Love is fleeting right?

I was conditioned to believe as a young adult that love could look like uncontrollable anger and rage, like a maze of protruding forearm muscles from hands molded firmly into fists, furrowed eyebrows with facial lines that resembled deep ravines, and pink ears hot from where the steam rolled over them. I equated roaring voices that drew hot tears down my cheeks with passion. Chaos, instability, and inconsistency were inevitable dimensions of love, I thought. Love was a forest with the Fire Danger sign always set to high - some days it was safe to waltz around trees and splash through clear water creeks and other days a tiny ember would catch the entire forest aflame, leaving scorched shadow limbs in the wake of oak trees.

Love was a feeling - fleeting - like all other emotions. One second it was there and the next second it was gone like a shooting star that you’re not even sure you saw or if your eyes were playing tricks on you.

The first time I experienced stable love I felt as if I had been submerged in an ice bath, it was refreshing and shocking all at once - my body and mind entered a state of confusion that only became clearer as I acclimated to the new waters. At first, I wasn’t even sure if I liked those waters, they were still and calm delicately swirling around my arms and legs supporting the weight of my body, unlike the choppy waters I was used to that fought against me instead of for me. The waters I was used to were a constant challenge, but these were different. I could describe this transition in my life metaphorically, but it wasn’t until I picked up a new book early this week that I had concrete words for this awakening.

The book is titled all about love - New Visions and within the first chapter I knew Bell Hooks would be the answer to the one ice-breaker question I’ve never been able to respond to: “if you could have dinner with just one person in the world, alive or dead, who would it be?”. I would even go so far as to say that this book has changed my life.

I came to learn that my evolution with my understanding of love, from the forest fires to the ice baths, is unique to my experiences but not a unique concept for many - and it makes sense given the definition of love we are told.

Love: an intense feeling of deep affection

In fact, it is very hard to find a definition for love that a feeling or a sensation is not central to. This theme reverberates in our culture as evident through the diminishment of relationship formation down to an individualistic activity based on rational choice. When a feeling such as deep affection is as fleeting as it is, finding lasting love seems like a fantasy and as a result, a bubble of cynicism - the concealer of a betrayed heart - forms around it

There is near collective agreement that being in love means that you and another care deeply for one another. Being in love means feeling like you want to be with that person all the time. Being in love means wanting to share your life with someone. However, these agreements once again trace back to feelings and sensations. Love is left holding a level of mysticism to its name. We struggle to love because we don’t fully understand what love means when the feelings that are extensions of love are stripped away. So what do we do? We create definitions and illustrations that fit our experiences to fill the mysterious gaps often times letting detrimental relationship characteristics slip in through the cracks.

So what is love if not a feeling that permits transience and elusiveness?

Deep affection falls short of describing love’s meaning. What Bell offers in her book as an alternative definition comes from the book The Road Less Traveled. Love is defined as:

By accepting this definition of love, Bell makes two striking points:

1. Love is rooted in intention and action, not in emotion and feelings. The feelings generated from the act of love are actually known as cathexis. Cathexis is the concentration of energy into a loved one wherein they become important to us. For example, feeling deeply drawn to someone is the work of cathexis making it easily and often confused with love.

2. In our culture and many others, it is generally accepted that humans love instinctually, but this definition argues that love is a choice meaning that it is a learned behavior rather than something we are born with.

Definitions are the basis for common understanding, they offer us a starting point and allow us to see where we want to end up. The limits of our imagination define what is possible wherein lies the importance of aligning on a definition of love that promotes enduring growth for ourselves and others. Through this lens, if the will to nurture is central to love, when we are hurtful or abusive, it becomes evident that we cannot genuinely profess to love. The coexistence of love and abuse is impossible, as abuse and neglect fundamentally contradict the definition of nurturance and care.

As I read this portion of the book, I found myself re-reading over and over the words “love and abuse cannot coexist” and my mind began to swarm with memories like bees around a disrupted hive.

The clenched fists

the threats

the belittlement

the neglect

and the shaming

all followed by the words

I love you

I felt my world become hazy and wavy and my shoulders felt heavy with the realization that in the presence of abuse, what was felt for me was not love, but rather cathexis. Bell says later in the chapter that a lot of us might find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we were never loved in a situation where abuse or neglect was present, and she is so right. Accepting lovelessness is as painful as it is necessary for healing and reopening up to both receiving and giving love.

In my experiences and those of so many others, a lack of love or a lack of sustained love does not mean that care and affection were entirely absent. Sometimes an abundance of affection or pleasure can produce a relationship so satisfying that it can fully mask a lack of love or disguise ongoing abuse. Love is a nesting doll - it is multi-layered and multi-dimensional - complete only when all its layers are whole and in harmony.

The definition of love our dictionaries offer deceives us into believing that love is about feeling rather than an action that assumes accountability and responsibility. The old definition has lured us into cynicism, preventing us from being open to love and therefore open to what makes us whole. The new definition, allows us to easily see where there is love in our lives and where there is not. Real love will change you and I promise the ice bath feels good.

I find some books that I let become my head and other books I let become my heart. The heart books are much harder to find but all about love will remain forever imprinted on me. If you have seen me this week, I have pointed you towards Bell; for the rest of my readers, if I can recommend one book, it would be this one. Thank you for being here. See you next week.

Btw, the artist in this essay is Seth, you can find his beautiful Creatures of the Heart art here.