Love vs. In Love

I know that I haven't been writing multiple posts per week like I was this summer, but that's just because life has picked up and become busier. While it's definitely a good thing that I run myself ragged until I come home and crash at night, it means less energy to write for my readers. But don't think I haven't been thinking about you. The list of potential blog topics that I've generated has been growing steadily. Just today, while I was on a particularly head-clearing run, I came up with a few fresh ones. But even though that list has stretched in length, I think it's time that I tackle a big, important topic that countless people have encouraged me to think about: LOVE.

Over the past couple of months, I've found myself in conversation with friends about what it means to be "in love" with someone, versus to just "love" someone. Some people habitually use those phrases interchangably, but I really don't think that's always appropriate. I sure hope that we love the people that we're in love with, but do we have to be in love with those we love?

Absolutely not.

On the most fundamental of levels, think of it this way. Are you in love with your mother? If you are, stop reading. Stop reading immediately. Get yourself into the next available shrink. I'm serious. In all honesty, though, do you love your mother? (Or, if not your mother, then your father, your brother, your aunt, whatever other family members?) Most of us can probably say that yes, we love at least one of our family members. But does that mean that we're in love with them? I sure hope to God not!

What's the difference here? Well, it's romance of course. We love our family members, meaning that we care about them in an extremely deep sense. Perhaps it means that we'd do anything for them to ensure their happiness and/or wellbeing, or maybe it means that if something were to happen to them, we'd be forever changed and devastated. We love them in the sense that they mean a heck of a lot to us, but we don't love them in the way that makes us want to crawl into bed naked with them. Right there, that's the basic explanation of loving someone versus being in love with them. (I'm sick and twisted, I know, but just hang out and see where I'm going.)

Now, movies and romantic pieces of literature often consider that silly old notion of love at first sight. Do I believe in it? No, I definitely don't. I'm completely sure that it takes a long time to get to know someone well enough to love them, that love isn't based off of looks or initial interactions. Yes, both of those things can start us on a journey to ultimately finding love, but can you really say that you know your life would be ruined if that guy you saw across the bar tragically died tomorrow? Love is deeper than appearances, more serious than a crush. More serious than even the biggest of crushes. Really.

That said, just because you love someone doesn't mean you're in love with them. Maybe you care about them deeply and know that they hold a special place in your heart. But would your heart be broken if they were to disappear tomorrow? Would you forever compare every other person of romantic interest to that one person, always holding them in higher regard than the rest?

A friend and I were talking about this and we came to one conclusion, a partial answer to a question that really has no answers. We decided it's easier to tell if you were actually in love with someone in retrospect than it is in the present. When we're dating someone, we might THINK we're in love. We decide that we really rely on our partner for at least some of our happiness, that our life would be changed without them. We think about this even if, in the back of our mind, we know that they're maybe not "the one," or that they have some qualities about them that drive us so insane that we can't really overlook them and focus on the good.

Looking back on past relationships, though, is what often allows us to determine if we were really in love, or rather just having a good time with a person that maybe we even, to some degree, loved at the time. If you look back on that first relationship that you felt "in love," how does it make you feel now? If that person were to contact you right now, would you get butterflies in your stomach? Or do they really not mean a whole heck of a lot to you anymore? Do you remember what it felt like to kiss them, or is that a memory so distant that your mind has sort of just forgotten it?

Although I'm stating the obvious, I think that looking back on situations is what really allows us to evaluate them. Maybe we can't verify that we were really in love until it's too late, until our object of affection has married and had kids. Or, conversely, what I consider a good situation is looking back and not feeling anything about that man who broke our heart or that girl who crushed us. Maybe, just maybe, that means that we really weren't all that in love, even though we thought we were at the time and in the moment.

I've come to two conclusions while having written this post. One is that it's true, it really takes time to both fall in love with someone and to love them deeply. I don't care what Hollywood says, but you can't love someone when you first meet them, as you simply just don't know enough about them to love their entire being. Two is that time really does make a huge difference. When we break up with someone, we can often feel this awful pain that seems as if it will never go away. But, when we let the time pass and we look back on our relationship with that other person, sometimes time has allowed us to realize that they didn't mean as much to us as we thought. (Of course, the opposite can also be true.) Point is, I don't think we always can accurately assess what we have when we have it. But, if feelings of love and being "in love" continue over time without any doubt, then maybe, just maybe, we've found something worthwhile and what we can actually call "true love."