When Love is Love

When Love is Love

Love, love changes everything / Hands and faces, earth and sky / Love, love changes everything / How you live and how you die.

These words by Andrew Lloyd-Webber are no longer just lyrics to me because I now know that love does change everything. 

Add these words: Now I tremble at your name / Nothing in the world will ever be the same. 

My world has not been the same since the first time that I danced with her. She fit! We fit!  She was 17. She came into my world from the old country and I still tremble at her name and my world has never been the same. 

Plato will have it that 'falling in love' is the mutual recognition on earth of souls who have been singled out for one another in a previous or celestial existence. To meet the Beloved is to realize 'We loved before we were born.'  

While I recognized her, and we did love before we were born, it is clear that rather than being singled out, we chose one another in that previous existence. 

So much is written about love, in songs, in poems, in prose, but many do not or cannot experience love. Sure they experience what they think love is, even call it love, but it is more often not love. 

Many are not sure what love is, and using words to define love will leave us wanting.

We want it, hope for it even, but it is very elusive. We confuse what is not love with what love is.  

Perhaps it is easier to say what love is not.

We can be 'in love' without really loving the other. The experience of being 'in love' probably causes more relational misery and confusion than other emotions mistaken for love. Usually being 'in love' wears out. Only then does love become a possibility. 

We may move from loving the characters in the play to actually loving each other. 

Tolerance, forgiveness, and taking care of, are often mistaken for love, but are not part of loving.  

We think learning how to live together is love, and without more may end up as two people in a row boat sitting in still water with no ores, watching the fireworks on the distant shore.  

We love specifically when we not only allow, but enable, enhance and enjoy the otherness of our spouse. As lovers we should be designing each other in ways that enhance rather than degrade. Can we see our love as putting the other at the heart of all that we do and are?  

Where is the imagination, the creativity, the curiosity, the love? 

No change changes like imagination / All the work and all the play / All the love and all the talk / Nothing, if you can't imagine.

Role-playing in relationship crushes the persons in it. What are you? What do you do? Boyfriend, husband, wife, mother, lawyer, teacher, doctor, son, daughter?  

No, you are not.  

These are the roles you play and if you play them according to your standards or worse yet, play by the standards of your other, or by the standards of so called experts and authorities, you can be labeled as a good husband or a poor wife, a good provider, a wonderful mother, a loving husband or a wonderful wife-- evaluated and judged for how you are playing your roles.

I have heard wives say "I just do not feel close to him." How much closer can you be I ask? You live in the same house, share the same bed, and share the same bathroom.  

There is too much closeness and no connecting as persons. There is not sufficient intimacy. Intimacy in this sense represents a dimension of reality, not a social position, not role-playing. Can you connect to your other as a person and not only by the roles he or she plays? Closeness and intimacy must be balanced. They form the dyad of love.

"I love you" is 

most deeply a feeling 

and least of all words, 

but when the feelings 

form the words, 

the words are 

not just heard 

but felt and seen.  

At times I feel this stirring within my heart, of a seed germinating, the stem growing and flowering into the words "I love you."  

I can see it, and experience it, which means that I experience her, and I experience me, but most of all I experience us.  

Love cannot be found in the me or the you. It is impossible. Most experience love as "if you love me, I will love you." This is not love, for love has no expectations. It asks for no response, nor does it demand the other to be deserving. It is not earned.  

This is why in a world where selfish is the norm, few continue loving. Love, even if initially discovered and fleetingly experienced, cannot be sustained in selfishness.  

Because we are all flawed and selfishness abounds in all of us, can we experience love? 

The answer is yes, but not in the way you may think. 

My experience has taught me that I can love unconditionally, and even be loved unconditionally, but not continually.  

At first these unconditional loving experiences, loving without any expectations, lasted only seconds, but were revelatory.  It was like I could glimpse them but not grasp them and hold them. 

The process then became a culmination of thousands of loving experiences, not a lifetime of loving. As the loving experiences, however, became more frequent and longer, I could hold onto them and bring them back through memory and love again unconditionally, and the selfishness diminished. 

