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This blog may be a bit controversial.
It goes completely against a big cultural narrative (eek!), but here we go.
I’ve gotten many questions around the topic of being “in love”:
“Did I fall out love with my partner?”
“What if I feel love toward my partner, but don’t feel IN LOVE with my partner?”
“What if we fall out of love in the future…then what?”
“If you fall out of love…can you fall back “in love”?
Society’s narrative says “If you fall out of love…that means you should not be together anymore.”
Society’s narrative says "Life past the honeymoon stage is boring. We should be constantly working to bring back the same feelings we once had”
Society’s narrative says “If you don’t feel the butterflies, maybe you’re not with the right partner.”
But what if all along, we’ve been so focused on staying “in love” that we’re missing something important: the “love.”
Not only being “in love”…but whats’s beyond that…love.
In Robert Johnson’s book ‘We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love’ he says:
“…people never seem to settle into relationship with each other until they are out of the romantic love stage, until they love each other instead of being “in love.”
Some of the key points he makes in the book are that:
1 - When we’re “in love” - we project an image of a perfect partner onto our very human imperfect partner. We see an image of someone who completes us and makes us whole. Once the feelings of being “in love” fade, we have a chance to practice true relational commitment
2 - Romantic love is an opportunity to deepen our relationship to ourselves. We can lower the expectation for someone else to make us whole. Once we are able to do so, we can settle into “love” without placing such high expectations on it
3 - To have a thriving relationship, there are two parts needed. First, the connection to self, and second, a connection to a partner. If we neglect the first, it will cause us to rely heavily on the second. We may grow to resent our partner if they can’t “make up for” the lack of our connection to self.
Let’s break each down a bit more...
Projection:
In simplest terms, we project onto our partner when we take away responsibility and put it on them.
“They are making me feel this way”
“They are not making me feel this way”
“They are not enough of this…”
“They are too much of this…”
We are removing our responsibility and placing it in someone else’s hands.
We expect our partner to do more, be more, do less, be less to fit into our definition of how they “should be” — THEN, we can be happy.
Additionally, we’ve been conditioned to think that when we’re “in love,” this other person is "completing us".
This person is making us whole.
This person brings joy and happiness to our life.
This person is our “missing puzzle piece.”
These notions are beautiful, and romantic, and I don’t think they are fully wrong to desire.
HOWEVER, there is a big piece of the narrative missing:
The part where we, too, are responsible for our joy, fulfillment, happiness, wholeness.
We’re relational beings. Being a relationship can add a lot to our lives.
Yet we end up outsourcing so to another person. Our joy, fulfillment, happiness, and even wholeness.
Thus, if they don't do enough to bring joy, fulfillment, happiness, wholeness to our life—it must be a them problem, not an us problem, right?
I’ve come to believe that is not true.
Here are my new beliefs:
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Our lives will feel the levels of joy, fulfillment, happiness, and wholeness that we create.
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Outsourcing those things to someone else is a recipe for resentment.
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We can add joy, fulfillment, happiness and wholeness to someone's life without it being our job.
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When the people in a relationship each focus on taking more responsibility for their own fulfillment and wholeness - magic can happen.
I'm working on practicing this in my own life. It's a big mindset shift from the knight in shining armor coming to rescue me.
When I practice these new beliefs, I am able to accept the love me and Nate share, instead of wishing I felt more "in love."
This leads to the next piece...
Deepening our relationship to self. How our lack of connection to self affects our connection to partner:
Who are you, outside of your relationships?
What do you love to do?
What do you feel passionate about?
What makes you smile, cry, laugh, scream?
What do you want in your life?
What are you proud of?
What do you find purpose in?
These questions are not easy to answer.
In fact, I think these are some of the most existential questions we can ask ourselves.
They can lead to us feeling like we need to have a perfect life plan all mapped out.
They can lead to us feeling like we’re not doing enough, or that we’re behind.
They can even lead to us feeling like our life is meaningless (which can be scary to think about).
But the quest to answer these questions is, in some ways, the task of everyone’s life.
By being human, these questions inevitably come up in some way.
And relationships mirror back a lot of these questions to us, whether we were ready to reflect on them or not.
If we don’t know who we are outside of our relationship, we may place more pressure on our relationship to be perfect.
If we don’t have things we love to do, we may lean on our relationship to fill that up for us even more.
If we don’t know what brings us purpose - we may look to our relationship to bring us a sense of purpose and identity.
None of these are bad. They’re just putting a lot of weight into one facet of our life, when there are many other facets we can focus on, too.
This is where it can be worthwhile to spend time deepening our connection to self.
Now, I'm not saying that we should avoid deepening our relational connection.
