Is it just a feeling? How would you define it? This is a very good question to pose for myself. There was a reason why I never said the word to my ex. Even after a year, I still never said "I love you." Love isn't just a longing for another person. It's not the feeling you get when someone understands you or even when someone is kind to you.
I don't believe in love at first sight. I don't believe that is possible. There is lust at first sight, but not love. I also believe that there are two kinds of love. There is love for the people you care about, and there is love for one specific partner. One is much easier than the other.
Love for friends, family, pets, etc. is something that can be easily formed and quickly grow to be unbreakable. But the other kind of love is something that starts out weak and unsure and takes a long time and requires a great deal of trust to become established and grow firm. This is the difference between "love" and "in love".
How can someone possible say that they are "In love" with someone that they hardly know? I have had someone tell me the were "in love" with me after only knowing me for 2 weeks. I find that to be quite impossible. What is this thing inside each of us that causes us to be so infatuated with a person that we would jump to the conclusion that we must be in love with them? Do our minds just fill in what we don't know about that person with what we want them to be like? We convince ourselves that this person is exactly what we want even when we scarcely know what they are like.
Is this because we are afraid of being alone? Or tired of being alone? Maybe this tendency to believe that we are in love with someone is simply our own failure to be strong enough in ourselves. We are unwilling to put forth the effort to make it on our own to discover more about ourselves. We simply want someone to discover who we are for us. We want someone who understands us because we don't understand ourselves.
I've had people latch onto me because I was nice to them. I believe that everyone is a person and deserves kindness. But it seems like I'm one of the few who are kind to them and then these people mistake kindness for love. What do I do when I am forced into that bind? Should I quit being kind to people so that they aren't mislead?
All I know is that love is something more than most people realize. It is even more than most can handle. Love can be the most terrifying thing to experience. Love can break a soul. Love is a responsibility. People think love is something easy… just a feeling. It's not just a feeling. And if people don't realize that, then it isn't going to work out, and they will never have the capacity to love.
Love is giving someone permission to take your life, your soul, and your body and rip them to shreds leaving you destroyed with nothing left, And they give you that same permission to have that power over them, yet each of you have the compassion to never use that power. It's living a constant cold sweat of the delicate balance between being completely defenseless and totally secure.
CLOSING THOUGHT:
"Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason." – Lord Chesterfield
"We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy" – Walter Anderson
"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved." – George MacDonald
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