PT 1 and 2: Love vs. In-Love


© 2005 Richard, 21CP Author and Publisher

_http://tearsandhealing.com/_ (http://tearsandhealing.com/)


This Excerpt:

Love vs. In-Love: Part 1

[If you like this essay, then definitely take a look at my newest title, In
Love and Loving It – Or Not! This new book takes you much deeper into the how
and why of falling of love, loving, and what you can do to make it work for
you.

This excerpt seems to be of interest to everyone - regardless of their
circumstances. It is an important issue that many of us never get an
understanding
of. We're so conditioned to think that love will just take care of itself
that we never dig in to figure out what we can do to achieve real love in out
lives. This essay highlights the difference between being in-love and loving
someone. It sets the stage to deal with the problem of being in-love with
someone who isn't good for us, covered in other sections of the book.

My perspective on being in-love continues to evolve – totally as a result of
two experiences since my separation in which I been in-love. I’m so moved by
the obvious importance of this phenomenon that I’ve just released a new book
on the subject, and my take on falling in-love is decidedly more positive
than it was at the time this essay was written. Still, the ideas here can be
very helpful, especially if you are in-love with someone who is hurtful to
you.]

Love vs. In-Love

Well, everybody is always talking about love. And with so many people saying
so many things about it, I guess it makes sense to understand what this
simple, four-letter word means. So let’s borrow from Harville Hendrix (p. 163)
and M. Scott Peck (p. 165) yet again. Right off the top let’s break this into
two very big and very different pieces. Let’s think of love, loving, and the
act of love on the one hand, and falling in love, being in love, and romantic
love on the other hand. And to really talk about these things and understand,
you need to know which one you’ve got and which one you don’t.

Briefly, falling in love is an unconsciously motivated insane state in which
we attempt to meet our own needs, to make up for not caring enough for
ourselves, by completing ourselves in sexual union with and emotional dependence
on another person. Loving is a chosen, purposeful effort, often done in the
face of fear, to nurture our own spiritual growth or the growth of another.

Wow. Are you still with me? I know this seems pretty radical, but there is a
lot here you can use to get in control of your life. Trust me.

Falling In Love: Old black and white movies; Beauty and the Beast; happily
ever after. Man, we all want to fall in love. It’s the way the universe tells
us who we belong with forever and ever. And nothing could be better. Except...

Falling in love is mental illness in disguise. Mental illness?!! Yes, that’s
what I said. Falling in love is mental illness in disguise. Here’s a short
catalog of what’s wrong with falling in love:

First, we’re overcome with excitement, fulfillment, and euphoria. Hello?
From being close to someone who we might not even know? Doesn’t sound very
healthy to me.

Second, we lose all perspective about the person we’re in love with. We
idealize the person. They become the most beautiful/handsome, most loving,
caring, kindest… Really?

Third, being in love doesn’t last. The fairy tales say it will. And
sometimes we might know a couple that is still “in love” after 40 years. But
it’s
not so. Eventually reality sinks in and the glow is lost. Being in love is just
a transient state of altered consciousness. That 40 year couple isn’t in
love, they’ve transitioned to loving, which is totally different.

Fourth, we lose ourselves. Without our understanding it, our whole ego tries
to merge with our love. We become incomplete without them. We need that
person to be whole. Nice romantic concept. But not very healthy. Have you ever
been in love with someone who didn’t love you back? I have. And it isn’t
very
healthy. Trust me.

Fifth, we can’t control it. We don’t choose to fall in love, and we don’t
choose who we fall in love with. Hendrix has a great theory, called imago
theory, that explains who we’ll fall in love with. But it isn’t up to us.
Sixth, falling in love is always sexual. It just won’t happen outside of
that, because it is driven by our sexual drives.

So, when you’re in love:

You get there without choice;
You didn’t get to choose who you’re in love with;
The one you’re in love with has to be from the limited set of people you can
be sexually attracted to;
You can’t think straight, because everything is idealized;
You can’t feel straight, because you’re lost in euphoria (or dysphoria if
she doesn’t love you back); and
You can’t be whole by yourself.

