what in love means

Howdy, reader.  How are you doing?  Do you know what in love means?  I was talking to my friend; I thought she never fell in love with her boyfriend, but he’s moving in with her soon.  Yes, I knew she loved him, but I never heard about an actual falling in love episode.

Not to be mistaken for a manic episode!  But truly, falling in love and a manic episode can be similar.

I’m happy that as I continually grow up and learn more about what I need, asking for help, and taking care of myself, mania is a rarity.  But love is not.

megacrush

Falling in love is like a crush, only it lasts a long time, and it’s based on reality.  There’s desire for intimacy, to partner, and for sex–at least that’s what falling in love is for me.  (People who are asexual don’t have the sexual desire but might have the rest of it.)

A crush could be a week of twitterpation or based on a dream.  But falling in love is like a crush times ten– deeper and grounded, worth building a life on.  These intense connective emotions can carry us through the difficulty of joining our lives together.

Several times I thought I was in love over the years, but then I realized the whole thing had not been based on reality.  Sometimes I thought I knew someone, but actually I misunderstood or projected.   Sometimes the other person downright deceived me intentionally.

NRE

Some people refer to New Relationship Energy as some emotional and physical thrills at the beginning of a romance.  This term means something like a crush or falling in love, but I find NRE as a term dismissive and slightly cold.  I hear it like, “Oh, of course you’re charmed by this person, thinking about them a lot, wanting them, and motivated to be near them.  It happens to all of us.  It will wear off in a few months.”

I’ve heard the term NRE as a way for polyam people to comfort themselves.  If someone has a long-term partner who they share Old Relationship Energy with–a stable marriage vibe–they can see their partner get with a new person and feel jealous.  But labeling the crush / falling in love as New Relationship Energy is comforting.  Like, “Oh yes, we had NRE back in 2012.  All things have a season.”

Do you know the word limerence?  It’s like a crush with an obsessive component.  In the pop psychology insta battleground of good feelings vs bad feelings, limerence is bad.  Don’t do it–don’t obsess about people in a hopeless way.  We are supposed to be healed from our childhood trauma and do relationships like reasonable, happy people.

Don’t you dare do limerence or you are sentenced to 19 years of therapy, a frog medicine ceremony led by a white shaman, and four aura cleansings.  Plus countless ounces of Blue Dream weed.

friend

I had a friend, Friend 1, who was in love with my other friend, Friend 2.  It was a stressful situation.  The power was weird, and I was heartbroken for Friend 1, sympathetic.  Many factors were at play, but I felt sure that Friend 1 had been pushed out, in a polyam context, by Friend 2’s established partners who had more power and were better at advocating for themselves.

Yes, Friend 1 reminded me of me, disabled and often getting the shit end of the stick.  Friend 1 asked me to pull tarot cards asking what long term possibilities they had with Friend 2.  The situation was something we talked about often.

Then a few weeks later, Friend 1 seemed to have moved on.  I asked, “Are you not in love with Friend 2 anymore?”  Friend 1 told me they were not in love with Friend 2 anymore, and I was flabbergasted.  The moving on seemed fast and complete.

In a way, I was impressed that Friend 1 could refocus and move on so quickly.  Yet I thought, “Were they really in love with Friend 2?”  Maybe they really were, and other people come in and out of those states faster than I do.  Or maybe they were never in love at all.

words

In a way, who cares.  It’s words–sometimes labels confuse things more than clarifying.  We feel however we feel.  Putting terms to it gets important sometimes–sorting things out, making plans, taking vows.  I love magic words.

But who we love and how?  There are so many parts.

• chemistry
• spirituality
• heart-connection
• hormones
• reward pathways
• what we learned in our families of origin
• what we developed ourselves
• sexual desire
• cuddly desire
• having babies
• convenience
• song lyrics
• power
• our own patterns over time
• trauma
• experimentation
• economics like who we live with being partly defined by what we can afford

Love is not one thing.

Relationship skills are not valued in our society or taught in a deliberate way.  Relationship skills are haphazard, mid, and mostly transmitted by flailing parents and big budget movies.

Sorry we built a culture where the most important things are often what’s least discussed: death, what we really need, love, who we really are.

questions for discussion

• Can you explain what in love means to you?
• Are you in love right now?
• What do you wish we talked about more?
• Is being in love desirable?
• How many people can you be in love with at the same time?
• Would you nest with someone who you had not fallen in love with?
• What would you change about love, partnership, dating if you could?

I would say more honesty in the whole thing.  I’m in it for the intimacy, and I need consent.  Intimacy and consent both depend on knowing what’s real.