In all of human experience, more words have probably been devoted to "Love" than any other emotion. It's certainly the subject for much of the world's art, music, and poetry, but what is it? Why is it so easy for some to love and it eludes others? I think there are many misconceptions about what love is...and what it is not.
I firmly believe the capacity for love is a learned behavior that begins in the cradle. Children who grow up through the first phases of their lives without a caring nurturing touch develop serious mental and emotional disorders, and developmental physical challenges as well. Sometimes children die from a lack of touch and affection, even though every other physical need is provided for. The earlier in the developmental process a child's needs are ignored or abandoned, the greater the trauma and stress and mental issues later.
Some issues become permanent.
Why as lovers, do we sometimes do and say the most hurtful things to the very people we profess to love? If love is an emotion, how can we feel such jealousy and rage towards our lover when they don't act think and feel the way we want or expect them to?
Falling in love is a fantastic experience. When we see our beloved, adrenalin is released into our bloodstream, as well as a delightful cocktail of endorphins, oxytocin, and hormones that help bind us to our lover and form an intense emotional bond, ego boundaries fall away and we feel as if we are "at one" with our lover. Orgasm releases a great deal of these bonding chemicals into our bloodstream as well.Falling in love feels good for a reason. If the relationship goes on long enough however, this initial stage passes, our ego boundaries snap back into place, and we realize that he or she is an individual with bad breath, the propensity to leave socks on the floor, and sometimes gets in foul moods. The bloom is over and the blossom always fades. Sadly, those who equate love with this initial stage of falling in love seek to re-create it, and when that fails, jump from lover to lover hoping that this will be "the one".
That isn't to say that we stop loving the person, because this stage sets the conditions in which true love can actually happen. In fact, this first stage must pass if we are to get to what I believe is real love in every sense of the word.
Once we exit the stage of seeing our loved one as "perfect" then we can begin to see them more as they actually are. They say when we hook up with someone in a relationship, we're getting three people.
The person they are, the person we THINK they are, and the person they will become as a result of being with us. The real power and the work of love is learning to see and accept the other person as they actually are, and our capacity for loving another is firmly rooted in our capacity to love and accept ourselves. Indeed, it is impossible to truly love someone fully while loathing and despising ourselves. Since nobody fully loves or despises themselves in the normal range of health, the meaning of love then, is in the daily journey from one end of the spectrum to the other. The trust and bonding that comes from exposing what we cannot love in ourselves to another and watching the anger shame and hurt dissolve in the light of day and the warm embrace of acceptance, is truly one of the most beautiful expressions in human experience. That is what I believe the journey of love is about. Love truly does set us free.
