One of the most confusing things about love is the difference between the feeling of being “in love” and the feelings of loving and being loved.
For most people, the feeling of being in love is absolutely wonderful. Our heart sings. All of life’s confusions vanish, as we develop a single-pointed focus on the beloved.
What does it mean in terms of long-term happiness?
This feeling, provided by a powerful neurochemical cocktail of adrenaline and dopamine, shoots us forward. It gives us the energy and interest to find ways to be together, for those long conversations until two am, for some initial moments of vulnerability that are the beginning of intimacy.
One of the first things we must learn about love is that this “in-love” feeling is only the beginning. It is not sustainable.
The cocktail is not the meal. A cocktail before dinner can be wonderful—a lovely beginning to a long evening and a beautiful dinner. And then we need to have the meal.
What comes next is learning to create long-lasting love that is not only sustainable but grows and becomes more fulfilling with time and nurture. The “meal” is a life-long process of learning to love each other well. And the feelings you will experience during this process are quite different than the ecstasy of the being-in-love cocktail.
Mistaking the “in-love” feeling for love can lead to endlessly pursuing that feeling. It can cause you to leave a relationship that might have the potential for lasting love, or if you stay, to go through roller coaster cycles of feeling in love, then disappointment and resentment. Chasing the “high” of being in love is like forgetting to go to dinner and having cocktail after cocktail. Eventually, you wake up with a bad hangover and very hungry.
If you hang out long enough with the person you are in love with, you will eventually get to other, very different feelings. The blissful feeling of merger and perfect fit dissolves as you discover unexpected and troublesome differences. The internal dialogue might go something like, “Oh no! Just when I thought I’d found the one. How could I be so wrong?”
But if what you are looking for is a long-term relationship, loving and being loved, then the correct interpretation of this moment is that it is the call to dinner. You have arrived at the transition from finding love to building love.
Love is not something we simply find. Learning to love and to be loved is a life-long practice. And the feelings you experience, some delightful and others uncomfortable and challenging.
Loving relationships are full of hard conversations, painful differences, and misunderstandings. In order to love we must practice dealing with uncomfortable and compelling feelings of hurt, anger, fear, and abandonment. These are a natural part of all-important relationships.
They nudge us, sometimes shove us, toward aggression, isolation, defensiveness–any number of reactions that take us in the opposite direction of love. Learning to love well means that we figure out, over and over again, how to pause before reacting.
So, does loving and learning to love always feel hard? Not at all. Sometimes it feels like a great relief when you have successfully navigated a difficult set of emotional rapids without capsizing the boat. It feels like the security and trust of finding yourself with a teammate for this adventure of learning to love.
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