Love bends time and space
“Why do keep looking at your watch?”
“Sorry.”
“You did it again!”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking if I stared at my watch long enough, I could freeze time with you.”
Addiction
Certain things light up our brain’s neurons like a Christmas tree: love, sex, food, drugs, gambling, traveling, exercising, and smoking…to name a few.
We seek pleasure and avoid pain.
This is why we’re so susceptible to addiction. We put ourselves in a self-perpetuating loop where we succumb to temptation.
The drug or gambling addict seeks the pleasure of the high or the win. It makes no difference whether the drug is clean or safe or whether the casino is fancy or dilapidated — the ends justify the means.
Sex is the drug; who the heck knows what “love” is
While some may disagree, sex had been added to the list of official addictions because it is a behavior with fairly predictable goals and outcomes — achieve pleasure, over and over again.
You don’t hear of “love addiction” because, unlike sex, “love” is not a pill or self-reinforcing activity we can provide to ourselves. It has a life of its own.
You have a headache, you take a pain pill. If you have depression you can take anti-depressants. “Love” is not something you can take in pill form.
“Love” finds you — uncontrollably and unpredictably — when it feels like it.
You cannot conjure up, or force “love” upon yourself or others.
“Love” can be so random and unfair it’s almost a sick joke. And to make it worse, love’s arrival is as mysterious as its departure — it comes when we least expect it, and it fades when we most need it.
When we seek sex we know what we’re after — sex, like drugs, feels good.
When we seek “love” what are we looking for — Sex? The possibility of sex? Positive affirmations? Love letters? Holding hands and walking on the beach? Simply being with that special someone?
What satiates “love?” What is “love’s end game?
If “love” could be purchased in little dime bags and smoked or injected, we’d all become love addicts?
Why do we “love” a certain type?
We can’t predict when we’re going to feel like we’re in “love” with someone, but we tend to know our type.
Why?
Why does someone have a favorite color or ice cream flavor or lucky number?
What makes the color “red” prettier than “blue”? We don’t consciously choose our favorite color or flavor — it chooses us.
Is it the same for love? Something mysterious happens with the way our brains perceive color, shape, size, smell, and touch.
Maybe love tends to be fleeting because it’s based on a flawed foundation. Maybe we actually fall in love with someone’s perfume or cologne or the way they’re dressed up or how they speak (a sexy accent?).
Perhaps we fall in love with the person our brain synthesizes, analyzes, and presents to us, but is based on faulty data.
We often seem to fall in “love” very quickly — oftentimes before we know much about the person.
What if our brains simply “fill in the blanks” by creating the person IT knows we desire and fantasize about — But ISN’T the ACTUAL person we’re falling in love with.
Our brain treats “love” like a paint-by-numbers portrait. You can paint them as perfectly as you can, but no two paint-by-number portraits look exactly the same — regardless of good intentions.
What’s actually happening?
This is difficult for me to write because I believe in both science and romance.
But my left brain is currently screaming this at me:
You stupid, overthinking fool. People take addictive drugs, overeat, and gamble because of the pleasurable effects on their minds and bodies —in other words, it feels good to be high.
Love is our brain’s way of building up anticipation; sex is the behavior (like drugs) we seek to experience the built-up anticipation.
Love, by definition, is a mind game, a hallucination, a fantasy, or a dream, because, unlike drugs, there is no such thing as “having love”. We say we’re “making love” but we’re not “making” anything. We’re simply expressing our “love” biologically.
Once we have physical sex, with all its sloppy and messy humanity, our brain reconfigures how it perceives we “feel”.
Once consummated, “love” is no longer a crossword puzzle for our brain to slowly fill in. It can now, like a computer, compare, contrast, and calculate the difference between the fantasy it was feeding you, and the reality you’re receiving.
In other words, once sex occurs, your brain has enough data to determine how long it’s going to release dopamine hits and when it’s going to close the spigot.
You’re so wrong for me…I think I love you
So, is “love” simply our brain’s way of exciting us with anticipation for something pleasurable to possibly come?
Is our brain just teasing us like those restaurants that roll the dessert tray by our table every 5 minutes?
Is it possible what we call “love” is just a frantic search to get laid?
That’s the biological part of the equation.
But just like we can’t know why someone “loves” the color red more than blue or prefers vanilla over chocolate ice cream, it is a mystery why our brain “lights up” after meeting certain people, and seems to let the “good ones” go.
It’s probably because dangerous, unpredictable, wild-and-crazy people arouse our brains, releasing dopamine which makes us feel euphoric and excited.
Our brains don’t differentiate someone who’s is “right” for us from someone who will treat us poorly — it simply reacts to its surroundings.
It’s not “love” we’re chasing — it’s physical pleasure.
Summary
My romantic side hopes, if we’re mistaking “love” for “sex”, maybe it means “love” is something bigger, larger, and more meaningful.
Maybe love is what’s left when all else seems lost.
Perhaps love is someone who, no matter what, continues to “light us up” like a Christmas tree — even in the absence of risk, danger, and fear.
I will chase love until the day I die — what I find in the process, only my brain knows.
Hopefully, I’ll find this elusive “love”. If not, I’ll settle for making someone else feel alive and special and wanted.
Even if “love” is aspirational and unattainable, I’ll keep searching for it.
Love may be the precise opposite of what we believe — the absence of fear and insecurity. Love has no patience for jealousy, envy, or betrayal.
While I may never experience it, true love is not having to worry about who you are, or what you say, or how you dress, or any of your imperfections.
True love is the opposite of addiction. It’s getting high, with no supply at all.
Every time you’re forgiven, it’s love.
Every time you realize your paranoia was misplaced, it’s love.
Every time someone means what they say and says what they mean, it’s love.
Every time someone saves the last dance for you, it’s love.
Love is bigger than biology. You may never find it because it’s as invisible as air, ghosts, and God.
But don’t ever stop chasing it — because even if you never find it — it may just find you.
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Previously Published on medium
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