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."

Oh no on the Radio

I promise I'm not a creeper.

You see, I didn't even listen to the normal radio until a few months ago. I'd been driving a car with XM radio, until my sister totaled it, smashing the XM radio to pieces with the rest of the left side of the car. After that, I had to downgrade-- majorly downgrade-- to a car I could pay for myself, and obviously say goodbye to commercial-free, talk-free XM radio.

The return to normal radio was tricky at first. I didn't know what stations still existed, which new ones were good, etc. I was lost. There were two stations I remembered liking in high school, so I tried them out. Turns out, they were still the same.

After awhile, I started developing a routine-- one station for the morning show on my way to work, another in the afternoon on the way home. I figured out which stations I liked best at which times, but occasionally I'd switch back and forth during commercials or when that Michael Franti song, "Say Hey," came on. I have a violent reaction to that song. One day, on my second go-to station, I heard the deejay's voice and there was no going back.

It was right after the earthquake in Haiti, while the whole Conan/Leno debacle was going on. The deejay was taking calls from people who were at a rally outside of NBC, and he kept asking them if they'd ever protested or rallied for anything else. They kept saying no, and finally he said "You know, I don't mean to talk shit, but all of these people who are calling haven't ever been to a rally for a legitimate cause, and I just find that completely ridiculous."

From that moment on, I couldn't get enough. I started listening to his show every day after work, even though I liked the music on another station better. He was funny, he was interesting, he was honest, and his voice was cute. I decided I was going to Google him to see if he was attractive enough to truly be the man of my dreams.

He was.

Let me clarify. I'm not usually one of those crazy girls. Okay well maybe a little crazy, for altogether different reasons, but I'm not one to get gaga over celebrities. I mean I have celebrity crushes, but no more than the average person, and I don't make elaborate plans about how exactly I can best stalk someone in order to get a glimpse of them, meet them, make them fall in love with me, get married and have lots of beautiful babies.

Besides, he isn't even a celebrity. Sure, he may have 2,499 Facebook friends (not that I've checked), but how famous can a radio deejay be, unless they're Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh? So is the fact that I have a major crush on this man, who I've never met, made more or less creepy by the fact that he's not a real celebrity?

I admit, it makes me feel a little dirty on the inside to have such a crush on someone I don't know. I've known those girls, and I don't want to be them. Like I'm kind of creeping myself out. I'm not about to go cook his pet bunny or anything (besides, he always talks about how he's single, so the whole homewrecking part of it isn't an issue), and it's not like I'm going to wait outside the station or find out where he lives, or even do anything besides listen to the radio show. But it isn't romantic like Sleepless in Seattle. They actually talked to each other. They didn't just sit there creepily without ever communicating.

Not to mention, that's a movie, and this is real life. So now I just have to figure out which makes me creepier: having a secret crush on someone who doesn't know I exist, or doing something about it.

Love,
S