Recently, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about different theories of love, two of which Ned graciously parsed for me on Philoblog. Thinking about love in purely scientific terms simultaneously gets me off and makes me depressed. I love reading the cut-and-dry ways people describe really hulking, emotionally charged subjects like “falling in love” on Wikipedia. There’s something amusing and almost charming about trying to define these really undefinable concepts in scientific terms.
Wikipedia describes “falling in love” as “the process of moving from a feeling of neutrality towards a person to one of love.” How clinical! Granting only scientific credence to a concept that dominates so much of our drive to live is sociopathic in some ways. Love is chemical, sure, but I refuse to believe that the men that I’ve loved–the people that I’ve loved–have only etched their meaning into my life because of the way my brain reacts to them.
I’m really attracted to the Alberoni Theory of Love, which states that “people fall in love when they are ready to change, or to start a new life.” In this way, falling in love is really a choice. We tend to think that “the heart wants what it wants,” which is true, but you have to be willing to let the heart want in order for it to want! You don’t necessarily choose to love, but you choose to be capable of loving. I have dated far too many men who have refused to make this choice.
As Annie writes in her really fabulous most recent Tumblr post:
Something I’ve struggled with for years, and I think a lot of girls my age struggle with (possibly?), is the desire to be a self-efficient, independent, strong, doesn’t-need-a-man kind of woman conflicting with the (innate?) desire for love and romance. Certainly this is not a new thing, but I think a lot of people, myself included, still wrongly manifest this psychological connection between love and weakness, and it’s inhibitive.
With this post-feminist (I suppose?) kind of psyche, a lot of girls my age want relationships, but they also don’t want to seem needy. What results is a lot of cold quasi-relationships, and they forget that maybe there is something to be said, something strong, about a life-long project that isn’t entirely self-centered.
Modern women are taught that modern romance is defined by this kind of quasi-relationship territory. “Neediness,” we are taught, is one of the biggest turn-offs for men, and for our own well-being we really want to be seen as self-sufficient Wonder Women. We steel ourselves, build up walls, say something earnest and then immediately follow it with a self-deprecating joke, because we’re afraid: afraid of becoming the 1950’s “needy” equivalent of ourselves, afraid of seeming like we might actually care. We have become hardened by our environment and by the notion that vulnerability is ugly somehow. We’re young enough to wholeheartedly desire being desired, but we’ve read enough books and seen enough movies to know that the inevitable consequence of allowing desire to progress any further is a gallon of ice cream and a Sex and the City marathon. Relationships end, even after 40 years. Who at 22 enters a relationship convinced that they will be with that person for the rest of their lives? Perhaps we are too young to rend ourselves open in the way that we should; it’s the idea that our love will inevitably sour that detracts from our ability to truly be vulnerable.
The result is that we let ourselves get sucked into a “hookup culture,” pretend that we’re okay with being “friends with benefits,” act like sex without love is not just something that we’re okay with, but something that we’d prefer. Some women actually are this way, but many are not. I am not. And so we end up getting hurt and confused, and our love lives turn into this messy jumble of pseudo relationships, where “dates” are just big parties that you attend together, and “love” is what you feel just before you climax. To be vulnerable is to be weak, and no modern woman wants to be seen as weak.
I guess I have to voice my resounding support with Annie on this concept. Down with the barriers we’ve installed in the name of self-preservation, even if it means that the men who cross them might sometimes make us feel ashamed, or devastated, or just plain awful. You have to choose to be open to let love in, even if it might mean that hurt seeps through too.
Even after all of the breakups I’ve endured, I now realize this: I’d rather feel heartache than nothing at all.
[...] Jess’ “On Letting Love In” [...]
[...] Jess: The result is that we let ourselves get sucked into a “hookup culture,” pretend that we’re okay with being “friends with benefits,” act like sex without love is not just something that we’re okay with, but something that we’d prefer. Some women actually are this way, but many are not. I am not. And so we end up getting hurt and confused, and our love lives turn into this messy jumble of pseudo relationships, where “dates” are just big parties that you attend together, and “love” is what you feel just before you climax. To be vulnerable is to be weak, and no modern woman wants to be seen as weak. [...]
[...] why I felt so embarrassed letting him see me that way, messy mascara and reddened cheeks and the ugliness of vulnerability. To let someone see your weakness automatically grants them the agency to hurt you. It has been [...]