regardless, we’re drawn to this person by what feels like a mysterious, inexorable pull, and this pull creates desire, the intense wish and pressing need to spend as much time as possible with the object of our affection. Enter romance—the tortured process of going to great lengths, spending a fortune, and sacrificing our dignity to “win” someone’s heart. The word romance, which dates back to around 1300, actually means story, specifically one not written or told in Latin. The attachment of love, love affair, and courtship to romance didn’t occur until the early 1900s. Used as a verb, to romance meant to “recite a narrative,” and later, to “invent fictitious stories.” (Online Etymology Dictionary). Romance, then, is the narrative we spin to ourselves and our prospective partners about who we are, why we love them, and what kind of life we’ll lead together. In other words, a mixture of hope, wishful thinking, and bullshit. Romance fabricates a story from whole cloth, while love builds a loom from scratch. Romance thrives on the fluff of fiction, while love deals with that hardest of things—truth. Romance keeps novelists, magazine publishers, and filmmakers in business, but it doesn’t nourish love. Courtship also sets the stage for a relationship of unequals, in which the courter (traditionally the man), constantly must to prove his love to his beloved. Magical dates. Unforgettable experiences. Expensive jewels. These are all nice, but romance is not love. Romance is a love story.
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Sex is a brief, brilliant, unsustainable act. Love is long-term, smart, sustainable action. Love creates the opening for sex, not the other way around.
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Myth number 2. Love is sex.
You probably don’t have a mirror on your bedroom ceiling. That would be weird, or depending on your fetish, kinky. But think of sex as a mirror. Sex can reflect love, if love is present to begin with. Sex can express love, if love is there to be expressed. Sex can get tangled up with love because sex is an intimate act, and intimacy is one of love’s essential components. But sex isn’t love and shouldn’t be mistaken for it. Sex happens with or without love and fulfills distinct physiological and emotional needs that sometimes align with love and sometimes don’t. The alignment occurs when sex transcends your own need fulfillment and becomes the physical manifestation your feelings for another. Sex is a brief, brilliant, unsustainable act. Love is long-term, smart, sustainable action. Love creates the opening for sex, not the other way around. Opening your zipper doesn’t equate to opening your heart, and no matter how sticky the glue of sex is, it can’t substitute for the bond that the commitment to love and the daily practice of loving action creates, a bond that grows stronger with each passing day, month, and year. Bodies change. Gravity takes its toll on the flesh and age diminishes the body’s abilities. But gravity cannot weigh down a loving heart. A heart filled with love remains buoyant to the very end.
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If we want the ever after part, we have to focus on the happily.
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Myth number 3. Love is forever.
King Henry VIII got himself kicked out of the Catholic church for, among other things, annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and wedding Anne Boleyn, whom he later beheaded. Leaving Henry’s fondness for the axe aside, he severed England from Catholicism because he didn’t want to stay married to the same woman until death. Henry opened the door to divorce, but he didn’t close the door on the pervasive myth of happily ever after. Taking this one apart is simple. If we want the ever after part, we have to focus on the happily. Love is not forever just because it’s love. Feeling attracted to someone, wearing a ring, sharing a bed, even baring your soul, doesn’t guarantee the survival of the relationship. For love to be eternal, it must thrive on the momentary and un-momentous, the seemingly minor, day-to-day interactions of two people committed not only to spending their lives with each other but to building a life together. The knowledge that both partners are forever shoring up the relationship’s foundation creates emotional security, the essential component of a lasting union. Love can indeed be forever, but if you take forever for granted, it will be over sooner than you think.
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What love is has been fed to us by religion, literature, culture, and the media. But these definitions and behavior models are all wrong. The bottom line? If you want love to be different this time, you have to think about love differently.
Photo—Wikimedia Commons