In a way, this is much more liberating than the kind of passionate romance where you want to be the person's one and only. To me, loving somebody without being in love with them means that you don't care whom they end up with, as long as their future partner treats them well. It's easy to judge and police your own emotions, though, especially when society has taught you that you ought to be seeking a committed, deeply passionate relationship at all times. The reality is that nobody is obligated to your feelings at all, and you can feel as much or as little as you feel. He reminds me of that time that I was head over heels for a punk who put on a podcast in the middle of having sex with me and was preparing to move into his van. "What's wrong with you?" he wants to know. Have you ever experienced your head telling you that you ought to be super into somebody? If somebody is great, kind, considerate, and funny, and I don't feel the fireworks, then it's like a tiny, internal judge starts banging his gavel away somewhere in my head, pointing his finger at me. No matter how much care and attention I give the people I am seeing, no matter how genuinely fond of them I may be, I feel differently about people when I love but am not in love with them. Even though I believe that love has a place practically everywhere, and that society would be a lot better off if we gave and received love more readily, I still fall head over heels into the infatuated, passionate, all-consuming kind. While I think hooks probably has it all figured out, I'm nowhere near her level of wisdom. You can practice love and not have it be just about desire and passion. Viewing romantic love as the only kind of love out there is isolating and limiting. This means providing the people in your life with the same space and attention that you would give to a significant other.Īs author bell hooks said in her book All About Love, society isn't set up to create connections. When I'm at my best, I like to think I am infusing love into all of my relationships - those that are platonic and those that are a little more.
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