I learned that it was much harder to know when I was loving than when I was being loved because to love is to be alone, at least initially and momentarily, since it is unilateral and not dependent on a response from the loved one.

Our love is always young / like renewal in the springtime / like flowers that are blooming / like the first warmth of the sun / like the cool of fresh water / like the morning dew upon the ground / like the breeze on summer mornings / like the smell of freshly fallen rain/

Our love is always present / like a fire that always burns / like a passion that always captures / like a sun that always shines / like a star that's always seen / like a warmth that's always felt / like a dream that never ends / like a love that always is.  

'Always' in this poem centers on the love being always present even though we are not always capable of accessing it and loving unconditionally. 

There are times when we are just not humble enough to feel love. Where pride is, love cannot be. 

The same for evaluations, judgments and expectations.  

These are more like test passing and have nothing to do with love. If you were only this or only that, I could love you more! If I am not loved as I am, there is no hope for me.

She made it clear that love be the foundation of our marriage. Not commitment, not loyalty, not trust, and it was frightening and exhilarating to remove these safety nets.

Love makes us better. More accurately love demands that we be better. However, we cannot demand that the other be better. 

Love makes fools of everyone / All the rules we made are broken / Yes love, love changes everyone / Love or perish in its flame / Love will never let you be the same / Love will never let you be the same. 

Without love as the foundation of us, we would never have weathered the extraordinary challenges that were our life together.

Remember how we loved that day / that day which seemed so dark? / Remember how we loved that day after? / Could it be that on that day / we loved more than we could love, / so that on the day next following / we felt all the love we loved? / Did it seem to you as me / though painful and afraid / we loved the more in sharing / what hurt and what we feared? / So that on the day next following / we had more to love / giving more to each / and receiving all there was?

As I said there is no 'me' in a real love story, at least not in the traditional sense. This type of me will and always destroys the love because it does not allow the love to shine, grow and blossom. It will always end with me and you.  

A real love story begins and ends with 'us' and the paradox is that we can find the me and the you in the us. 

 

However, as long as it stays 'me' and 'you' it is not love.  

Certainly two can learn to live together and get along, but that is not love. And being close does not necessarily mean feeling close.  

When I first danced with her she completed us. And when she went back home at the end of the school year, part of me left with her and part of her stayed with me. The us was intact even though we were 5000 miles apart. Years later when we danced again, she fit still, because she had always fit.  

Your leaving left a refugee / and years to go between. / But remember how a young boy knows the closest to his heart / and how the door will never close / no matter we're apart?

Loving is giving and receiving, the good and the bad of all that we are. We, after all, can only give what we are, and we can only receive what is given.  

I remember when she gave me, or more accurately exposed to me, her vulnerability, or what has and will hurt her. She gave me a priceless gift that day which said to me "do not abuse it or take advantage of it." She opened a door to her self and shared that self with me. I felt special and loved, and also vulnerable. She gave me the most wondrous gift. 

When one can share such a precious gift with another, will not the other rejoice? 

Can you still enjoy and celebrate the differences that brought you together?

 

Can you love that person no matter the weaknesses?

 

Can you even love the weaknesses because they are hers?

 

All that is given can be loved, cherished even, for without them there would be no her.

How can two who are so different from / Be the same as? / Who are independent of, be connected to? / How can two apart be as one / And mirror and reflect each other? / How can I be beside you and yet within you? / Side by side you and still transcend you? / If I am separate from you, why do I surround you? / Encircle you and fly with you? / Why are you within me and through me / such as you penetrate and fit me? / Intertwined with yet separate from you? / Why are we apart from and yet a part of? / You are above me and beneath me / yet I am in you. / How can I be in you when you are in me? / How can we be far from and yet together with?

What can I see in her?  

The little girl, the teenage girl, the young woman, the middle aged woman and the mature, wise and most generous person.

However, it is not what I see, but what I experience in each: delight, thrill, joy, glad, grateful, excitement, awe and wonder.  

There is a reason her nickname is Awesome.

