What is Love?

"I don't believe in love." This, I spoke matter-of-factly to my couple's therapist recently. Love is an overused word. It refers to so many different states and most people seem to have no idea what they actually mean when they use it. Affection, concern, care, wanting the best for someone, sex, wanting someone to be around, obsession, wanting to take care of someone.... And the list goes on. A word that refers to almost everything has no meaning for me. The phrase, I love you, is just emptiness.

I'm mostly talking about Love with a capital L-- the romantic version. This "love," when we are “falling” into it, always describes one person projecting something onto another: I love you because you offer the promise of making me happy, or justifying my existence, or offering a spark of excitement in my life. I love you because: You complete me; you fill in my gaps; you enable me to remain in denial. I love you because: As a risk-taker you hold the part of me that wants to go for it, but is afraid to do so myself; or as the picture of stability, you represent my potential to achieve the same if I could only love myself enough. You get the picture. … and we call this love.

It is, in fact, what attracts us to one another to begin with. I'm attracted to the one who is unavailable so as to avoid my own fears around intimacy, but then when the relationship remains distant or is thwarted in some way, I wonder why I have such bad luck and I come to resent my partner. I choose to remain unconscious of the reasons I was drawn to this person in the first place. The problem is not so much the fact that we fall for our own distorted image of someone or choose someone who helps us to maintain a certain image of our selves, the problem is that we remain unaware of this. Thus, we don’t take accountability for it. We hide behind this thing called “love,” which is, when we really come down to it, pathology and neurosis. Now, coming on to a potential mate with a phrase like "I think I have a neurosis for you," or “my pathology is leading me to you,” is not going to get any of us very far. But it is a more truthful pick-up line, the large majority of the time. And recognizing something of this for yourself, early on in the relationship, will prevent much misery down the road.

Let’s take an example. I met my husband when I was 15. At the time, it was painful for me to see the distress and suffering and financial “inferiority” of my own family; and it would have been intolerable to invite others to see this. So, I chose someone who didn’t, and wouldn’t, look beneath the surface. Someone who was literal and concrete and uninterested in the depths of human experience. Twenty years later, I realized that things had changed. I had come to accept more and more of what I used to feel shame about. And now I was ready—in fact, I was deeply craving—someone who might wish to know all that lives within me. Someone I could share my inner world with. My husband is not this guy. For his part, he chose me because he enjoyed being needed, and without a family I could really count on, I needed him. He is also unconsciously drawn to exploring—from a distance—the f—ked-up-ness of life. He found, in me, a person he could do this with vicariously, without ever getting his hands or heart or soul dirty. I do that for him. The perfect couple. He calls it love. I call it synchronized neurosis.

The good news is this: I’m a psychologist who recognizes these patterns and strives to shed light on that which is unconscious. And my husband listens. We can both own our parts in the original “fall” and take back the material that we projected onto the other. He can see that being a caretaker is his need, more than it is about me and my needs. And I can see that I chose him for the exact dynamic that I now find so unsatisfying, which means that I don’t blame him for this. It doesn’t make our problems go away, but it does allow each of us to develop further as individuals. I cannot think of anything less romantic than grappling to own one’s shadow material, but for now, that is what we do.

In closing, here is my advice. If you are in love, stay there and enjoy it. Try to preserve, in the recesses of your mind, the idea that it won’t always be this way and that the very reasons you’re falling for him or her now will be the same reasons you have difficulties later on. Try to remember that loves turns into opportunities for self-development, if you work toward illumination. But for now, enjoy that thing most call love.

If you are at that stage where you are having difficulties in a current relationship, ask yourself the following: When I complain about x, what does that say about me? How am I participating in this dynamic? What image of myself am I needing to uphold? What is the most frightening thing I could imagine facing in a relationship? And then go find a therapist to help you sort this out. You will be better for it; and it will allow your relationship to either evolve into something more authentic or to dissolve in a compassionate way, allowing both partners to move forward knowing more about themselves.