Saturday, September 6, 2014

The Science of Like and Love

I dated my first real boyfriend on and off for four years.  I was twenty when we met, and it was the first time a guy had ever openly reciprocated my advances.  The feeling of validation that accompanies being told you're pretty for the first time is intoxicating.  I was his.  I loved him with all of my heart. I had nothing left for myself, but I thought it was okay, because he would return my love with his own. When he repeatedly broke up with me, I was empty.  When he came back, saying he was sorry and that he'd made a terrible mistake, I felt like a starving person being handed food.  I was addicted to him.  Wrapped around his finger, I would follow him anywhere.  Shortly after graduation, we moved across the country, where our relationship quickly deteriorated.  I was out of my element.  I had compromised too much of myself to make a failing relationship work, and within a year, I was back in Michigan, single, unemployed, living at my mom's house without a car, money, or worst of all, an identity.  I had attached my sense of self to my romance so completely that I had no idea how to be me without him.

The year that followed that break up was one of uphill struggles and personal growth.  It was one of the best years of my life, and yet it was one that I would not relive for all the money in the world.  I was a scared, lost, and broken thing, but my friends took me in, wrapped me in a blanket, and nursed me back to health.  I had found my way home.  

My second relationship was a well-meaning and doomed endeavor.  I met a guy about a year after my first breakup.  He was nice, and he was talented, and he was smart, and he loved me the way I had always wanted to feel loved.  I genuinely wanted to reciprocate his feelings, and when I told him that I did, I thought I meant it.  I really liked him, and I knew that I would be sad if anything bad happened to him.  I worried for him, because I knew that my feelings for him lacked passion.  How many times had I heard or read, though, that no love is like your first?  I chastised myself for having unrealistic expectations.  Maybe this feeling was what I was going to need to accept in order to find happiness.  No more butterflies, just an honest appreciation for someone you like.  But I was still bitter, and my walls were too high.  I was terrified of losing myself to love again.  Love is scary.  It means showing someone your weaknesses and hoping that they don't abuse you with them.  I tried to love him the way he deserved to be loved, but I just couldn't do it.  I finally had to end things, and I had to accept a hard truth.  I had been wrong in telling him that I loved him, and because of that, I had hurt him more than I should have.  I felt cruel, but I also felt free.

A buddy of mine ended things with his girlfriend within a few days of my breakup.  That summer, we formed a sort of lonely hearts club, and over the next few months, he went from being a longtime pal to one of my dearest and most valued friends.  Through our beach days, movie nights, long drives, and bonfires, I began to wonder how I had gone so many years without realizing what a cool, unique person he was. How had I never noticed how much we had in common?  How had I let this fantastic friendship idle on the sidelines of my life for so long?  And when did he get so good looking?  And then, suddenly, there they were.  The butterflies were back.  I was scared, but I was also so deeply relieved that I wasn't broken.  I tried not to act on them right away.  After all, this was unlike anything I had ever experienced in dealings with love.  I had something so much more important invested in this potential romance.  I had a friend.  I had never been friends with someone I had dated.  With each of my respective exes, I had met them, and within a month we were monogamous.  This was a whole different story.  This guy knew me.  He knew my exes.  He had been there through both of my past relationships.   It was pointless to try and hide my flaws or highlight and emphasize my qualities.  This person recognized me as nothing more or less than me, and he still wanted to be my friend.  When things eventually did tip toward romance, it was this realization, I think, that made me fall in love with him.

In my first relationship, I believed that loving someone was more important than liking them.  In my second, I thought liking was more important than loving.  I believed that liking someone was a stepping stone to love.  Once you loved them, you didn't like them anymore, because love was bigger.  I don't see it that way anymore.  To like someone and to love them are two separate things, and in a healthy partnership, you should feel both.  Maybe you won't feel it every day, but working at each individually is what keeps you going when one slips a little.  In a lifetime with another person, you're likely to go through patches where you don't like them all that much.  If you still love them, though, you're not just going to throw in the towel.  Likewise, you may hit a dry spell, when you don't feel the passion or spark that once was there, but if you like that person, if they're still your friend, then you have a reason to hold on and work it through.

I'm not naive enough to believe that this realization portends a lifetime of unsullied happiness for me, but I am positive that it has laid the groundwork for the healthiest relationship I've had in my life.  I am, in equal parts, in like and in love, and I've even kept enough for myself this time.  And that, I think, is about the best I can ask for.