ROMANTIC LOVE AS A BANDAGE
Images like the one above provide us with a somewhat erotic and yet sentimental depiction of love and romance that represents a fairly ubiquitous concept of what most of us have been taught to dream of having someday – a blissful relationship with someone we can grow old with. These are natural inclinations and aspirations of the human heart. After all, who doesn’t love the mouthwatering experience of two entangled bodies rolling around in bed sheets and the exhilarating and highly addictive biochemical experience of falling in LOVE?
Those who know me know that I routinely describe the experience of “falling in love” as a socially acceptable form of insanity, or more specifically – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; and it is, in virtually every way we look at it. But who doesn’t want to experience it? Right?
Though we are completely bowled over by the sudden onset of these unexplainable and overwhelming emotions drawing us to this particular person, who we see as a gift from the heavens, this infatuation/obsession emerges from, taps into, and nurtures our vulnerable, timid, and frightened inner child that is always looking for security. It’s a desire that emerges from an emptiness and lack of security we feel that was bore out in us in early childhood.
Research psychologists and clinical-behavioral therapists routinely reflect upon and write abstracts about the disparity that exists between our human logic and emotions. The two are completely incongruent, never occupying the same space in our mind at the same time. This gap is never more painfully obvious than when we “fall in love.” The whole experience is soooooo delicious and yet bordering on complete delirium in every way.
If we could stand outside ourselves and observe ourselves objectively, we’d witness how we obsess over this person we only recently met and are now smitten with. We can’t wait to see them again, laugh with them, kiss them, touch them, taste them, have sex with them. They’re the first person we want to receive a text message from every morning and the last voice we want to hear before falling asleep. We love knowing someone is pining for us and misses us as much as we miss them. No distance or time that separates us can keep us apart. We will go to extraordinary lengths to be in their presence. We lose sleep, staying up all night just to talk to or be with them. We have boundless energy, we forget to eat, forget to drink, we forget or voluntarily abandon our “to-do” lists entirely. Our priorities are reshuffled and everything on our “to-do” list is now secondary to time spent with our lover. The thought of doing anything with anyone else is a negotiation at best, because every decision we make is the one that allows us more time with this person we’ve always dreamt of meeting. We’ve literally “flown the coup!”
When we fall ‘in’ love” we tend to fall ‘out’ of our mind and trip all over ourselves to be with our romantic partner! We can barely even recognize the person we were before meeting this person that we feel now completes us. Indulging in this biochemical romance we’re having with another person, as tidal waves of hormones rush through our veins, we will do anything to maintain the ecstasy of it all indefinitely through role playing, and by modeling the observed behavior of our parents, friends, and the expressions of romantic love as depicted in the movies and the lyrical content of songs, to win over our lover. The perilous nature and accompanying risks inherent in repeating these patterns modeled for us, is that it comes with a whole host of predictable behaviors and corresponding outcomes during the relationship. But even more predictable, very reactive behaviors and corresponding feelings that are attached to the underbelly of romantic love and come to the surface when relationships end: feelings of self-hate, jealousy, abandonment, rejection, grieving, depression, anxiety, and fear. But hey, who has time to worry about these when we’re so “in love,” right now?
This scenario doesn’t play out for the individual who has freed themselves from the needless suffering that happens for most following the moratorium and post traumatic demise of a lost romantic relationship. But before you feel sorry for those that don’t suffer this departure from reality, thinking they must have never been in love, we must first understand why it happens to us in the first place and why we find it all exhilarating during the relationship, and so debilitating after it ends. It says something about a much deeper dimension of ourselves and is what causes us to seek love from others as a bandage, to cover up our deepest fears and insecurities.
To understand this aspect of ourselves, we need to look at the nature of falling in love and why it’s so easy to do.
Convinced we’ve found “THE ONE” – that someone that feeds our ego, validates us, and makes us surrender to this bliss – our search is over; we’re ALL IN!!! We see ourselves with this person perhaps for the rest of our life and begin plotting the mile markers that will get us there. Talks of marriage, children, having a family, and growing old together are commonplace, and thus, soon the planning begins.
Without even noticing, we’ve now tethered ourselves to this person that we describe as our soul mate to anyone who will listen and subsequently, import our entire sense of self-worth from them. We’ve now become an unwitting participant in a self-induced, bio-chemical dependence on another person who’s going to help build our own cage. This is because the walls of security we build today, often become the walls of our imprisonment tomorrow.
Please understand, what I’m describing is not the “LOVE” that gurus, sages, teachers of the esoteric and yogic sciences refer to, but rather what the masses have adopted as their concept of romantic love, which is something altogether different, and is anything but loving. What society has adopted conceptually as “love” is something that only appeals to the most superficial aspects of our ego and can actually become a tremendous impediment to developing spiritually and understanding the essence of who and what we are.
