Philosophers have defined different kinds of love, ranging from fellowship to sexual attraction. Much has been written about romantic love.
What happens when you fall in love? Love is a state of being, not something you fall into. It is not dependent on another person. You can be in a state of love on your own. When you do love another person, you grow to love them, as you get to know them. You cannot love what you do not yet know.
In love at first sight you feel as if you know the other person. There is a recognition of something about them that you confuse with love, because you like it; it fits with a pattern of knowledge, conscious or unconscious, that you have about the kind of person you want to be with, who will suit you, because they are like you, or because they have some quality that you believe you lack. This person you recognise may have the potential to be that person you are looking for, but they may not be manifesting that potential. That is why love at first sight can be a let-down, why it often turns sour. You need to know the person in reality, not only in fantasy. You need to know how they are living their life. If this checks out, then you have a chance of a lasting relationship.
But this is where you can get into difficulty. If they are not manifesting the way you want them to be, you try to change them. You have fallen in love with your own reflection. This is where you confuse love with longing, which is what you have really fallen into. This is a sign that you are not being who you really are; not manifesting your own potential. Longing is not a joyous feeling; it is not uplifting, as love is. Longing is painful; it is a state of grieving. You are longing to be reunited with your own lost soul, your self that you have been separated from, through your upbringing and your conditioning, through having to adapt to an environment which has not enabled you to be who you are, and left you unable to fulfil your own potential. You are grieving that loss. You want someone to comfort you.
You try to fulfil this potential through another person. You want love, but you seek someone who you imagine will enable you to be the person you are not yet being, who will help you to heal yourself. Often this person lets you down, because they cannot do this, and you come to know love as painful. That pain becomes a familiar feeling which you identify as love. It is not. It is longing.
You may feel love in this state of longing, but it is an undifferentiated love. It does not discriminate. You need to discriminate in choosing a partner. You need someone who is safe for you to be with. You need a healthy, mature relationship. Because you cannot differentiate, because you have fallen in longing with the reflection of your lost self, you do not know where you end and the other person begins. You lose your boundaries. You merge with the other person.
This merging in dangerous, because you lose your identity, your individuality, which you need to function in the world. For a while, you also lose your false self, the one you have adopted to cope. You gain your sense of self from the relationship and cannot function alone. You become dependent and feel you cannot live without this person, because you cease to be without them to confirm your identity. You are in conflict. Your false self, the one you have used as a coping mechanism, surfaces again, and upsets your partner, because that is not who they fell in love with.
You do not register this danger, because you have come to associate its feeling with the thrill of falling in love. It is familiar and goes along with the illusion of love, which you want. When the object of your love turns out not to be what you want them to be, you fall out of love; you stop loving. You have not fallen in love, but into fantasy.
Often the longing is a spiritual feeling. You are longing for God. You make a god of the person you fall in love with, when you are really longing for our own divinity. You give them responsibility for your life, and power over you, rather than taking up your own responsibility and your own power.
You can also fall in lust, and confuse love with sexuality. Sex becomes the obsession, with which you kill the pain of longing, merge into oceanic bliss and fill up your emptiness. You can have sex without love. You can have love without sex. Or you can have them together. There are many euphemisms for the latter. I like to call it union, or marriage, which may or may not be formalised, legalised, but is, nonetheless, a state of being; two people being, together. It is a sexual and spiritual partnership. One without the other is not a true marriage.
If you are not united with yourself, with your own soul, if you do not have an inner marriage, you will not be able to marry with another person; you will merge instead. If you do not have a sense of your own self, an identity and an individuality, you will not be able to share who you are in partnership, sexual or otherwise. If you are not in control of your own sexuality and need it validated by another person, you will not be able to share it in a healthy way. You will not be able to bond in love or sex; you will merge in longing and lust instead.
Excitement, stimulation and attraction to another body, another person's sexuality, is not love. In itself it is lust, healthy or otherwise.
When you are obsessing about another person, you are avoiding pain, a pain that may have been awakened by your contact with that person, or an emptiness you feel and are trying to fill up with your fantasies. Obsession does not mean that you love them.
