Late night ride home from the city last night after a concert. It was 1am, and my friend and I were pleasantly exhausted after a great show. We easily kept each other awake talking about life. We are both 40-something single moms and the conversation inevitably turned to dating…no easy thing to do living on a peninsula, but makes for a great time-killing topic.
One of us asked the other about love. Something along the lines of “did you love him?” or “did he love you?” At first, we approached it as a simple yes or no answer, but soon discovered there’s a bit more to it. As I pondered the thought of “love”, I flatly stated, “I don’t think I know what love feels like”. I’ve read that the butterfly in the stomach, excited “chemistry” feeling I’ve often had at the start of relationships wasn’t the love that I assumed it was. It was really anxiety, a triggered attachment response, as I tended to choose men who were emotionally unavailable, and the chaos and instability/insecurity of the whole situation resulted in those triggered anxious attachment feelings. My deep rooted abandonment from my childhood spilled into every relationship I’ve had as an adult. I developed a pattern of clinging to people who were incapable of staying. I acknowledged that I probably wouldn’t know what love felt like, even if I had the real thing. My girlfriend told of a conversation she recently had where she asked a man about past love, and he replied, “love is just a word”. Love is just a word? I wondered what that meant, for a minute…and then it came to me. What if, instead of identifying love as a feeling, we talk about what love looks like? What actions demonstrate love?That made it easy…
To me, love looks like him going out of his way to do something for me, happily. It’s knowing I can count on him, without feeling like a burden. Love is him texting me, just to tell me he’s thinking of me, or to tell me something funny that he just thought of. It’s him pausing in the parking lot, telling me I’m beautiful. Love is me setting boundaries, and him respecting them. And love is him setting boundaries, just the same. Love looks like us making each other laugh, and laughing at ourselves. It’s a grateful caress. I think love looks like me lifting him up when he’s sinking in things I don’t understand…and him letting me. Or maybe I just sit there with him in that dark place, allowing him to sink for a bit, but with me by his side, so it’s not so isolating. It’s being comfortable enough to not hold back from each other to avoid being judged. Love is being able to share our emotions without fear of retribution or abandonment. Love is wanting to know how things are going with each other’s families, jobs, friends…love is asking questions and being inquisitive. Love is relaxed, and love is work…but not one sided work. Mutual work. It’s relaxed because we both have self love, because really…you can’t love someone else if you don’t carry it for the self. Love is being vulnerable, authentic and patient. It’s having realistic expectations. It’s the ability to argue, talk through things and make up. It’s knowing each other’s triggers and being willing to postpone a debate until those triggers are calm, and not taking it personally when our demons make us a bit unlovable. Love is equal, but not keeping score, and a willingness to learn from each other, instead of proving yourself right. Love is investing in each other. Love makes us a priority. Love is trust.
Wow, this reads as a list of affirmations. Love affirmations. It’s funny, because I’m still not sure that this is what love is, as I have yet to experience any of the things on this list, other than self love. For all I know, this is a fairy tale. That’s OK. I always likened my life to Cinderella…minus going to the ball. As unrealistic as fairy tales are, if you are already living a bad one, then it’s justifiable to hold out for that better ending. Even if that better ending is by myself.
This post was written in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness Saturday
