When You’re in Love, You’re Not Free

True love can be so self-destructive, we usually don’t appreciate it until it destroys us.

Unlike most diseases that are caused by an invading germ or virus, love is a self-inflicted trauma — it’s as if our brain is attacking itself.

When we can’t get someone out of our head, it’s not a bunch of overzealous cells dividing uncontrollably — it’s our own mind turning on itself in a vain attempt to discover something that never existed in the first place.

Love defined

Love is when against all reason, we become emotionally, physically, and psychologically addicted to another person.

Love addiction is profoundly more powerful and dangerous than gambling or drugs since there is no treatment or cure for it. Unlike a chemical substance or the dopamine hit we get from winning at a slot machine, love has no predictability, whatsoever.

By definition, love is obsessive, compulsive, chaotic, intense, and out of control. Therefore, love is invigorating and euphoric — and also powerful and destructive.

Love is schizophrenic and bipolar

“I swear if you don’t respond to this text, I will never text you again.”

Three minutes later: “I knew you didn’t give a shit about me.”

Two minutes later: “You’re the worst boyfriend I ever had….THE WORST!!!”

One minute later, “That was a little harsh, almost the worst…LOL”

30 seconds later, “Okay, I get it, you’re angry. Fine. Have a good life.”

15 seconds later, “I need my sweater back, it was my grandmother’s and it is very sentimental to me.”

10 seconds later, “If you hate me that’s fine, but have the courtesy to at least give my sweater back to me. Thanks.”

……I hate you….I love you….You’re destroying my life…I can’t live without you…I can’t sleep or eat or breathe…I replay every detail of us over and over in my mind.

Why? Why do our brains attack us in such a blatantly self-destruction manner?

Pain and suffering

If you were an alien from outer space and believed just half of my description of love’s craziness, would it be something you’d be interested in?

Love sounds like the worst kind of mental and physical hell anyone could conjure up: You think you want somebody so badly your own mind turns against you in a neverending, insidious, compulsive loop of torture, self-doubt, and fear.

And to add insult to injury, the object of our insane brain-diseased love is often someone who, on paper, is the absolute worst person on earth for us.

Why do we hate ourselves so much?

Desire trigger?

Someday we’ll know the precise physiological process that occurs in us chemically which triggers obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors.

We know extreme love compulsion is at least partly triggered by a strong sexual desire for someone. It makes some logical sense to obsess on something that could possibly turn into a physically euphoric event.

But there is a distinction between wanting to get laid and ending up in a state of panic, sadness, depression, despair, hopelessness, and disillusionment.

Perhaps some people have such a strong, everlasting effect on us, it actually changes us fundamentally — chemically, emotionally, at the cellular level.

Maybe ‘the one that got away’ actually did steal a piece of our heart — or brain.

Maybe a certain person, inexplicably, infects us with enough neurologically embedded serotonin, it creates its own permanent spikes — whereas simply the thought of them creates a reinforcing dopamine hit.

Love shouldn’t hurt?

And here is the neverending conundrum we face. If love is supposed to be wonderous and magical, why does it simultaneously drive us clinically insane?

Are less evolved mammals too cognitively underdeveloped to feel emotion, longing, and engage in mental fantasies? In other words, does the expression, “He’s as horny as a dog,” make sense. Maybe most animals feel a chemical attraction and desire to fornicate and simply get it on — right there, on the spot. And then move on until their pheromones kick in again — then simply rinse and repeat — free of any mental anguish or second-guessing.

Accepting our helplessness

There’s a price to pay for everything in life.

And it is true that love shouldn’t hurt.

But it does.

And it does because we’re evolved enough to know there is something uniquely powerful about the sensation of being in love.

Unlike food, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco, where we know the cause and effect, we have no idea why one person gets under our skin and someone else doesn’t.

Certain people create such a dramatic, indelible, neurological impression on us cognitively that we effectively become addicted — not to anything we can point our fingers at — but to a mysterious, internal eruption of emotion…manufactured by our own brain chemistry.

Love is like a slot machine where you never know if the next spin is the one where all the apples or oranges will line up — so we’re driven to keep spinning. And by the time we realize we’re “in love,” it’s often too late, or the opportunity has passed us by.

Summary

Sifting through the attraction, desire, chemistry, emotion, insecurity, and fear associated with what we define as love, can be mentally and physically exhausting and tortuous.

You’d think something as fundamental and powerful as love would be better understood by now — neurologically and biologically.

As we age, some people remain so “neurologically loaded” we know we have to keep them at a safe mental distance — to push them out of our minds.

Some people have the power to bring us to our highest highs — but also our lowest lows. That may be what some mean when they tell someone, “You can’t handle me.”

Does this mean we are doomed to end up “settling” for someone because our “true love” is too hot to handle mentally and emotionally? Yes…it likely does.

But our whole life consists of making educated choices. We know how we react biologically to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco and can avoid them….or not.

Human beings don’t come with warnings of adverse effects. We know not to take 50 pain pills, but deep, obsessive-compulsive love can be as fatal as a drug overdose.

So how do we navigate these love landmines and enjoy the intense emotion and pleasure of being with someone who excites us?

We don’t control love’s etiology but know it is a constellation of intense emotional and physical symptoms without any treatment or cure. It is mysterious, unpredictable, and impossible to predict.

We accept we are oftentimes stuck between love and a hard place — loneliness.

Ironically, it is possible to protect your heart — just not your mind. Once someone permeates your psyche (like a flashbulb memory) there is no telling where the emotion and intensity will end up.

And that’s the true definition of love in the 21st century — like the kid scared mercilessly about jumping into the deep end, or the way we wave our arms around in the dark hoping to find stability or that dream of a quaint cottage in the mountains or a resort condo on the beach — we crave fantasy almost as much as reality.

So, when you’re in love, are you free? Yes. You’re free to ride it like a bucking bronco or hold on tight to that rope as you swing over an unruly lake.

But it’s better not to fight your penetrated mind. Just accept that for some unknown reason, certain people are going to seep into your consciousness and take up residence — possibly forever.

At some point, whether we’re physically sick, drug-addicted, or hungry, we surrender to what we cannot control. Love is no different.

If the trade-off for love is permanently losing some real estate in my brain and therefore losing some freedom to “be myself,” I’ll take that deal any day.

Maybe love won’t set you free. But maybe it’s worth it.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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