Falling in love [versus working out love]

Please note, I have written a post about something similar to this recently. As I am working through this idea in my mind and thinking about it deeply I feel the need to write a number of posts about it to get it all clear in my mind.

I have often said on this website that I don’t understand what people mean by “love”.  However, I of course do understand what people are talking about: profound feelings of admiration, tenderness and care for someone else, possibly an expectation to be loved in return. What I don’t understand is how people take the base symptoms and somehow diagnose love. This subject just leaves me mystified because I look at the base symptoms, or base “ingredients”, and I struggle to believe that these are sufficient to build your entire future upon.

You know how what I am about to say is true? When people talk about love, they often describe it in mysterious or abstract terms. “When I am with you, I feel as if I am at home!”  Or when trying to describe it to other people, they will act as if it is this profound deep thing, but that all the same there is something “concrete” there, and they make it sound as if this mysterious thing which is so hard to define is always the same from one instance of “true love” to another. “And when it happens to you, you too will know!”

You know, reflecting on it, this is what I think is actually happening:  when people talk about love, from evaluating all the posts I have read, all the articles about successful relationships and unsuccessful ones, when people talk about “love” they usually mean a combination of the following things; I believe that this is true even when people cannot articulate it to themselves. Please note, I spend hours thinking about this every week, and even then I struggle to articulate all this to myself.  I can only imagine that people who don’t spend hours thinking about it and analysing it will also struggle even more.
– Physical Attraction:  whether people admit it or not, this is often a huge part of love, especially “falling in love”
– Emotional intimacy and/or vulnerability
– Caring for the other person, respect, admiration
– Excitement about all of the above, which itself stems from
– A deep all-consuming desire to experience deep love

There are probably other factors tied in with these, but I believe that these are the fundamental ones.
You know what?  I believe that these factors often play off on one another as follows, in short, using the power of your imagination.

This is the way it has worked with me in the past, and I am as inherently capable of this behaviour as anyone else.

1.  Because there is within me a deep, all-consuming desire to experience deep love, it is as if I am walking around with a deep hole in my heart that yearns to be filled with romantic love. Christians sometimes talk about the God-shaped hole in everyone’s heart. Well I already am a Christian, and that God-shaped hole has already been filled for me. And yet there still remains a hole for me in my heart, and this particular hole is crying out for emotional intimacy. Because this yearning is so real and so deep, and I know it must be as deep for many other people as it is for me, I believe that this is the reason why so many of us are eager to accept just any appearance of love, in our yearning to fill that hole.  This, I believe, is why we often cannot think straight when we are in the throes of a crush, or whatever else it might be.
2. Even before you meet someone whom you could be attracted to, your imagination is busy creating scenarios of what life could look like with the love of your dreams. You imagine spending time together, holding hands, laughing, hugging. You imagine hugging him in silence under a quiet, moonlit sky – or is that just me?!  Long story short, if you are anything like me your imagination has already been hard at work. As I type this, it occurs to me that this is a biological thing, that is, the urge to procreate presenting itself in exciting dreams of a loving relationship.Attraction:  You meet someone attractive, you exchange smiles, and boom! There is an emotional connection.  This is where my own imagination tends to take over. What then happens is that my mind will subconsciously insert “attractive new guy” into all the pre-existing dreams and fantasies. If it “works” then my mind will just happily continue to create dreams and fantasies around this person, whom I usually don’t know.  So when I am attracted to someone, all it usually means is that I could be with someone who looks and smiles like him. When I am not attracted to someone, that usually means that it does not “work” in my mind, I cannot imagine being excited by his smiles, something within me is just saying “nup”.Emotional intimacy:  Once again, this is something that is often created in my mind. I will simply imagine myself pouring out my heart to the dream version of this guy, which will in turn make it easier to do that in person.

Caring for the other person:  Because in your dreams this man is kind, considerate, understanding, a listener, of course it is easy to care for him, to respect him, to admire him.  And then you just project these feelings onto the real man. I have got a big imagination, so it is so easy for all of this to literally happen in my mind, with scarcely any input from the real man. However, if someone does not have quite such a big imagination as I do, then I imagine that there will be more input from the real guy. This is where things like lavish dates and expensive gifts come in.  Perhaps in your mind you remember how he took you to a lovely restaurant, and in your mind you dream about further lovely restaurants to which he might take you. Or you remember how he looked into your eyes and called you beautiful, and you imagine the different scenarios in which he might call you beautiful, in that same sweet way.

It would not be difficult to imagine yourself coming to care for and respect someone who treats you so excitingly. This is true whether like me you manage to make the whole thing up in your mind, or you rather project unto the future examples of his previous loving acts. Which is exactly the reason why men act like this, of course. They want us to fall for them, they want us to imagine a rosy future with them.

I call this “falling” in love because it can happen so quickly. It can literally happen within days or weeks of meeting someone. And yet from reading all these articles that I have read, it seems all too possible for someone who initially “fell in love” in this way to fall out of love. The problem with building your entire life on this is that it is simply not reliable.

Once again, I will tell you what tends to happen after that, from my observations:
After marriage, one spouse or both will at some point start demonstrating unattractive characteristics. This will carry on until it comes to a head, and one spouse or both will realise or decide that actually, they don’t really like their spouse that much. This then breaks all pretence of care, admiration or respect, and the whole relationship follows close behind. And it seems that it is at this point that people realise that it is too much of an ask to continue to invest their life and soul into this thing if they do not fundamentally respect, or admire their partner. So they divorce.

