Love, thoughts 1

Love is not emotion, nor simply commitment. It is a large and complex array of stuff. I want to work out a few of the stands, however. I'm talking about the marriage kind of love at this point, although parts of it apply to other kinds of love as well.

Love is a commitment to "watch each other's backs" in a no-holding-back commitment. This should go first, because it is very important and frequently forgotten when couples interact. There are at least two elements here, but I've included them together. Have you seen a couple say "I'll leave if you want me to leave" "You can leave if you want to." ? (Like on "P. S. I love you") They are just trying to protect themselves from the pain of rejection if the other wants to leave. The nature of love is to be vulnerable to the other, to not hold back in expressing your commitment, because the other is caring for you (even if it doesn't feel like that in the middle of a fight). It is caring for the other so that they can express their commitment to you in a vulnerable manner. It is assurance that your partner will not walk out on you and you will not walk out on your partner. I'm talking about more than physically walking out: it is a metaphor also for abandoning the hope you have in your spouse that they will succeed or abandoning the commitment to speak well of your spouse to others. Two things that irritate me in this regard: when people whine about their spouse to just anybody (sometimes people need a close friend with whom they can verbally work out problems with the spouse -- that's different from whining); the other is when people joke about leaving their spouse because they say that they don't really like them anyway. They may use the joking genre, but sometimes the joking genre only works because their is an element of doubt in all parties.

Love is an enjoyed shared history with the promise of a shared future. This is the new part that just hit me this week. (I'm a little slow.) The idea came from watching old movies of someone who leaves their fiancee to begin a new relationship with another person with whom they have just had an intense experience (survived a plane crash; survived a hostage crisis; etc.). The shared experience from which others were excluded is important here to perpetuate the relationship. This is the reason why dating has occurred in our culture (although it has gone horribly wrong, in my opinion). This is why advocates for arranged marriages say that "love grows". It takes time. This is also why sometimes "Love fades". When the experience, even in a marriage, is not an enjoyed one, then the shared history is one of stress, discontent, distrust, loss of respect, etc. We say that they have fallen out of love when, in fact, the past indicates a less than pleasant future. The continuity between the past and the future cannot be overemphasized here...

Love is the promise of a shared future. If the past was enjoyable, then the future promises to be good. We humans don't even need that temporal tie, however. [OFF TOPIC: "Love at first sight" is a hope for a shared future that doesn't involve a shared past. Is there justification for an enjoyable future? no. Is there sufficient justification even for that hope? no. Nonetheless, people are illogical enough to have such a hope swell up within them and commit themselves unreservedly to another person without any confidence of an enjoyable history together nor the other person's commitment. It makes no sense, but some people do it.]
This "hope" or "promise" is not only logical, necessarily. It depends on the person. We are complicated creatures and our minds do things without our control. (Take psychsomatic illnesses, for instance.) The power of the subconscious/illogical/uncontrolled part of the person is immense. Some people are healed because they believe they will be healed. (This is even quite apart from Christian healing when God heals the individual, which is something different.) It is preferable if this "hope" were based on a positive shared history, but it isn't always. It is the daydreaming of the school girl who writes her first name with the boy's last name "just to try it out". We "try out" in our mind the future (frequently idealized) with that person. We process millions of non-verbal clues in the world around us and in people around us that cannot be summarized in conscious thought which provide us with hopes and dreams. These non-verbal clues and unconscious decisions provide clues into the mystery of "falling in love"

I don't have any more time today.