Beyond Romanticism

One of the most difficult subjects to understand that I have ever encountered is Love. There is of course the argument that love is not meant to be understood, and there is some validity to this argument: as a feeling, it’s only requirement is to be. It is meant to be felt, not thought about.
But what manner of emotion is it?
What is it about love that makes us do the things we do?
How can love make us feel so intensely?
Is there a right time for love?
Can you force love?
What happens when you want somebody so much, and yet it seems as though the world is conspiring against you?
Is love personal? Or universal?
Can we love? Or is that just a plurality of loves?
It has been my experience that “I love.” What I mean by this is that the emotion I feel for somebody is my own. The emotion that somebody feels for me is his or her emotion. The most common manifestation of this principle is how people tell each other that they are in love:
“I love you.”
And the response is usually:
“I love you, too.”
When “too” is used in this position at the end of the sentence, it means “also.” In other words, what is really being said here is that “I love you,” and “I also love you,” but, in this situation, “you” is the same thing. In other words, what these two hypothetical people are saying is that they love their relationship, not the other person specifically. What are the psychological ramifications of this? Are there any?
It seems to me that it is fairly common to fall in love with the relationship. The person can be anybody—proven by the commonplace that we oftentimes come out of a relationship, fall into another relationship, and look down to find ourselves in the same relationship with somebody else. It is in this situation that the love is not for the person, but it is for the psychological fulfillment that comes from having somebody with you.
Perhaps I am simply being pedantic. What kind of importance can a little world like “too” have in reality?
Yes, that was most definitely a rhetorical question. I will leave it up to you start having this conversation with your loved one:
Look them in the eyes before and during your saying, “I love you.”
And as their response, have them say, while looking at you, “and I love you.”
Change as necessary.
It could be an interesting experiment. Maybe nothing will change, but I know, from personal experience, that is sounds and feels different. The “why” it feels different doesn’t matter, the “what” that feels different is a matter of language—and I have been over the fact (many, many times in this blog) that we ARE language, and the how of what changes is the personalization of the salutation (you know that this person is talking about you specifically).
The changeover to personalization is huge. What happens when you start lauding the relationship over the person is that the other person is put in charge of being able to take the love away. What I mean by this is, “YOU can end OUR love.” When love exists in the form of a fantasy-type relationship (in that there is no way to combine two people into one—sex is the greatest illusion of this), the love sits outside of the individual on this very precarious pedestal. When love is personal, I make the decisions regarding it. If “I” decide that I love “you” no matter what you do, then I grant all. In other words, “you” can do things that might make “me” reconsider our relationship, but because this love is mine and mine alone (which, by the way, is simply a recognition of the fact from both a theoretical/philosophical and physiological standpoint that we are all individuals and “we” is simply a plurality that is easily divisible), I make all the final decisions about who takes it away.
The easiest argument to make against this position is: what kind of love is it where there is no trust, or where there are no boundaries? If you think about the question long enough you’ll see first that when there are no boundaries, this love is boundless. I am not sure, but I would imagine that in this love where there are no boundaries and all is honesty and truthfulness and faithfulness to the truth of love in the individual, there would probably be less “infidelity” than one would imagine. Who wants forbidden fruit that isn’t forbidden? As far as trust goes, it is simplified. The only trust I need to have is that you love me right now. The trust is taken out of time and placed where it ought to be: in the present. Traditionally, you are trusting your partner to make decisions that don’t negatively affect the future of your relationship. In this new love you are trusting only in the fact, the reality, that your partner loves you right now. There is no future beyond if there is no love now. Two people focused on their present individual loves seems to me (scary and unconventional as it might seem) to be “the love of the future.”
Everybody loves a little romance. It is nice to feel wanted. It is nice to have those little gestures that say, “I care about you.” It just plain feels nice. The problem with romance is that it is traditionally concerned with the future. How many couples would complain that all the romance went out of their relationship after they got married? In this new love, there would be room for romance because it would be day-to-day courtship. Every day would be a glorious affirmation of my love for that person, simply because I have him or her right now.
Ah, yes, the older generation is probably sneering at my youthful naiveté, and why not, they’ve got life experience on their side, and that teaches them that they need to plan for the future; however, they’ve also never tried living an entire life this way. I think that there is discipline in living your life in the present. I believe it takes a great deal of will and strength to wake up every day and joyously affirm that I love this person. I don’t even know if it’s possible. Maybe it’s not, but why isn’t it worth trying? Is it too free?
“They're scared.”
“They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to them.”
“All we represent to them is somebody who needs a haircut.”
“Oh, no. What you represent to them...is freedom.”
“Freedom's what it's all about.”
“Oh yeah, that's right. That's what it's all about. But talking about it and being it...that's two different things. It's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Don't tell anybody that they're not free, because they'll get busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. They're going to talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's going to scare them.”
“Well, it don't make them running scared.”
“It makes them dangerous.”