Where Love Starts
Both Heat and Stability
Where do we like a romance to start?
Do we love it best when a person takes our breath away, sweeps us off our feet and helps us to forget our many worries? When this happens, do we find time for this person?
Or do we love it best when the other person is tentative? Do we like it when neither person calls or texts for a few days after the initial spark? When we keep it cool and juggle dates with a big pipeline of other options waiting for…for what?
The transition into trust is no formula.
Every two people must find their own rhythm. We each have a different way and even more so in unique combinations.
Fast, hot and passionate thrills us, but in accord with received wisdom, if it flares up like a bonfire, it probably burns through fuel quickly and goes dark.
Or perhaps we start with caution and an incremental step toward entwining lives. The cliché here means such a slow and tentative dance lasts longer and has a firmer foundation, also usually true.
Simmer for longevity. Crank it up for short but intense heat. This is how love is usually framed as an either/or choice, for passion or for stability.
After making almost every mistake in the book and experiencing highs, lows and stability for times, here’s what I believe I’ve learned. It’s not easy, but we can have both.
The most profound love a person can know can also endure.
We can have bright heat and a strong foundation.
There is limitless fuel if you’re awake enough to see it and you’re patient enough to let it replenish. Fast or slow in love is another false choice, part of our either/or brains, when and/both is sometimes perfectly within reach.
Why don’t more marriages look this way?
I think it’s very common that one or both people find ways to unravel their greatest romance. And most often, the reason they did this was not conscious. We are profoundly talented at self-sabotage, most of us, and in no arena more than romantic love. Freud was right on this point at least.
However our earliest feelings of love with a parent were expressed, however that infant or toddler intuitively felt when cuddled (or not) by mom or dad, that’s what we most often unconsciously reproduce in adulthood. We snap back like rubber bands to familiarity, whether that familiar feeling is one of unworthiness and despair, mild indifference or deep appreciation, kind gestures and affection.
So what can be done?
Therapy? Not very romantic, right? But it’s a good start. Put shame behind you and find a counselor you can pour your heart out to, someone trained to help you reflect discover those childhood patterns that no longer serve. Feel it all and learn about those deep habitual grooves which are no fault of your own. Learn how habits of mind are starved or fed. This may allow you to cultivate new patterns, to lean into uncomfortable new forms of intimacy.
How else?
Meditation. Meditation helps us become more self-aware. Not some esoteric activity full of beliefs, labels and the inner conflict of “shoulds.” I’m not talking about metaphysical speculations about what happens after death. Just sit still, in quiet, alone and pay attention. Pay close attention to all your sensations and all of your thoughts, every single one of them arising and passing away in short order. Learn not to grasp or push them away. When we learn to meditate, what often happens is a profound and healthy dissociation. We learn to stop appending each thought and habit with the prefix, “I am…,” such as “I am unworthy,” or “I am impossible to love,” or “I am uncomfortable.” Just be with discomfort. Watch and acknowledge feelings and thoughts arise and dissipate. Perceive a feeling of unworthiness arising and passing, or a feeling of discomfort.
Meditation can cause an inner voice with a different timbre to arise. Sometimes it tells you it’s best to leave your relationship. Sometimes it might be telling you that you’re being treated great, deeply appreciated, but it just feels strange because it’s unfamiliar, dissimilar to the love you felt in youth. Being loved well can make those of us who had rough childhoods feel cagey.
So love seekers, I’d like to suggest that we can abide in the greatest and/both.
We can be fallible and hurt, heroic and compassionate and wise. None of these qualities need dictate our decisions in romance. We can be right there and clear away the past and choose freedom to “sit in the fire” through passions and loss and triumph. We can listen and be kind in many small ways and meet another person with a wide open heart.
When this occurs, a wellspring of joy flows out of our connection. And if we find the right dance these connections really can last, the dance of a lifetime.
