'Twas the Season ... Thoughts about "Love" in all its variations

With the holiday season just behind us, and Valentine's Day being just around the corner, we are being bombarded by two kinds of messages: "Buy Buy Buy" and "Love and Peace on Earth". Our society is torn between an unattainable ideal of love on one hand (and if you don't have *that* kind of love, you better feel lonely and unworthy!), and  a disregard, almost contempt, for other kinds of love on the other hand. A narrow straightjacket of what "love" is, should be, and can be.

Love. There is no other emotion that has generated so much fuss, has inspired so many books, poems, movies, songs, and paintings. There is also no other emotion that seems to have so many different definitions. "Love" has so many faces. "Love" is supposed to be pure and good, yet people commit murder and violence, and express cruelty, all in the name of what they call "love".  

There are also different kinds of "love", supposedly. The love we feel for friends. The love parents feel for their children. Romantic love. Love of things. The love we feel for our non-human companions. Love of God. Love of country. Universal love for humankind. Love of power.

We believe that love can make us blind. Crazy. Obsessed. Love makes us into better people. Love hurts. Love heals. Love brings out the best in us. Love is eternal. Love is patient. Love makes us jealous. Love makes us brave. Love makes us possessive. 

People search for love. They crave love. Chase love. Yearn for love.

But what is "love"? There is a quote from the 1987 movie "Nuts" starring Barbra Streisand that I've always loved:

Francis MacMillan: You don't believe your mother loves you? 

Claudia Draper: God, of course, she loves me. She told you that. Didn't you hear her? He wrote it down. Now you stand up there asking, "Do you love your daughter?" And she says, "Yes, I love my daughter." And you think you've asked something real? And she thinks she said something real? You think because you toss this word "love" around like a Frisbee we're all gonna get warm and runny. No. Sometimes people love you so much their love is like a goddamn gun that keeps firing straight into your head. They love you so much you go right into a hospital. Right, Mama?

Rose Kirk: I didn't know. I didn't know. 

Claudia Draper: No, you didn't want to know. 

Francis MacMillan: Mrs. Draper, I'm a little confused. Do you love your mother? 

Claudia Draper: Sure, I love her. So what?

Is it love? Can love be cruel, and still be love? Can we love people we don't even like? Those who do not like us? Is love involuntary? Or have we simply bought into a myth? Does love exist, or have we combined a whole host of emotions, and labeled them with one overarching term? Just like people seem to realize that the term "cancer" refers to a multitude of illnesses, does the term "love" likewise refer to countless emotions? And is there one "true" form of love? One that is truer, better, purer, more noble than the others? Do we sometimes use to word "love" to mask more sinister, more selfish, even cruel motives and intentions? Is love something so strong we are helpless in its face? Another quote, this time from the TV series "Desperate Housewives":

It’s impossible to grasp just how powerful love is. It can sustain us through trying times or motivate us to make extraordinary sacrifices. It can force decent men to commit the darkest deeds or compel ordinary women to search for hidden truths and long after we’re gone, love remains burned into our memories. We all search for love, but some of us, after we found it, wish we hadn’t.

Can we love someone, and then hate them the next moment, because they did not behave the way we wanted them to? Because they did not love us back? Because they hurt us or left us? Is this really LOVE, or is it a mixture of selfishness, ownership, jealousy, and imagination? I love you - or at least that picture that I have of you. I love you (or so I say) and because of that you have to act a certain way. If I can't have you, nobody can. I can't live without you, so I will kill us both. All of these things have been, and still are, being sold to us as love, not only as love, but as the true, highest, purest form of romantic love. The kind of love that drives us to do crazy things. The kind of love that ends in tragic death. The kind that makes people destroy other people's lives. But is it really love? Was it ever love? If we are capable of intentionally hurting the very person we professed to love not more than a few days, or even moments, did we ever love them? 

Sometimes, what is being advertised as "love" is nothing more than need, selfishness, control, possessiveness, and a fear of being alone.

Can we feel (romantic) love for more than one person? Again, I quote from a  movie (Prince of Tides, 1991):

Susan Lowenstein: Just admit it. You love her more.Tom Wingo: No. Not more, Lowenstein. Only longer.

I have known in my heat for a long time that my definition of love seems to differ from that of many other people. I don't believe that we have different kinds of love for different kinds of people. The love we feel for a friend or a romantic partner are not different in nature, they are only different in intensity. Sexual attraction is not always a sign of love, and its presence or absence does not define how much we love someone. If mutual feelings of love coincide with mutual attraction, if a close emotional bond includes physical intimacy, then we have found "romantic love". But just because we do not feel attracted to the other people we care about does not mean we love them less. Just because we feel attracted to someone does not mean we really care about them. While it is great when physical attraction and emotional closeness coincide, one does not cause, or even predict, the other.

