Hopeful Romantic

In our society we hear love and think of romantic love, or eros. Even the so many books and movies and songs (oh the songs, are there any not about romantic love?) over the years support a dramatic idea of “love.”  Day dedicated to love…romantic love. Illusion of what it is, kinda feels like real love in disguise. Disillusioned with romantic love since 7th grade when I fell for someone and then turned out they had a new girlfriend the next week (isn’t that the way of middle school). I wrote an amazing array of teen angst love poems believing love was a phony.

And in someways it kind of is. We fall for people we may not normally even been able to stand sometimes but because they kiss us a certain way or the sex is so great it suddenly comes "love." We put up with things from lovers we wouldn’t put up with from the closest of our friends. For why? It’s that rush of excitement, it's fun. I suppose I've always enjoyed the other "types" of love more....they feel more safe. And in the end, they probably are.


I'm ready to move from "in love" to loving and skip the temporary emotional high (made up of serotonin, dopamine, and other feel good neurochemicals) which isn’t actually true love. Fueled by pheromones and hor“moans” (wordplay that is obvious and also not so obvious) we seek out a mate and superimposing them as a lover as well. I sometimes wish I could skip the first stages of a romantic relationship to experience what “love” would really be like with someone. After our hormones stop doing the work. Will they still be there where love because a consistent choice? I don’t believe true love can begin until “in-love” has run its full course.

The Greeks believe there are five different types of love. I believe in one and only one. Though all the others as pathways/gateways to love.When we experience a love that grows out of choice, that’s emotional without being obsessional we experience a co-creation with the entire universe. It has nothing to do with the physical world and yet this is where we find the way to express it. It’s what we’re born with and the essential fact of life. I think Marianne Williamson says it best in her book Return to Love, “There are no different categories of love….the love that is real lies at the heart of all relationships…doesn’t change with form or circumstance.”
At 28 (almost 29 she shockingly adds) I’m making my peace with love (the sort I now call romantic love). The kind that can be found behind all the other kinds in the sea of things we call love. As there are many paths to God, so also the same for love (as they seem to be the same thing anyway).;)

I’m a romantic, not because I believe in soulmates or “the one”, instead because I believe in love and romantic love as a gateway into it.

Today I'm grateful for Valentine's Day, Craigslist, and bubble baths.