Blissfully in love, our lives are now inextricably intertwined with this other person and have become utterly defined by this relationship . . . that is, until they end. When they end, our footing, our falsely bolstered, self-aggrandizing ego, and feigned confidence is lost, as we spiral downward. This is why so many lovers become enemies after a breakup. With the fantasy we created in our head now collapsing in around us, our ego and our entire sense of self-worth is annihilated and reduced to ashes. We spend days, weeks, even months feeding on the filth of our imagination, and we now vilify the very person who only recently was seen as our ultimate truth, our soul mate, “the ONE.” We ask ourselves, “How did this all go so wrong? How is it, my lover, no longer loves me? What’s wrong with me?” During the time we usually arrive at the conclusion, “I’m not good enough.”
Can you feel the weight of that statement? It’s debilitating…
It’s tragic that we invest so much of our well-being and self-worth into the completely unpredictable choices and thoughts of others, and yet as lovers we do it all the time. The saddest part is how disempowered we become in doing so, because we fail to realize that our pain isn’t caused by our LOVE for the other person, nor is it being caused by the loss of the relationship, but rather because of our attachment, codependency, and the destructive internal dialogue we’re having with ourselves. Attachment is the antithesis/the opposite of love.
This is important to understand.
“The only love that exists, is LOVE without attachment.”
Buddhist Proverb
A difficult concept for most to understand, because it runs counter to everything, we’ve ever had modeled to us. At the level of our fledgling and nescient emotions, what most think of as love destroys the essence of everything it projects itself onto. This requires some explaining, because right now my dear reader you’re probably shaking your head, thinking, “Love destroys? That makes no sense.”
It’s interesting to note, and may surprise you to know, that the modern word “LOVE” comes from the Sanskrit term, LOBHA which means greedy and self-serving. I don’t think of this as coincidental. After all, we never become more greedy than when we fall “in love,” as why try to sequester as much of our lover’s time as we can.
We believe that because we’ve grown so attached to another this is why we’re so caring towards them. What if I told you we are actually the most uncaring once we become attached? Though we believe we care about our lover, (and we do on some level) every choice we make is ultimately selfish and designed to create experiences that provide us with a desired feeling . . . in this case, LOVE.
It is not because of our attachment that we have become so caring about the other person. Lacking self-awareness, we don’t see that our caring is only because we believe we’re investing in the other person in a way that will continue to provide us with all the intoxicating feelings we’re currently indulging in with our partner. We want these feeling to last forever, or at least indefinitely. As a result, our caring is nothing more than an elaborate ruse, a means to an end, a transactional exchange, and is completely, utterly conditional. It has been learned by modeling others and cultivated through positive and negative reinforcement since childhood.
Our caring is entirely contrived, but that’s not to imply that there’s something nefarious or scheming about it. It’s just that we’re not consciously aware of what we’re doing. Guided by entirely sub-conscious patterns of behavior and biological drives, we shower our lover with cards, gifts, flowers, chocolates, love and affection, appeasing them and essentially marketing ourselves as someone that can love them forever. We do this believing that this recently discovered individual, providing all of these invigorating feelings, will continue to do so if we continue to reinforce their behaviors that make us oh so happy. We mirror their loving and romantic gestures thinking we can maintain this infatuation with one another.
This is what I call ‘emotional bartering’ and ‘transactional love.’ Two beggars treating each other like emperors, only to find they’re emotionally bankrupt without the other.
It’s an unspoken contractual agreement and emotional exchange between two people romantically involved and there are severe penalties if either one or the other falls out of compliance. “I’ll love you as long as you love me. Stop loving me? Watch out!!! I will hate you and vilify you, and sadly, pretend that i don’t miss you when in fact, I miss you terribly.”
If you question this outcome, invest yourself in another person, 100%. Hold nothing back! Adorn them with gifts, surprise them, kiss them, love them, be completely intimate with them, and extend to them the freedom to see you whenever they want or not. Give them the freedom to be with whoever they want, whenever they want, go wherever they want, do whatever they want. Then, check yourself. See how much you truly LOVE your lover. To what degree can you truly extend unconditional love, (a love with no conditions, no expectations, no bartering, no contract, no titles, no agreement, and no commitment) to them? If you can’t do that, you only know Love at the level of the Egoic Mind and codependency. This is what is termed Eros love, and although Eros love feels like a bond of love, it’s actually emotional bondage! Or should I say, “Love as a Bandage.”
I would love to hear from you and hear your own personal thoughts on relationships in the comment section below. Let me know if the content of this article resonates with you, provides perspective, or helps you see things in a different way that empowers you to make different choices or see life and relationships through a different lens. I value your thoughts and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
Love & Light to You in your continued Journey of Self-Discovery!
David