It is also true that we, from a  very early age, are being conditioned to look for a certain kind of love. Romantic love is valued above and beyond all other kinds of love. It is mystified, elevated above everything else, presented as the holy grail of all. The one thing we need to be complete and successful. Yes, we all strive for intimacy. Emotional intimacy, and physical intimacy. We look for someone we can trust, we can be ourselves with, we can share our fears and mistakes and insecurities with. That, I believe, is a truly universal (or almost universal) desire. But this is where conditioning comes in: From a very early age, we are taught that we can only attain this goal, find this kind of intimacy, by looking for one "mate" from the opposite sex. Society, or culture, or the "system" tells us: Sure, go out and look for this intimacy, but make sure to look only within a certain set of people. Those of the opposite sex. Those within a certain range of your own age. Those of the same skin color. Those of the same religion. Those of the same nationality. Those of the same socio-economic status. As much as we love stories about people finding romantic love across gaps, gulfs, walls, and other boundaries, we also make sure to let these stories end dramatically. No happy ending for Romeo and Juliet. Why?

Because society as we know it, the system we live in, the system we serve, depends on people adhering to this narrow standard of love. Romantic love is better/more worthy/more precious than other kinds of love. You can only ever feel "true" romantic love for that one person, the love of your life, without whom you are forever incomplete. The love of your life can only be a certain kind of person. When you have found that one, idealized, seemingly perfect "other half" within this severely limited subset of the population, you have to express your love in certain, societally approved ways. You have to get married. You have to move in together. You have to become part of one another. Our wish for closeness, our wish for intimacy, our need for a connection is being exploited for social control. Yes, you need to find "love", but don't you dare find it outside of the "norm". 

If we feel love, romantic love, outside of these tight norms, we are being told to question ourselves. Can it work? (Can we EVER be sure of that?) Am I making a fool of myself? (Don't we always risk that when we open our heart to another being?) Am I kidding myself? Should I feel guilty? (Mutual affection and attraction between consenting adults is nothing to feel guilty about, in my opinion, but people frequently do. I have - and so has almost everyone else I know). The list goes on and on. The voice of societal control speaks to us from within our own heads.

This expands beyond romantic love. Yes, we are supposed to love our friends, but don't you dare love them "more" than your spouse. Yes, we love our aunts and uncles and grandparents, but if we love a cat or dog or mouse or spider with all our heart, we are being branded as pathetic laughingstocks. To feel love for an "animal"? Sure, as long as you don't "pretend" it's the same thing as loving a human being.

And then there is the love parents feel for their children. Without a doubt, this bond is special and cannot be fully understood by those who do not have children. It is a deep connection that oftentimes seems to come closest to truly unconditional love. But again, society/culture/the system steps in to tell parents (specifically mothers) what they have to do to make the rest of us believe they truly love their children. The expectations and pressures and guilt and shame sometimes reach a level that seems impossible to bear, and all of these things are primarily directed at mothers. This is what makes you a "good" mother. This is what makes you a "bad" mother. This is what makes you a "failure" as a mother. And so on. The list is endless. A double-bind. A lose-lose situation.

We all have fallen into some, or all, of these traps. I know I have. I have been in relationships just to be in relationships. Not because I did not want to be alone, but because I was afraid that others might see my lack of romantic partner as a failure. I got over this several years ago, but it was not easy. Even today, I am sometimes selfish towards those I love. I see what I want more clearly than what they want. I am self-centered. I think they think about me more than they do, and in attempts to reassure them, all I do is force them to pay attention to me. I am far from perfect. I make mistakes. But I tell myself that at least I am able to see those mistakes for what they are. That is, after all, the first step towards learning from them.

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”

― Thích Nhất Hạnh

Love, in any form, is rare. Oftentimes, we confuse it with other feelings. We bury it with attachment and dependency and fear and control. We are scared by it, and by the vulnerability it entails. We reject so as not to be rejected. We built walls and fences. We pair up just to pair up, because we are afraid of being alone, afraid of being seen a failure. But only when we love and accept ourselves in all our flawed humanity can we ever love another being.

Put differently: What if love is none of those things? What if love is not about us, but about the person we love? What if love is not about us feeling complete, and achieving intimacy, and being understood, but is a truly selfless feeling? What if it truly means wanting the best for someone, even if that does not include you?

But, oh how glorious it is if it does include you!