As nice as euphoria is, you can do a lot of damage to yourself when you’re
lost in this fog. There’s a little more on this feeling of euphoria in
Magical
Stuff (p. 54).

The Incomplete Self: Why do we go there? We go there because, by ourselves,
we are incomplete. When we are incomplete, we are unhappy. Now, you can read
Hendrix (p. 163) to get a lot more detail about this. He says we deny parts of
ourselves, and we lose parts of ourselves.

We deny parts because family and society disapprove. I might be a big
hulking guy and love floral wallpaper. Not for long, I guess. It would be too
painful. Better to just deny that part of me and go with plain off-white.

We lose parts of ourselves because we fail to recognize them and don’t
nurture them. For example, I might have been an athlete in high school, but in
my
years studying quantum mechanics and later working hard at the laboratory
bench trying to count all those quanta, I could lose the physical aspect of
myself.
These denied and incomplete parts are more than just empty spaces. They are
unmet needs. As people, we are not complete without them. They are
deficiencies in our spirit. We cannot fulfill ourselves without them. They are
aspects
of ourselves in which we need to grow. And neglecting these aspects of
ourselves makes us sick, too. It causes malaise and depression. Have a look at
Depression and the Unconscious (p. 68).

To grow, we are going to need to expend some effort. We are going to need to
take some risk. We are going to need nurturing. In other words, we are going
to need some spiritual growth to overcome these deficiencies.

Which brings us to love. [Continued in part 2…]




This Excerpt:

Love vs. In-Love: Part 2

[In the last excerpt we saw that falling in love is not a rational process,
and it can actually look a lot like being mentally ill. Actually, how crazy
it looks mostly depends on circumstances, something I talk more about in my
new book, In Love and Loving It - Or Not!.I explain in a lot more detail what
we can do - consciously and rationally - to get into love in healthier
situations.

This excerpt is the second part of a longer section from Tears and Healing,
and in this half we see that love and loving are conscious actions, and they
don't have a whole lot in common with being in love.

In truth I believe we all need some of both in our lives, and understanding
what these two important dimensions of relating are all about is essential.
And so, to continue...]

Love vs. In-Love

[Continued from part 1]

Which brings us to love.

Love: Peck (p. 165) says it better than I can, but, to paraphrase, love is
work or courage expended to nurture the spiritual growth of myself or another.
It is a choice. And it is hard. No idealism here. No euphoria. No loss of
ourselves. And no agony if it isn’t returned.

What is spiritual growth? It is the growth of ourselves as human beings - as
complete human beings. Hendrix talks about four aspects: physical, sexual,
thinking, and feeling. To be complete, to be spiritually fulfilled, we need to
develop all four of these parts of ourselves.

Now, let’s say you grew up in a family situation where you were told that
you were dumb and shouldn’t expect to succeed at anything “hard.” You
might
have made choices that steered you away from developing your thinking
capabilities. As an adult, you’re probably not going to suddenly start
studying quantum
mechanics or relativistic physics. To develop this part of you, you will
probably need some help. You will need the effort and persistence of someone who
can assist or guide you in developing your thinking skills. This effort is
love, and assists you in your spiritual development.

The same might be true of your sexuality. If you were influenced to avoid
those aspects of your emotions and ignored the physical signals from your body,
you are probably going to need some help to develop a healthy sexuality. That
might come from a counselor, a doctor, or a caring intimate partner. But it
is going to take some effort, and that effort is going to have to be focused
on you and helping you grow.

One From Column A, One From Column B: Now, let’s start lacing these two
together. Did you notice that both falling in love and love are ways to complete
yourself - to fill in the missing pieces?

Now, here you are, incomplete, as we all are. There is a driving force to
change that - that’s why we fall in love! Now, you have a choice. You can try
to
fill in those holes by falling in love, or you can try to fill them in
through love. Which are you going to chose? Well, love is work. That’s not
too
enticing. Falling in love feels good. Yeah, that’s for me!

The problem is that falling in love has so many problems. Go back up and
look at that list again. Just limiting the people could help you grow to those
who could be sexually attractive is a huge limitation. Think of all the
potential that’s eliminated! And the other problems are big, too. Taken
together,
they almost guarantee that falling in love won’t provide the growth that you
need. It’s a deception, a dirty trick of nature.