O, blame me not if there are no more words / Look in your mirror, and there appears a face / So beautiful that seeing starts the music of the birds / And your gifts do tell also of your grace / And more, much more, than in this verse can sit / Your own mirror shows you when you look in it.

The giving of herself, emotionally, spiritually, physically, intellectually, her fears and her hopes, her dreams and her pain, were and continue to be, each one a precious gift.

Each one to be received with care. 

She gave her heart to me and said please do not break it. I received all that she gave. 

She continues to give me new depths of her, and I continue to rejoice in receiving her. 

Can you imagine the responsibility it takes to hold each in trust and love? 

The incalculable risk to give one's heart to the other is that the other may break it, crush it and stamp on it. And yet there is no possibility of love unless we take the risk and give not only our hearts but all that we are.

What often happens is that where one may be willing, the other is not, and as a result the willing one pulls back and they concentrate instead on just living together, being nice even, taking care of, but not loving. 

I asked a friend of mine once what she really wanted in her marriage, and she could not tell me. Or more likely she would not tell me because what she had (a good marriage) was not what she wanted (a love story).

It is understandable that many if not most would settle for a good marriage or a good relationship. Life, after all, can get in the way of a real love story. Work, family, obligations, money, the world, all combine to demand our attention and it is easy to give in and say "when all else is done, then perhaps we can love."  

Usually it is too late and we settle in and accept at most a good marriage or a good relationship. The structure, the system becomes more important than the people in it. 

The practical cares of the world, even the smallest of them, are a great distraction to lovers.  

If we are too busy thinking of all the demands and spend no time thinking of the other, then the hope for a love story and the love story itself fades into the words of a romantic novel, and becomes a longing of past hopes and feelings, occasionally brought to the surface by proxy through a love story at the movies.  

Oh how we long for and even recognize what we don't have!

The fact that she is a mother, a teacher or a doctor is far less important than she is herself.  

Love wants and longs for the Beloved, not what the beloved does, and certainly not what the beloved gives to or provides for you.  

The richness and vastness of the other would take thousands of years to discover, and because we have given up exploring and looking for the treasures of the other, and have instead settled into life and living, mistakenly thinking we know the other, all the while we do not and cannot know.  

Sexual desire, without love, wants It. Love wants the Beloved! It is a sensory pleasure. Love makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. The lover desires the Beloved, not the pleasure she can give. Without love, sexual desire, is a fact about ourselves, not the other. Without love the other is but a means to the pleasure. 

The lover does not find but makes her lovely.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  

Love, anything, and your heart 

will certainly be wrung 

and possibly broken.

  

If you want to make sure 

of keeping it intact, 

you must give your 

heart to no one....  

Wrap it up carefully 

round with hobbies and 

little luxuries; 

avoid all entanglements; 

lock it up safe in the casket 

or coffin of your selfishness.  

But in that casket--

safe, dark, motionless, airless--

it will change.  

It will not be broken; 

it will become 

unbreakable, 

impenetrable, 

irredeemable" 

(C.S. Lewis The Four Loves).

A true love story lasts forever because it invites charity or the pure love of God, which is the only sustainable love that can last forever.  Human love is derived from the love of God and can only be sustained by it.  

Pay no attention, however, if all you want is a good marriage or a good relationship.

Human activities called "love" can be sustainable for a time, and only mask as love.  

The facade that we create and sustain by human efforts, however, while beneficial, is not love.  

True our lives can be comfortable, busy, exciting, wonderful, but not loving. We create distractions to keep us from facing the reality, and even make the distractions our reality.

"You made my life, our life so great. I have felt so loved and I have been able to tell you how I feel for you. I have been able to feel myself and to feel good and awesome. You are so beautiful and surrounded by understanding. You are so lovable that I fall in love with you every day. I know we have only reached the beginning. I can anticipate what it will be like. I do not know if words will ever be able to express the love I still have in store for you."  

While written close to 30 years ago, the love she had in store for me is only just beginning.  Are we just now scratching the surface?

Being filled ever more with Charity, the frequency of the unconditional love experiences are not just occasional, but are recurring, expanding and experienced almost daily.