These ways of `falling' in love are obsessive, and addictive. You find yourself repeating patterns, seeking `fixes' of love and sex. You call your emotions something else. This denial deadens you. You ignore the fear and enjoy the danger. Adrenaline wakes you up, makes you feel alive. You become addicted to the highs it gives you. You ignore the reality of your relationships, the unsuitability of your partners, or their dysfunctions, and try to live with your fantasies, and make them into the people you would like them to be, the people who you falsely believe would enable you to be the person you want to be. You adapt yourself to fit into relationships that don't really suit you in order to get your needs met, rather than seeking the resources to meet them within yourself.
So what is real love? Love is a feeling. It feels the same whether you are feeling it for someone, something or just in yourself. Love is a feeling you can have for yourself and, when you don't, you try to seek it from other people, or you try to find people who you can love. It starts from loving yourself, having your heart open, and not being goal orientated. You don't ever stop loving someone once you have grown to love them. If you love them you can let them go, to do whatever they may need to do, even if it hurts; you do not need to hold on to them. You can let them be who they are, without trying to control or manipulate them. In practice this is quite difficult for many people to do, because we do have needs too.
So you confuse loving with needing, with dependency. You cannot love when you are needy, when you are still trying to fulfil your unfulfilled, self-centred infantile needs. When these needs are resolved and you are independent, then you can inter-depend with other people; you can love unconditionally. You do not trade favours or bargain for love. You give out of generosity, from the fullness of your heart that you have filled from your inner resources, not for what you can receive in exchange. You do not use people or let them use you in return for having them rescue you or take responsibility for you. Nor do you take other people's responsibility away from them, which is an injustice.
We confuse loving with liking, and people with behaviours. We may love a person but dislike their behaviour. It is OK to dislike the behaviour of people we love. That does not mean that we have to tolerate that behaviour. It is our task to love ourselves, and not to tolerate abusiveness. We love others by making clear boundaries, by discrimination and clarity, by stating what we want and what we don't and by avoiding the latter if we have to. Martyrs are not loving people, nor are those who sacrifice their own souls and rescue others, enabling their abusiveness.
You can also confuse love with desire. You may love somebody, but you do not want them sexually, or they may not be a suitable partner. You may feel lust for them, but not like them as a person, in the way that they are manifesting. You may feel desire for a person that it is not appropriate to be sexual with. You have choices. However, love itself is the same feeling whenever you feel it and whoever you feel it for. You feel the same love for your children as you do for your lover. The difference is that, with your children, you do not feel desire and, if you do at any time, and you love them, then you do not act on it. Nor do you, if you love them, act on desire that you feel for any other person who you do not intend to make a committed sexual relationship, a marriage, with. If you do, then you are not loving them, you are using them, and yourself.
This is the nature of mature love. It has discipline, clear boundaries. It has self-responsibility and integrity; compassion, the ability to feel with. It is fulfilling and uplifting, joyous. Even though you may experience losses, you are able to grieve, and let go. Love is never ever painful, only loss is.
In immature love you are trying to meet your unmet infantile needs. In your regression, your feeling of helplessness, you cannot see outside yourself; you are selfish. People become need-fulfilling objects, love objects, because you do have a need to love. But you love inappropriately, indiscriminately, re-enacting old losses, often choosing abusive people, repeating the patterns of your childhood, meeting the same inadequacies, people unable to meet your needs for you.
It is only when you recognise your immaturity, accept what you didn't get then, and that you do not need it now, that you can grieve its loss, together with the loss of your self that you suffered because of these deprivations, and move on. You can then assess your present needs appropriately and get them met realistically, learning to parent yourself in the process. In this way you find your true self again and fulfil yourself from your own resources.
You no longer look to others for your sense of self, or to make a fulfilling life for you. You are no longer dependent on them. At this stage you can share who you are and what you have got in healthy ways, without losing your boundaries. You can love others because you love yourself. You no longer feel lonely in and out of relationship because you are at one with yourself; you are being who you are. You lose your fear of abandonment. You are no longer grasping and demanding, or getting rejected. You no longer feel resentment.
When you are able to discriminate you can choose a suitable sexual partner. You can make a commitment without fear. Your sexual partnership, being a healthy one, produces love. It is not exclusive. This love spreads to other relationships. Because there is only one kind of love, you are not dependent on your sexual partner alone for love, or on being in a sexual relationship in order to love and be loved. You are no longer pairing for safety and security, but to express love creatively.
So, do you know yourself?
