There are some intricacies of human emotion and our Psyche that remain unexplored. I want to touch on the ones revolving mating and dating. The one thing I have learned over the course of my own journey is how much we Glamorize Falling In Love VS. Being In LOVE. One process is automatic, based on our primal natures and the way some stranger looks at us in a Coffee Shop. The other process is more delicate, like carving a vase in a pottery class.
Real Love requires consistent tending and caring. You have to genuinely want the best outcome for the person of your affection; not relegating them to a mere object of your own projections.
This version, is actually way harder to do. We have been taught for a long time that Fairytales and Happy Ever After’s are a must, even in the modern world of Independence and Thirst for Adventure and Novelty. When these two paradigms clash, the results can be disastrous. Both needs are in constant conflict with one another. The fact that Falling In Love is different than Being In Love did not hit me until I was well into my late-20s.
As a young, ambitious 20-Something, my main goal was to delay relationships in pursit of Wealth and Status. I thought if I could just take one more seminar, read one more self-improvement book, get one more degree, I would finally feel enough. This was an automatic script I ran around, foregoing the notions of Love altogether for a while. When I finally listened to the pangs of my loneliness, inner cravings for companionship, rejection letters and the never ending hamster wheel of work, I realized something was missing. It would take me another two years to figure out just how myopic my thinking was.
I would continue to spend another year fantisizing about finding love in a Coffee Shop. I expected to lock eyes with a Stranger, and fall heads-over-heels for them in an instant. Moreover, I expected this to be an endless loop of repetition for my lifetime. Like many dreamers, I expected love to drop on my doorstep. It is unfortunately, a byproduct of living in age of UberEats and Express Mail Service. We want Love to come wrapped in a package that’s easy to consume, just like our expresso. It took some time and patience from my better half, to realize what True Love is.
True Love is Not Falling In Love In A Coffee Shop. It is an active process where you devote yourself fully to your partner without expectation of return. It is a nagging curiosity to find ways to understand, appreciate and make their life better.
We all have insecurities. We all have our own baggage. Our running scripts and dialogues about when our hearts will magically open up. Yet, life rarely pans out the way we want. When we spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy trying to find a fantasy creature in a coffee shop, our delay our relationship due to shallow goals, we lose out on precious time. This is the time that can be used to build ourselves, our spirits and our partners up.
Everyone wants forever. Yet, no one knows what it looks like. We have ideas of forever in the most convenient versions possible. Forever is not even a destination. In the long-run, it’s just a speck in the infiniteness of Time and Space. I finally realized what I had was so real, nothing in my script of grandiosity and trying to feel enough could match it. My heart came to rest soon as I realized that forever starts now. It starts with honesty and a willingness to forgo my attachment to falling in love. Instead of chasing forever, I decided to create it. And I didn’t have to go to a Coffee Shop to do so.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: Mary Niazi
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