Vacuosity

Heart picks

Is there a difference between loving someone and being in love with them?

If you had asked me when I was seventeen, I would have told you no. If you had asked me at twenty-three, I would have told you no. But ask me today, and I will answer yes.

I used to deny the concept of being in love. I would say that there is one love, which you either feel or you don't. I thought that anyone caught up in the idea of being "in love" was just romanticizing the whole thing and falling prey to stereotypes and cliches. I thought that you would feel that same about everyone that you love, although there might be different intensities of that feeling.

But now I feel disagree with my former self. We've debated it, he and I, and have reached a consensus: how you feel about your mate is a singular emotion. This is, in part, because you, the person, is partially defined by who you have chosen to love. (I say choose to love because I do believe that it's a choice, it's not pre-ordained, nor is there only one love per person. I believe that you can commit yourself to anyone, and when you do make that commitment, you have to choose each day to honor it and continue loving that one. However, that in itself is a whole other topic.) Not because other people define you by your mate; they will, to a degree, but that's not why. It's because you make a judgement of yourself by who you have chosen.

To love someone, requires nothing from them. Genuine love is not determined by whether it's reciprocated. It's based on independent observation, approval, respect and admiration.

But being in love requires much more. The person that you are in love with is the person that you are saying you have chosen, out of all the people available to you to choose, as the one person you most admire, most respect, most enjoy spending time with. In your eyes this person is the best person of all the people you know, or at least those available to choose as mates. It means that everything that that person represents, their morals, their beliefs, their personality, their life choices, are ones that you most identify with and approve of.

And being in love requires that those feelings are reciprocated. If they are not, those feelings simply recede again into admiration, or develop into one-sided infatuation.

It's when you really, truly get to know a person, intimately, better than you know yourself, that it becomes difficult. Maybe you don't respect as much; maybe you don't admire as much. What then? That's when you choose.

No one said it was easy.

posted by David @ 12:07 a.m.