64. You're Not Really in Love

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on skipping stones: “You’re Not Really in Love.”

If you cannot stand to be apart from them, you're not in love.  You are infatuated or maybe just dependent. The difference between actually being in love or not is the difference between feeling pain when you aren't around them and having no place that you'd rather be. Romantic relationships have a way of being a kind of band aid for a lot of our insecurities.

They make us feel less alone. They can bring some excitement to our lives. They bring pleasure to our lives. They can make us feel like we have value in the world. They may simply be what is familiar and therefore better than the unknown. We put a lot of meaning into our relationships, whether it's deserved or not.

Sometimes we hold a vision in our heads of what that relationship should look like. And we dress up our imaginary partner with the face of our actual partner and try to shoehorn that relationship into the one that you've imagined. Giving up on a relationship sometimes is less about giving up on the person that you're with and more about giving up on the dream you had created with their face on it.

So, I've heard before that love at first sight is a largely male phenomenon. A lot of men have a tendency to create an entire fantasy about a woman that they haven't even met yet or even know very well. They're so wired toward the visual that sometimes just seeing a beautiful woman is all that it takes to get their fantasy machine rolling.

Contrary to conventional thought, I think it's actually more often than men, presuming that they're extremely interested in a woman that are actually the first to start imagining the wedding and the future kids. Speaking for myself, one of the internal battles that I've waged is recognizing that the fantasies I'm creating about women that I get infatuated with are simply borrowing their faces to fit my dream.

There have been women that I've dated that I felt like I couldn't live without. If I'm really attracted to the girl, I'll think up pet names and imagine all the experiences we're gonna have throughout our blissful relationship. I end up thinking every little thing about them, in my mind was heaven sent, but I know now that I was never really in love with any of them.

I was physically attracted to them. I was in love with the idea of them. We need to pay less attention to what we imagine and more attention to how we feel when we're actually around them. So, what I've come to believe real love actually is, is when you are no longer desperate to be around that person, but rather you want to be with that person because the tension of the world washes away when you're with them.

Being in love means having your heart rate slow down when they're near you. It means feeling safe. It means they aren't bringing the worst out of you. Based on what my understanding of love is now, I'm not sure I've even experienced it. I've loved deeply, but I'm not sure that I've ever been in love. So maybe this is kind of like the blind leading the blind here, but I do know that I'm unwilling to accept anything less than what I've described, even though I haven't experienced this.

I think I've witnessed it a few times, and if I can't have that, then I want nothing at all.  Wild and passionate. Romance sounds fun, and there should always be a place for passion, but if the cost of that passion is constant insecurity and tears. Then you are not in love. You are infatuated or unhealthily dependent on someone else to feel good about yourself.

Times are different. People seem to almost expect drama now. I certainly did. I think for a lot of us, romance without drama sounds weird and maybe even boring, but maybe real love is. A little boring sometimes. The good thing is that it is the boring things in life that are the basis of almost everything incredible that's ever been done.

I knew a guy once that worked as an engineer on large suspension bridges, and he told me it sounded really cool. But all of his time was spent on the fasteners used to connect the pieces of the bridge, and so he got bored and moved on to something else in his career regardless of whether or not that was the right choice for him.

Those boring fasteners are one of the most important parts of the bridge, and even though something as simple as a bolt may be boring, a bridge simply wouldn't be able to stand without them. The drama in our lives shouldn't come from inside our relationship. The whole point of having a relationship is to protect us from the drama that comes from outside of the relationship.

We're not meant to be living a soap opera. Soap operas are the domain of people that don't know what they want. Or even what matters to them. The only drama from inside the relationship we should be having is the drama that comes when one of you gets sick or injured or dies. No one gets together so they can have more problems.

They get together so they can fight their problems together. Real love is made up of the little things, the back scratches, fixing the toilet. Making a meal. Taking a turn with the kids, doing the laundry, working a job, remembering a birthday, slow dancing to your favorite song, bringing home the groceries, being someone's calm in the storm.

So, what do you have to offer? How are you going to be someone's calm? I'm not sure that true love is for everyone, because I'm not sure. That all of us have the capacity for it. I like to think that I do, but until I finally experience it, I will never know for sure. True love is reserved for the people willing to be someone else's rock, and if you happen to be one of those people, you may be so fortunate as to find someone that's also willing to be yours.

Everyone I know, including myself, thinks they have what it takes to be in love. But none of us will know until we find that we've become someone's anchor and that they've become ours.  Feelings are a terrible gauge of love because we just don't seem to know which feelings are the ones that really deserve attention.

We chase after people that make us feel desperate for them. I. We fool ourselves into thinking that we want a challenge. We try to commit altruistically to relationships where we expect to save our partner. We put 'em on a pedestal and expect nothing from them in love. Too often we forget to consider whether or not they make our life better than it was before.

So even though I don't think a lot of us have what it takes to truly love and be loved. I do think that we all have a lot of potential. Men and women have so much to offer each other. A truly loving relationship is possibly the most beautiful thing that we can be a part of in our lives, and that's why in spite of our failings, we all still persist in trying to find that there are hardly any higher achievements, if any.

Few topics dominate humanity's attention more than love does. I wish it was possible for us all to achieve it, but it would not be an accomplishment if it wasn't hard to achieve. So, all that being said, I hope you find the one that makes you warm, not hot. I hope you find the one that makes you strong, not weak, and I hope to God when you grow old that you'll have no relief.

When they've moved on,  this is Skipping Stones: “You’re Not Really in Love.” You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit skippingstonessr.com. And if you enjoyed the show, please like or subscribe. If there is a topic you would like me to speak on, please feel free to email me at info@skippingstonessr.com, new episodes will be released weekly every Monday.