So it often tends to hinge on the sincerity of the care, admiration or respect that you have for your spouse. So this is why I say “Don’t jump into anything!  My minds are so skilled at tricking us that we deeply love someone. However, if you have just met someone, then that is not a reliable timespan to use to evaluate whether this person is truly worthy of your respect.”
Let me flip the question around a bit: off the top of your head, are there any character traits that you inherently despise? Because the point of checking someone out is to make sure that they don’t have these unattractive character traits. Because if you inherently despise those character traits, and your husband turns out to have them, then you will find yourself in the uncomfortable position of despising, or even hating some aspects of your husband, even while you are still trying to love him. I suspect that some people carry on in this weird tension, before eventually calling it a day and ending their marriages. Because this causes a kind of cognitive dissonance, and cognitive dissonance is actually painful in a way. It is like if you are in a job that consistently goes against your fundamental beliefs. And you have to go to work everyday, working on something that you fundamentally disagree with. Even if you force yourself to stay, you will hardly be performing at your best, will you? Rather you will be working under duress and frustration, and it will eventually show. For instance, sometimes one spouse will take to a website to start complaining about their spouse.  And I will think to myself: “So why are you complaining now? This is what you should have been looking out for before you married them!”

You know, when “two-yearing” people, I have often found myself in a position of discovering some deeply unattractive character traits within them which I fundamentally despise. And obviously I essentially ran away from each of those men whenever that happened. And then on more than one occasion the man in question actually tried to get me back – urgh! I cannot begin to express the frustration I would feel if I found myself already tied to one of these men before I discovered this unattractive trait.  Or you might discover a non-negotiable deal breaker after you have already struck the deal of marriage.

So this is why I am saying, why I never stop shouting. For crying out loud, for the sake of your own future marital peace, evaluate someone before you marry him! Don’t rely on those amazing feelings, on the promises of your imagination. Don’t assume that he is going to be an amazing guy, just because he is a Christian, for instance. Some of the character traits I discovered in supposedly Christian guys were absolutely shocking.

Our hearts are prone to concoct amazing feelings, regardless of the true underlying status of the relationship. This must be true, because the continuation of the human race depends on us making babies, and we do that by developing feelings for one another and from that starting relationships. True love is when your loving feelings match the true underlying status of the relationship, and you cannot reliably know this until you reliably know the character of the person you are dealing with.

So then, when you feel overwhelmed by “love”, look and compare your feelings with the huge feelings that other people also felt, which have all the same landed them in awful relationships. Many of the women who now cry bitterly about their husbands were just as much in love as you are, their feelings were just as big as yours are now. If their big feelings were not sufficient to guarantee amazing relationships, then yours might not be either. Conversely, if feelings are going to work, then they will always need to be based on strong character.  So make sure the person you are checking out genuinely does have outstanding character before you decide to fall in love with him!

Sometimes, character flaws or incompatibilities will be subtle, and will slowly reveal themselves over time, that is, years, or decades. However, what Reddit seems to shout is that many times character flaws are not subtle at all but reveal themselves almost immediately after marriage.  Which leads me to think that if the woman/injured party in question had waited even just a bit before throwing herself into the marriage, then she would have seen these traits which would have made her realise that this man would be very wrong for her.  Or, even worse, the character traits were there and obvious all along, as “red flags”. But she was so blinded by “love” or “feelings” or loneliness, that she could not even truly see them, even though they were there, flashing at her, all along.

Sometimes, to complicate things, someone might genuinely have started off outstanding. And yet, as time goes on, their character changes.  This is why I am looking for someone who is going to keep striving after outstanding character, even after I marry him. I am looking for someone who has made a lifetime commitment to that. I am very conscious of this possibility regarding myself. I evaluate myself and I see the ways in which my spiritual fervour might be dimming, or I might be absorbing ungodly attitudes from the world. And I renew my commitment afresh to be hot for God. And here it helps if there are two of you, so that you can be mutually praying for one another. Perhaps you notice things or traits about your spouse that your spouse does not notice about himself. Then you can quietly take these things before God. What I am going to say next might sound strange, but all the same it is true. I have noticed that it is easier to pray for someone who is already (genuinely) committed to giving God a thousand percent, than someone who is not. That is, someone who is already committed to giving God a thousand percent is more likely to change positively as a result of your prayers, even if they do not know that you are praying for them. Whereas if someone has not made that commitment, you can pray and pray and pray, and nothing will seemingly change.

I believe that the reason for this is because someone in true commitment to God will already have a mind that is open to God. They are already eager to listen to God. Whereas someone who has not made that commitment just does not have the same openness to God. So when the Spirit of God speaks to them, through your prayers, they are already inclined to listen.
That is why I am not going to be praying for a non-Christian to come to faith so that I can marry him. When someone’s heart starts off being that far away from God, then it will realistically take years for such a prayer to get through. That said, it is probably easier to pray for a sincere person of another faith than a cold-hearted Christian, because some so-called Christians are so far from God. Shrug. In true Reddit speak, “I said what I said!” To clarify what I have said, so there is no confusion, Jesus is the only way to God – absolutely.  However, some supposed “Christians” are so far from God that some non-Christians are much closer to Him, or at least more open in their hearts, especially if they already believe in God and are receptive to faith.

[A blog post for me to work on: a way of working out love to have a more reliable expectation of a successful marriage.]

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[PS,]

– working on your marriage – why I believe it often does not work: asking people to change their fundamental nature