Love Isn’t Cruel or Wicked

I will feel this way forever

I will love you forever.

How do you know?

Trust me, I know.

Didn’t you tell your first wife you’d love her forever?

Yes. But that was then, and this is now.

What’s the difference?

Time.

Familiarity breeds love

We tend to love those we spend a lot of time with — classmates, fraternity brothers, siblings.

Not romantic, sexual love, but the kind of deep emotional connection we develop with people for whom we share a large amount of time, energy, and experiences.

Even classmates we thought we hated, we ended up missing if they switched schools or were out sick for an extended period of time.

Familiarity breeds a level of compassion, expectation, companionship, and camaraderie which we associate with strong platonic love.

And that makes sense. If we spend 30 or 40 hours a week with the same group of people, of course, they’re going to grow under our skin and become meaningful to us whether we think we like or “love” them, or not.

Platonic love doesn’t typically evolve into wild, uncontrollable romance, it tends to creep up on us over time.

Platonic love is a bit like Goldilocks — not too hot, not too cold.

However…

Romantic love has a life of its own

Deep, powerful, obsessive, love has a life of its own.

It comes and goes based on factors we don’t control or understand.

There are no conscious levers we pull to expand, accelerate, or diminish how we feel about someone — love plays us like a marionette, not the other way around.

Who controls Cupid’s arrow?

When I was 12 years old, I invented my own Love Potion — it consisted of my mother’s perfume, my dad’s cologne, a little orange juice, a few maraschino cherries, and a dash of Tobasco.

I dabbed a drop behind each ear and approached the young girl of my dreams.

It didn’t work.

I was deflated — there had to be some technique or potion or ritual that would make a girl love me.

Even at 12, I knew there was something peculiar and patently unfair about love.

I used to lay awake at night and wonder, in my scientific mind, what a terrible mistake God must have made. He gives us this powerful, miraculous, overwhelmingly joyous feeling and disposition that is usually focused on one person — who oftentimes doesn’t feel the same way we do.

What a sick joke!

Making us live our lives in a constant state of unpredictable arousal and stimulation, not knowing whether the object of our desire feels the same way or for how long either person will continue to be enamored, seems torturous at best.

Love lives and dies based on its own set of criteria and doesn’t care if billions of people are confused, hurt, or even suicidal in its wake.

Love is nasty badass.

Love takes no prisoners.

In fact, it’s not hyperbole to say, “Love hates you.” Why else would something come along that makes you feel so alive and special, just to yank itself out from under you, at your most vulnerable?

You’d think we could at least get some warning signs or a head’s up that love was about to take a hike — perhaps in a dream or maybe our skin or hair could change color….anything to help us prepare our heart for its inevitable diminution.

Love used to fit our principles and morality

I used to wrack my brain wondering why so many couples of my parent’s generation stayed married for life — until I realized I was simply overthinking.

The turning point sociologically was a combination of declaring our personal happiness as paramount over everything else in life and the well-intended notion that if love is meant to be it will last.

Our personal happiness should be a priority in our lives. We do matter, indeed.

But love is not designed to last forever — nothing that mind-blowing is.

We may love roller coasters, for example, but we know if we rode one consecutively for hours we wouldn’t love it anymore. We’d be over-stimulated. We’d need to take a break from it.

Do you know when love lasts forever?

When we proclaim we’re sticking with someone through the “good and the bad,” we mean we’re sticking with them even when that loving feeling is weak or gone.

A stubbornness of the heart you might call it.

Anyone can do it — just insist on staying together no matter what and remain committed to defining love on your own terms.

Most of all, know yourself.

If you’re someone who craves (and needs) that chemical euphoric high that accompanies fresh love, it doesn’t take a genius to know you’re likely to stray.
Perhaps in today’s “anything goes” atmosphere of permissiveness and progressive relationships, maybe you and your spouse will agree on an open relationship.

Summary

We could analyze love, romance, and loyalty until we’re blue in the face, it may boil down to which part of our brain rules the rest of our lives.

If the radical, progressive, dopamine-hit desiring part of our brain is prominent, the moment love ebbs or wanes, we seek fresh excitement.

If the more reasoned, moral, principled, conservative part of our brain rules, our meta-cognitive critical thinking recognizes love is fickle and sometimes fleeting. But that we can still consciously decide to stay with one person regardless of how strong or weak the love signals are blinking.

Love isn’t cruel or vicious, nor does it care what you think about it.

Love knows there is plenty of fish in the sea. It knows we’re human and crave biological satisfaction.

Love can be eternal and everlasting, but not on its own.

Love is not a recipe or a series of scaffolded events leading to something deeper and impenetrable.

Love is a little like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, they exist only when we truly believe in them — and not one second more.

Love doesn’t live or die.

We do.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.