Teaching Tools for Mindfulness Training

"Winter 1999/2000 Classroom Talk"

Some Thoughts On Romantic Love~
Posted by Sally on December 15, 1999 at 16:34:29:

In Reply to: Been there...and am STILL there! posted by Sally on December 15, 1999 at 14:46:23:

Hey~
I found this and it has some things for one to "look" for regarding
love....If these things are not there...should Michael stand by this
woman? or should I "pick" this guy(myX) when he does not meet any of
them? I do not think so.....Sal

Some Thoughts on Romantic Love

by Wendy Freebourne MSc

Philosophers have defined different kinds of love, ranging from
fellowship to sexual attraction. Much has been written about romantic
love.

What happens when we fall in love? Love is a state of being, not
something we fall into. It is not dependent on another person. We can
be in a state of love on our own. When we do love another person, we
grow to love them, as we get to know them. We cannot love what we do
not yet know.

In love at first sight we feel as if we know the other person. There is
a recognition of something about them that we confuse with love,
because we like it; it fits with a pattern of knowledge, conscious or
unconscious, that we have about the kind of person we want to be with,
who will suit us, because they are like us, or because they have some
quality that we feel we lack. This person we recognise may have the
potential to be that person we are looking for, but they may not be
manifesting that potential. That is why love at first sight can be a
let-down, why it often turns sour. We have to know the person in
reality, not only in fantasy. We have to know how they are living their
lives. If this checks out, then we have a chance of a lasting
relationship.

But this is where we can get into difficulty. If they are not
manifesting the way we want them to be, we try to change them. We have
fallen in love with our own reflection. This is where we confuse love
with longing, which is what we have really fallen into. This is a sign
that we are not being who we really are. Longing is not a joyous
feeling; it is not uplifting, as love is. Longing is painful; it is a
state of grieving. We are longing to be reunited with our own lost
soul, our self that we have been separated from, through our upbringing
and our conditioning, through having to adapt to an environment which
has not enabled us to be who we are, and left us unable to fulfil our
own potential. We are grieving that loss. We want someone to comfort us.

We try to fulfil this potential through another person. We want love,
but we seek someone who we imagine will enable us to be the person we
are not yet being, who will help us to heal ourselves. Often this
person lets us down, because they cannot do this, and we come to know
love as painful. That pain becomes a familiar feeling which we identify
as love. It is not. It is longing.

We may feel love in this state of longing, but it is an
undifferentiated love. It does not discriminate. We need to
discriminate in choosing a partner. We need someone who is safe for us
to be with. We need a healthy, mature relationship. Because we cannot
differentiate, because we have fallen in longing with the reflection of
our lost selves, we do not know where we end and the other person
begins. We lose our boundaries. We merge with the other person.

This merging in dangerous, because we lose our identity, our
individuality, which we need to function in the world. We also lose our
false self, the one we have adopted to cope and feel uncomfortable
with - for a while. We gain our sense of self from the relationship and
cannot function alone. We become dependent and feel we cannot live
without this person, because we cease to be. We are in conflict. Our
false self, the one we have used as a coping mechanism, surfaces again,
and upsets our partner, because that is not who they fell in love with.

We do not register this danger, because we have come to associate its
feeling with the thrill of falling in love. It is familiar and goes
along with the illusion of love, which we want. When the object of our
love turns out not to be what we want them to be, we fall out of love,
we stop loving. We have not fallen in love, but into fantasy.

Often the longing is a spiritual feeling. We are longing for God. We
make a god of the person we fall in love with, when we are really
longing for our own divinity. We give them responsibility for our
lives, and power over us, rather than taking up our own responsibility
and our own power.

We can also fall in lust, and confuse love with sexuality. Sex becomes
the obsession, with which we kill the pain of longing, merge into
oceanic bliss and fill up our emptiness. We can have sex without love.
We can have love without sex. Or we can have them together. We have
many euphemisms for the latter. I like to call it union, or marriage,
which may or may not be formalised, legalised, but is, nonetheless, a
state of being; two people being, together. It is a sexual and
spiritual partnership. One without the other is not a marriage.

If we are not united with our selves, our own souls, if we do not have
an inner marriage, we will not be able to marry with another person; we
will merge instead. If we do not have a sense of our own selves, an
identity and an individuality, we will not be able to share who we are
in partnership, sexual or otherwise. If we are not in control of our
own sexuality and need it validated by another person, we will not be
able to share it in a healthy way. We will not be able to bond in love
or sex; we will merge in longing and lust instead.

Excitement, stimulation and attraction to another body, another
person's sexuality, is not love. In itself it is lust, healthy or
otherwise.

When we are obsessing about another person, there is pain that we are
avoiding, a pain that may have been awakened by our contact with that
person, or an emptiness we feel, and are trying to fill up with our
fantasies. Obsession does not mean that we love them.