In fact, both Peck and Hendrix argue that falling in love is a Darwinian
development designed to fool us into starting families, and might by luck even
set us up to get real love. But by itself, falling in love is not going to fill
in those holes. Only the growth made possible by love is going to do that.
And in case I wasn’t clear, falling in love is so dysfunctional that no real
love will happen in that state of mind.

No Alternative to Love: So the reality is that, sooner or later, you are
going to have to get some real love if you’re going to be complete. That means
you’re going to be unhappy until you get it. And you may fall in love again
and
again, each time being swept up in the euphoria and distorted thinking,
believing this time all your needs will be filled, and still not get there. If
we
’re lucky, a falling-in-love relationship will evolve into a loving
relationship, and that will help us grow. But if you’re reading this, it
probably didn
’t happen for you.

The great thing about real love is that it can come from anyone: from an 89
year old chemistry professor; a therapist we pay to help us; some loud mouth
on the Internet; the author of an inspirational book. Real love is about
people, not about sex. Real love is healthy and sustaining, so you can get it
where you want, when you want, with whom you want. And you can keep your head
and
your emotions with you. It is truly a healthy interaction.

We all need energy and courage invested in us to help us grow. We need
someone - and it could be someone else or we can do it ourselves - to care
enough
to work to help us overcome our fears, learn the things we didn’t know,
unlearn the wrong things we’ve learned (that’s what I’m doing here, I
hope), and
step onto new ground. It takes time. And it is work. And it’s not very likely
to come from falling in love.

But it is the only way to become truly happy. And the need to complete this
task will never go away. Not as long as we live. It is, in truth, the
challenge of being human.

What to Grow? Great, you’re thinking, all I have do is fix up these hidden
and denied parts of myself --- wait a minute?! How the heck do I know what
these parts are?

This is a hard question. Obviously once you break through the denial enough
to see the denied parts, they won’t be denied anymore. The hidden parts you
probably know, if you have the courage to look. But how?

Well, I think there may be lots of ways to get at this, but the one that I
think has been most definitive for me is the pointer of tears. I talk more
about this in the section on Tears and Healing (p. 137). But for now let me
just
say that, in general, things that give you a teary, hurt feeling are things
that are about your hidden and denied aspects. I’ll give you a couple of
examples.

Example 1: Performing - I used to sit in my daughters’ ballet recitals with
tears in my eyes. There was no great mystery about it. I knew that I was
wishing that I could perform for an audience. I was really jealous of the
opportunity my children had. This was an undeveloped aspect of my spirit,
making its
need felt through tears. Well, one of the activities I’ve found for myself is
a performing sport. It’s done before an audience, and people like to watch.
I didn’t know when I took it up that I was fulfilling a part of myself that
had been neglected. But I was, and I know now that this is one aspect that
continues to draw me. And I feel very different watching others perform now. I
don’t feel jealous or sad; I relate to what they’re doing.

Example 2: Help Me! - I used to find myself welling up, almost sobbing, when
an ambulance would pass with lights and siren. I would think about how
ambulance crews devote themselves selflessly to helping others in desperate
need.
This had happened for a long time, but I never understood it. Now I do
understand.

I was in an unhealthy relationship for a long time. My wife controlled me
and dominated my spirit. Even as I was growing and building some new aspects of
myself, she resorted to more desperate and violent verbal attacks to beat me
down. So what does that have to do with an ambulance? I had isolated myself
from people and from the nurturing that was around me in the world. And I
needed the help and nurture of those people. My spirit was calling out to me,
“
Help me!” And I wasn’t listening.

Step by Step - I know these are small things, and they’re about me, not
about you. But I bet you have a little store of situations, places, people,
movie
scenes, or whatever, that give you similar feelings. These things are
pointing to the areas you need to develop: aspects of yourself about which you
need
to find people willing to give to you, and help you grow.

Those people are out there. They’re teaching art classes, on Internet
support lists, at the end of the telephone line to that relative you’ve
stopped
talking to, and a thousand other places. We each have to reach out to find
them.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter,
and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr. Suess



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