How Does Being In Love Affect Your Life?

It’s been a while since I last fell madly in love with someone. Crushes? Of course, I have had those too.

Crushes rise fast and fade just as quickly although sometimes, one persists long enough to let the feelings of love creep in. — I think there is a difference.

My last such feeling of a persistent crush was probably in 2014 but now it’s back with another person whose path and mine crossed a few months back.

Crushing feelings can be very intense but fleeting. I can’t speak for anyone but I know that I can have several such crushes in a day.

But, pulling a theoretical statistic here, 99% of those crushes dissolve and die by the end of the day. The 1% that does remain is that which occurs when my mind keeps revisiting a memory or the person that sparked that crush.

And I think I do have conscious control of this at least to some significant degree.

When a crush first arises, I can justify why or why I am not interested. — And even with my self-esteem issues, I am picky.

Also, the ones that drop out of my conscious hold hardly have anything in common with each other. It’s as random as it gets.

The ones that do persist are the ones that I have little or no conscious control over. Like the one in 2014 or the current one that’s been on for a couple of months now.

These persistent ones are very rare but they maintain their intensity whether or not you revisit the memory or the person in question.

The powerlessness that those feelings render in me makes me think that maybe I am not the only one projecting feelings. I mean, I have seen countless instances where the crush has a crush on the person crushing on them. — But I digress.

Anyway, my speculations aside, those feelings naturally pull me towards that person with all my insecurities making the loudest noise in my crush’s perfect presence.

Unless it is a case of unhealthy and toxic obsession, crushing on someone who has no idea that you exist never gets to this stage. And it should fall away naturally however intense it is unless you initiate contact and make your existence known. — At least this is how these crushes of mine tend to play out.

So this crush that’s rendered me powerless is of a person I know exists. Someone I have spoken to. Maybe not as much but still, I can recognize when I have crossed the path of mere crushing.

The transition from crushing to love happens somewhere during the surrendering phase.

You stop fighting or hiding the feeling. You begin compromising on the goals and ambitions you have so as to match the other person’s ideals.

The feeling of falling in love can take a long time. It comes with so much excitement. It is one of the few times that you lose appetite because of something exuberant.

I am not even going to attempt describing how one text from this person makes my day. Speaking of texting, I’d find a lot of value in an article about how to manage your anxiety when texting someone you are falling in love with. I hope someone would write one.

But when texting in general, I can’t really celebrate anything so I just let it out with a wide smile/blush — Jesus, what am I saying?!!!

It is what it is, although I find very few things as concerning as a 6’2″ adult male with an overgrown goatee and receding hairline, grinning totally unconcerned that he has 4 teeth gaps distributed between either side of his jaw.

Years of depression can mellow a fellow. But he gets to be private about his misery. Falling in love does the same thing although publicly and it is embarrassingly sorry to witness his excitement.

With love, you must dress up your insecurities the best you can, wear confidence that you don’t have, and think of someone else but you.

How do y’all tinder darlings do it if you’re yet to meet each other for the first time? — Can you tell I watched the Tinder Swindler last weekend? No? Ok. I did. It’s wild.

Then there is that dreaded resolution that ends in rejection.

I’ve walked that path too. Terrible experience. One that I can never wish for my worst enemy.

If you’ve had your feelings handed back to you with a recommendation to try them elsewhere, first of all, sorry, you’ve got this.

I don’t know how other people handle this nightmare but this is the only feeling that makes me approach love like an African witch-doctor in St. Peter’s basilica finds their way to the tabernacle.

Also, should something go wrong, you can’t repair anything.

Actually the more you try, the worse it gets until you enter murky territories of questionable morals. In any case, you lose everything. Every memory that you had with that person gets locked behind complicated emotions of betrayal and distrust. Sweet memories take on a new meaning in which the manipulative perspective becomes more dominant.

You weigh all that and you genuinely value the person and their presence in your life more than you value their romantic involvement with you. You choose to take the friend seat but so are many others seated there and you cannot tell them apart. Friends or simps? Even they cannot answer that. Y’all just have to profess how amazing the person is.

Even the optimist’s path has conflicts of its own and I won’t go into those because I don’t think I know what that feels like lol. Maybe your feeling of love is well received. In which case, magical. Good for you.

My explorations of how love affects my life are very limited and biased as a reflection of my experience in the field.

I am sure there are many of you who have a more lovely and richly wide experience in general and in as much as I tend to spell doom, I also have a deeper knowing that love is something significant and beautiful.

My only caution is not to hurt myself or the person I’m in love with during the process of navigating this feeling.

Enough about me. How does being in love affect your life?

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Previously Published on medium

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