How is it possible to love someone with your whole heart one day, and then feel nothing the next?
Was it ever really love if the feeling can change?
Is love a lie? An illusion?
You worry something is wrong with you… that you did love, and now you don’t.
Nothing is wrong with you.
Is Love a Lie?
Feelings aren’t concrete or tangible. You can’t hold love in your hands or lock it away in a box.
Poets and songwriters have a hard time even describing it. So, without the ability to even describe it, how do we plan to hold onto it?
There’s a fluidity to love. The best analogy I can come up with is water.
Sometimes in the form of ice, sometimes snow. Snow can melt to water. It can heat and evaporate. Water rushes in a furious river, or drifts slowly in a stream. It can play in big lakes or sit briefly as a puddle.
Water changes like feelings. The water is real. But the form can change.
You aren’t broken. This isn’t a reflection of your ability to love. It’s universal.
The Act of Love
The dictionary defines it as “an intense feeling of deep affection.”
One might also argue “The more you analyze love, the more you lose its meaning.” Abhijit Naskar.
I side more with the latter argument. We could spend all day trying to describe love and be no clearer on the subject.
Love is felt by everyone, but everyone feels it in a unique way. Just as everyone describes it in a unique way. It’s even valued differently depending on the person.
Love can be your reason for living… or dying. It can be the well from which you draw your energy. It can be the single thing in life that makes it all worth it.
Love can also be the thing that terrifies you. Running from love is as common as running to love.
It’s beautiful, and dangerous. For to love, we must open ourselves to the intense injury of loss. It is the Ying and the Yang. The dark and the light. The balancing act for which the whole human consciousness precariously balances.
You’ll find a few other great descriptions by clicking this link (not written by me) about Love.
Who Do You Love?
You love your family, your spouse, your children, friends.
You can have love for strangers. People you meet and immediately feel connected to. Fast friends.
There are different kinds of love. Different kinds of people.
Some love stands the test of time (like the love you have for your kids). Other loves are a blip on the radar of life.
And still it flows. Still, it goes on.
Love can change form. Drifting from the love of a raging river to a dry bank where no water runs.
The opposite happens too. Where once there was a dry bank, the waters return with vigor.
What’s Real?
Who knows what’s real and what’s not?
Is, or was, your love real?
Just because you no longer feel it, doesn’t make it less real.
The butterfly was once a caterpillar. Now it has wings. Do wings make the caterpillar any less real?
The love is always real. But sometimes it changes form.
None of us know which loves will be forever. You might think you do, or hope you do. But it’s not up to you.
Blaming yourself for the change of feelings is a waste of time.
You can work hard on your relationships, nurturing them. But sometimes it’s just not in the cards.
The best advice is to respect the flow, and don’t blame yourself. Some things are outside of your control.
The river will flow as it likes, to where it likes, at the force it likes. You can’t control nature. Maybe a damn will help. But nature always takes back what’s hers.
The nature of love works the same way.
You can try to force the love. Try to make the love stay. It only puts off the inevitable. And the inevitable comes back full force.
That’s why so many people are angry over break ups. They try to force it. They want to refuse it. To capture the butterfly and never let it go.
But the butterfly will go where it pleases, or it will die.
Respect the path of love. And if it’s time to let go, let go gently.
The course may change ahead and bring it back to you. Or the course may take it far away.
Either way, it’s not up to you. Gentle acceptance of what must be is far easier than raging a war against something you were never meant to control.
Love is a wild thing.
It’s not an illusion, but it’s beyond our full understanding. Further still from our control.
So, love the people you love for as long as the love is there. Respect the flow of the water. Respect the change of course. And be honest with yourself about it along the way.
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