These ways of `falling' in love are obsessive, and addictive. We find
ourselves repeating patterns, seeking `fixes' of love and sex. We call
our emotions something else. This denial deadens us. We ignore the fear
and enjoy the danger. Adrenaline wakes us up. We become addicted to the
highs it gives us. We ignore the reality of our relationships, the
unsuitability of our partners, or their dysfunctions, and try to live
with our fantasies, and make them into the people we would like them to
be, the people who we falsely believe would enable us to be the people
we want to be. We adapt ourselves to fit into relationships that don't
really suit us in order to get our needs met, rather than seeking the
resources to meet them within ourselves.

So what is real love? Love is a feeling. It feels the same whether we
are feeling it for someone, something or just in ourselves. Love is a
feeling we can have for ourselves and, when we don't, we try to seek it
from other people, or we try to find people whom we can love. It starts
from loving ourselves, having our hearts open, and not being goal
orientated. We don't ever stop loving someone once we have grown to
love them. If we love them we can let them go, to do whatever they may
need to do; we do not need to hold on to them. We can let them be who
they are, without trying to control or manipulate them. In practice
this is quite difficult for most of us to do, because we do have needs
too.

We confuse loving with needing, with dependency. We cannot love when we
are needy, when we are still trying to fulfil our unfulfilled, self-
centred infantile needs. When these needs are resolved and we are
independent, then we can inter-depend with other people, we can love
unconditionally. We do not trade favours or bargain for love. We give
out of generosity, from the fullness of hearts that we have filled from
our inner resources, not for what we can receive in exchange. We do not
use people or let them use us in return for having them rescue us, take
responsibility for us. Nor do we take other peoples' responsibility
away from them, which is an injustice.

We confuse loving with liking, and people with behaviours. We may love
a person but dislike their behaviour. It is OK to dislike the behaviour
of people we love. That does not mean that we have to tolerate that
behaviour. It is our task to love ourselves, and not to tolerate
abusiveness. We love others by making clear boundaries, by
discrimination and clarity, by stating what we want and what we don't
and by avoiding the latter if we have to. Martyrs are not loving
people, nor are those who sacrifice their own souls and rescue others,
enabling their abusiveness.

We also confuse love with desire. We may love somebody, but we do not
want them sexually, or they may not be a suitable partner. We may feel
lust for them, but not like them as a person, in the way that they are
manifesting. Way feel desire for a person that it is not appropriate to
be sexual with. We have choices. However, love itself is the same
feeling whenever we feel it and whoever we feel it for. We feel the
same love for our children as we do for our lover. The difference is
that, with our children, we do not feel desire and, if we do at any
time, and we love them, then we do not act on it. Nor do we, if we love
them, act on desire that we feel for any other person who we do not
intend to make a committed sexual relationship, a marriage, with. If we
do, then we are not loving them, we are using them, and ourselves.

This is the nature of mature love. It has discipline, clear boundaries.
It has self-responsibility and integrity; compassion, the ability to
feel with. It is fulfilling and uplifting, joyous. Even though we may
experience losses, we are able to grieve, and let go. Love is never
ever painful, only loss is.

In immature love we are trying to meet our unmet infantile needs. In
our regression, our feeling of helplessness, we cannot see outside of
ourselves; we are selfish. People become need-fulfilling objects, love
objects, because we do have a need to love. But we love
inappropriately, indiscriminately, re-enacting old losses, often
choosing abusive people, repeating the patterns of our childhoods,
meeting the same inadequacies, people unable to meet our needs for us.

It is only when we recognise our immaturity, accept what we didn't get
then, and that we do not need it now, that we can grieve it's loss,
together with the loss of our selves that we suffered because of these
deprivations, and move on. We can then assess our present needs
appropriately and get them met realistically, learning to parent
ourselves in the process. In this way we find or true selves again and
fulfil ourselves from our own resources.

We no longer look to others for our sense of self, or to make
fulfilling lives for us. We are no longer dependent on them. At this
stage we can share who we are and what we have got in healthy ways,
without losing our boundaries. We can love others because we love
ourselves. We no longer feel lonely in and out of relationship because
we are at one with ourselves, we are being who we are. We lose our fear
of abandonment. We are no longer grasping and demanding, or getting
rejected. We no longer feel resentment.

When we are able to discriminate we can choose a suitable sexual
partner. We can make a commitment without fear. Our sexual partnership,
being a healthy one, produces love. It is not exclusive. This love
spreads to other relationships. Because there is only one kind of love,
we are not dependent on our sexual partner alone for love, or on being
in a sexual relationship in order to love and be loved. We are no
longer pairing for safety and security, but to express love creatively.

Adapted from a paper published in the Association for Humanistic
Psychology In Britain Newsletter, New Year 1984

E-Mail: relate@path-finder.demon.co.uk

Click here to find more papers.

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Follow Ups:

Re: Some Thoughts On Romantic Love~ Sally 12/15/99 (1)
- Re: Some Thoughts On Romantic Love~ Michael 12/16/99 (0)

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Archived February 13, 2000