THE WEIGHT OF DESIRE | LOVE | RELATIONSHIPS
Are you really in love or are you lying to yourself?
How to know for sure
Here are the hard facts. Data suggests that most people don’t like their spouse, and definitely don’t love their spouse. However, we didn’t need data to tell us that. We just needed a pandemic; when everyone was asked to shelter in place with the love of their life, they preferred to go out and risk getting what was believed to be a deadly virus instead…odd.
Okay, great so everyone is lying about how happy and how in love they are, and if you aren’t one of those people that actually are in love you think whatever feelings you have towards your significant other is “love” because why would you think any differently if you don’t know the alternative?
The good news, however, is that I have found through my research that there is such a thing as a perfect partnership, love does exist, but the deeper truth related to all of this is scary.
Many people have tried to define love, but no one has a complete definition. What most people agree on is that love is something that is metaphysical and indescribable. Nonetheless, there are telling ways to know you are experiencing love by your actions, emotions, thoughts etc.
You have to ask yourself a few very hard, but cut-and-dry questions. Be honest with yourself because no one will hear the answer except you (since you are talking to yourself).
- Who is most important to you, yourself or the other person?
- If necessary, would you die for that person to live?
- If necessary, would you be tortured for that person to not feel pain?
- If necessary, would you starve to let that person eat?
- Would you be Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic and let your person get on the floating door while you stay in the freezing Atlantic Ocean waters knowing you would die of hypothermia just to give them a slight chance of being rescued so that they could live and carry on with their life?
- Would you do all of these things with no reward and without anyone finding out you didn’t do it?
*These questions aren’t meant to be dark. The above question is the most critical because most people would sacrifice themselves rather than face the societal ridicule that would come from “shirking their responsibility” of sacrificing for their loved one. However, if they were assured no one would find out they “shirked their responsibility,” most people would shirk away.
- Are you all compatible?
- Would the most exciting event in the world become no more exciting than eating cold, stale popcorn on your sofa if they weren’t experiencing it with you?
- Relatedly, does this person add more dimension to the meaning of life’s events?
- Can you be your real unfiltered self around the person?
- Does hearing something funny become 10x funnier when you can share it with them?
- Are TV shows uninteresting unless the two of you are watching together and both engaged in them?
- Is the person your best friend and #1 priority or does someone else in your life trump them?
Overall, what I have found and concluded is that love…real love…is all about intensity. If love was a heat source it would be the sun, and everything else would be some variation of “like” or merely friendship, but it wouldn’t be love.
If you find love, you will know because it will be as debilitating as it is rewarding.
However, for most of us, thinking about intense relationships initially conjures up images of imbalanced, attached, and dependent people.
According to society, intensity is neither healthy nor normal. But is that the right way of thinking?
This will be the first article of a 3-part series on love. I will first provide a framework for evaluating whether you are in love and then go into the implications of real substantive love (not the fake performative love that we so often see). Afterward, I’ll offer a new way of seeing and talking about this phenomenon.