Instead, focusing on 'nurturing a sense of selfhood,' as Esther Perel shares.
In her book Mating in Captivity, Esther says:
“Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves. If cultivating separateness sounds harsh, let’s think of it instead as nurturing a sense of selfhood”
Nurturing a sense of selfhood can strengthen a relationship. It's not meant to take away from its strength.
Nurturing a sense of selfhood is a worthwhile pursuit.
Without a deeper connection to ourselves (sense of selfhood), we may live in response to others.
We need others, we need connection, we need relationship.
AND, we need that connection to self, too. It's a balancing act.
Here's where things started getting interesting in the ‘We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love’ book.
Robert Johnson talks a lot about how romantic love is connected with our quest for meaning and purpose.
He shares that “Romantic love has always been inextricably tied to spiritual aspiration.”
For someone like myself, this was an interesting aha moment.
I didn't grow up with religion in my life. I have only recently opened up to the idea of spirituality.
I have wonderful friends and family, but I didn't have a particular "community" I belonged to growing up.
I jumped around playing different sports, never staying in one long enough to build a long-term "tribe."
My tribe is my best friends and family (and now Nate). And yet, I can now easily see why I was placing so much pressure on Nate to be my everything.
I can now see why my relationship anxiety latched onto him.
I was expecting him to bring me the meaning and purpose in my life. I didn't leave room for the meaning and purpose to come from the other wonderful people in my life (including...me).
We have grown up hearing beautiful, romantic stories about finding "the one" and them giving us meaning and purpose.
It's not wrong to get meaning and purpose from our relationship or partner. I think that is wonderful.
It's just when we unintentionally make them the main source, and not one of many sources.
That's when we may want to take a step back and realize what we're asking.
The points I want to make are this:
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without a strong sense of selfhood, you may (unintentionally) place your partner/relationship on a pedestal
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if you feel like your life isn’t as meaningful or purposeful as you want it to be, you may place your partner/relationship on a pedestal
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if your partner cannot “make up for” the meaning and purpose you are hoping for, that could lead to resentment or doubt
These patterns are understandable, but once we understand this—we can decide to shift it.
We can also realize that "love" and commitment can bring us a deep sense of meaning and purpose.
Not just being "in love."
The question I want to raise in this blog post is:
What if all along we’ve been focused on the wrong thing—being “in love” instead of “loving” (ourself, and others)?
I think that as a culture, we’ve taken romance and being “in love” to the extreme in many ways.
We’ve put such high expectations on it, that it’s causing many people to not find relationships enjoyable.
And we often forget that relationships have evolved so much.
They used to be a business transaction between two families:
I’ll marry my daughter to your family for more status in exchange for something.
Then, there was a transformation to romantic love:
Being with someone because you love them, no other reason needed.
Romantic love was once empowering. It allowed people the freedom to be with someone they actually wanted to be with.
But it’s become a quest for perfection.
One extreme was transactional. Now the other extreme has become a quest for one person and one entity (the relationship) to fulfill all our needs wants and desires. To make us feel good all the time.
But this expectation then leads to disappointment.
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We realize the person we're with is human, not perfect.
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We realize that our feelings change and evolve and don't stay "obsessive" or "lustful."
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We realized that what once felt effortless now may involve some effort.
Then these realizations leads to doubt, fear and worry.
"Is this how things SHOULD be? What happened to "happily ever after"?"
The thing that can bring joy, fulfillment, happiness and LOVE (the thing we’re all after, right?) then becomes something riddled with comparison, perfection, and expectations.
We've grown to want all the highs without all the lows or neutral moments.
Even…dun dun dun…the mundane moments!
One more quote I loved from Robert Johnson’s book was:
“We don’t like anything that is “simple”: To us “simple” means dull or dense or stupid. We have forgotten that simplicity is a need in human life: It is the human art of finding meaning and joy in the small, natural, and less dramatic things.”
A few years ago if you asked me if I wanted more simplicity in my relationship, I would have laughed.
No, I wanted all the bells and whistles, not simplicity.
Now, my answer has changed.
I wish the cultural narrative would change a bit, too…
The RomComs, the romance novels, the social media posts, the narrative as a whole focuses more on:
The honeymoon stage, not day to day life.
The engagement, not the wedding planning.
The wedding, not the marriage.
It's frustrating, because the MAJORITY of a relationship is the "love" part, but we get stuck at the "in love" part.
Being “in love” is a feeling that’s seen as the end-all-be-all.
We derive meaning and purpose from feeling “in love.”
And I think we’re getting it all wrong.
What if simply loving someone instead of being “in love” was actually the whole point?
What if that got to be enough? How would you show up in your relationship differently?
Drop a chat with your aha moment from this blog post!