What love does not have, it creates, and because I love her for what she is, she is always becoming, revealing, and giving herself to me in ways that I could have never imagined, and even when she does not think she is giving, I am receiving. And that is what love does because that is what love is.

We cannot "fix" the way we relate to each other. Being told to fix a relationship is not helpful. 

In fact the term "relationship" is not a term where love is found. 

Love is discovered in how we relate to each other as persons. 

It is the relatedness, not the relationship, that matters, unless of course we are satisfied with only having the structure of a good relationship. 

We love specifically when we not only allow, but enable, enhance, and enjoy the "otherness" of our spouse. 

This is a special experience, for so much of the time we are instead caring for or caring about others by tolerating, taking care of, forgiving, or any of the many responses that are not love, but aspects of closeness.

Liking is not love, understanding is not love, friendship is not love. They are profoundly important human relational experiences, but they are not love.

This story illustrates the difference. A psychotherapist was supervising a number of younger psychotherapists and was listening to one of them discuss a teenage patient who was in some serious trouble. He was uncertain about how he should most effectively intervene and help.  

Suddenly he said, "I don't really need to discuss this any further with you. I know exactly what that boy needs to do."  

The supervisor said, "I suspect that his parents also know exactly what that 'boy' needs to do.

I knew that what the therapist thought the 'boy' needed to do was, rationally, exactly what the 'boy' did need to do, but that was beside the point. What his parents thought he needed to do was probably just what he did not need to do; but that too was beside the point.  

Someone--his therapist, if his parents had not done so--needed to let that 'boy' know that he was loved and cared for, just as he was. Someone had to tell him that he need not be different or better in order to be loved." 

What the therapist was saying to his young patient was that "if you were different from what you are, then I would approve of you and love you more."  

Sound familiar?  

Even though his prescription for how the 'boy' should be different was a healthier one, it was still a prescription.  

As such, it withheld from the 'boy' the essential prerequisite to growth: the acceptance of him as he was despite what both recognized as his inadequacies and failings.

The point of this story / is that 

if we do not care for / and love each other where we are / we cannot go any further /  We are stuck.  

If we are not worth / loving as we are / there is nothing / to improve.  

If she improves / and you love her 

more / because she has changed /

to meet your expectations / and requirements /  then when can she ever be / intimately at ease / no longer anxious / about your expectations and requirements /

for changing?  

She becomes an / emotional yo-yo / 

tied to your string.  

As Eliza Doolittle discovered in Pygmalion, conditional love does not feel like love at all; it feels like studying for exams.  

In relationships usually one or both settle for what they have rather than what they want. Usually one will sacrifice and give in to the other rather than rock the boat. For him it may be a realization that finally comes when he is in bed for the night. He sees his spouse and decides to give up on what he wants. He just doesn't see it happening the way he thought it could and decides to let it go. The resentment can and usually does fade, and a good marriage may result, but that is the most he now hopes for.

If you desire a love story, ask yourselves if you will both be content to diagnose the ills and remedy them in ways to which you have become accustomed?  

Or will you insist on designing together an opportunity for love in which your imagination can be unleashed, and in which the joy of real love replaces the unpleasant tasks of trying to fix the old? 

Can we lift our view enough to see what we might attain?  

Shouldn't we be at the heart of designing each other in ways that enhance rather than degrade? 

Do you see each other at the heart of all that you do and are? 

So real as to enhance your spirits and enrich your lives?  

Or have we concentrated all our efforts on the recent past and attempted to 'fix' what is wrong?  

Where is the imagination, the creativity, the curiosity, the love?  

Lost in failure?  

Sitting in dusty closets 

as 'old' letters 

to be read by others 

after we are gone 

because we failed to see 

that the old is the new, 

where we may have first 

caught a glimpse 

of when love is love?

Shakespeare said:

"So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground"

And true it is, but also true is this:

So are you to my life as breath to air,

Or as never ending words are to the poet;

Her voice awakens me, all of me,

Takes away my breath;

Brightness in a darkened room,

Her lips and mine;

Sweet and warm--tasting, smelling, touching me.

I talked with her last night.