I Found Another Blindspot About Love. It’s Power.

When you feel something as powerful as attraction for someone, there are perhaps only three ways to deal with it.

You either express how you feel fueled by the rapture you have for your beloved, you sit on the emotion out of fear that they don’t feel the same or that if they feel the same the relationship is doomed; or lastly, you do whatever you can to prevent anyone from finding out to the point that you become mean towards your crush.

I think we all can agree that the first choice is the healthiest option. But the other two have something in common other than fear.

When we want to admit how we feel about someone, we often use the word, “confess.” Imagine a world where liking someone was akin to a crime! Well, maybe we don’t have to imagine.

People often feel embarrassed to say how they feel about someone. When asked, people will deny how they feel. People will go to various lengths to prevent the person they like from finding out how they feel. They do all of these things despite the fact that they will eventually have to “confess” how they feel in order to even get a chance of being in a romantic relationship.

If this is resonating with you at all, maybe you just had the thought that as long as they say how they feel first, then you’ll be okay saying how you feel. Yeah, maybe. But you could also be prolonging a potential relationship and lengthening the opportunity for them to go with someone else or for some faux pas to occur. What’s the point of that?

The obvious and go-to explanation for this is that people fear rejection. Another common explanation is that people’s hopes, dreams and expectations for their beloved get dashed on the rocks of unrequited love.

And while those are certainly reasons people fear to confess their love for another, there’s something else we don’t consider: people view love as power.

Sometimes one’s confession of love is seen as giving away one’s power to someone else. Now that they know how you feel about them, it’s almost as if your fate is in their hands. They could give you what you desire or they could deny you. Then there’s the possibility that you’ve fallen for someone who only chases after what they don’t have; and if they have you, they won’t want you anymore. There’s also the fear that they will use and abuse you because they will abuse the power.

When you’re in love you don’t pay much attention to what you don’t know. But when the time comes to express how you feel, suddenly the unknowns matter. It’s natural though, isn’t it? When you merely admire someone, you don’t have to seriously consider much. But when you’re thinking of joining lives with someone, you’d want to ensure that you choose wisely.

The irony is that when it comes to friendship, most of us don’t worry about this. If we like someone, we show it. Dare I say we make it our duty to let the person we admire know that we see them as special.

And why is there such a difference? Because friendship isn’t about power. It’s about appreciation. But throughout the years of human history and media, we’ve seen or heard of people being exploited because of love. And while it is true that some people exploit their friends, it never hurts and it is not as egregious as when a lover is betrayed.

The level of vulnerability in romance is far higher than that of friendship. The level of proximity is far higher than friendship.

It’s true that some people would feel a bigger loss by losing a friend than a lover but to be honest, both are big losses. When you become intimate with someone whether in friendship or romance and people take advantage of your trust and love, it hurts like hell. This is why people view love as power.

Having said all of that, what is the way forward? How can we say how we feel without fear? How can we remain protected?

If you are someone who believes that love is about power, the best way to get over it is to go through it. Embrace the reality of how you think about it and decide to let it go. As long as you make the decision to stop defining love in this way, you’ll be okay.

When you do this, the fear of saying how you feel and of choosing the wrong person fades. Now you’re able to go back to option one that was mentioned earlier: you express how you feel due to the delight you have for your beloved.

You stop thinking you have something to lose or that someone has power over you. You don’t lose your power telling someone how you feel about them. You demonstrate your power. After all, you’re the one who is judging them as this awesome specimen of a human.

If they don’t feel the same it’s because they find other criteria more interesting. If they don’t choose you, it’s because of their appraisal. It’s not because you’re inherently flawed. No one has power to destroy you unless you think they do.

Moreover, when you are free to express how you feel you live a lot freer. Love isn’t a game or a competition. A red flag is a lot easier to spot when you’re relaxed and observant rather than stressed and hypervigilant.

You would think being extremely attentive would allow you to spot issues better. But if you’ve ever seen it in action or done it, you will either spot something and blow it way out of proportion or you never spot the real killer blow because you’re too caught up with trivial matters.

Like virtually everything else in life, love is better when you’re relaxed. Consciously or subconsciously thinking that love is about power is a surefire way of ruining something good or disqualifying yourself from something good.

So let go of the power trip. You’ll thank yourself later.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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