Making Love Manageable, Part 2: How to Treat the Hurt

The other day, I stumbled across this movie called Stuck in Love. The first sentence of the movie is the quote you see above, and it captivated me in so many ways. I thought a lot about love after that, what it really means, and I concluded one simple thing about it that probably isn’t news to you at all – love hurts.

It doesn’t make much sense at all. Isn’t love supposed to make us happy? If so, then why does it feel sometimes like love just reaches into our bodies, pulls out our heart, and stumps on it as we seemingly disintegrate into a million pieces?

When we love so much and love so hard, we necessarily give it our all. Our lives are no longer our own. We feel a total loss of control that makes us fearful of what might happen to us if that love fails. If that love fails, will we, too, fail?

On the other side, battling the fear of losing ourselves, is the fear of disappointment. Because we love the other person and care about them, we see how much we mean to them, and how terrible it would be to let them down. So we make all kinds of sacrifices, willingly. We give and give, sometimes without the other person asking for it or needing it at all. In the process of all this unnecessary giving, we become depleted and bitter.

This is why love is so hard. It’s not complicated because we don’t understand it; it’s complicated because we feel too much- our emotions confuse our thinking, so we do irrational things that snowball into more emotions, which further confuses our thinking. A complicated web we weave.

There are people who live off of this kind of emotional roller coaster. When it gets too quiet, they have to stir things up in the name of “love”. They think drama is romantic, that without it, it’s not really love. Perhaps Carrie from Sex and the City puts it best. “I’m looking for love,” she says. “Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.”

I don’t know about you, but to me, this kind of “real love” sounds terrible! My life is complex enough that I don’t need my love to be ridiculous and inconvenient, let alone all-consuming. I just want to be with people who don’t have a problem with attachment, who can solve relationships problems with me in a reasonable manner without the “screaming, crying, perfect storms“. When people think of love, I think there is often a misconception that being rational cannot mean it’s love. You can argue that by being rational, you lose the “magic”. I say, you just lose the drama, which is not such a bad thing. 

Below are some tips for making love a bit more rational, and thus, a bit easier to deal with.

1. Don’t be afraid 

Not being afraid is the singular most important thing to help you learn to let go and be at peace. In yoga, it is only when you stop fearing falling over that you come to balance your body, in say, a standing bow pose.

The human mind tends to escalate the possibility of bad things happening more than the good, and if you’re invested in someone you love, this mental exercise can escalate to biblical proportions. What if it doesn’t work out? What if he’s not the right guy for you and there’s someone else out there who is? What if he cheats on you and silly you, you don’t even know it? What if he’s still in love with his ex?  What if your parents don’t approve of him? What if the sex never gets better?

As with many other things in life, worrying is premature. It’s like walking outside every day fearing a crane might tip over and fall on you. Why not just let it go, see past the cranes, appreciate what a beautiful day it is outside, buy yourself a macaroon? Enjoying all the good things today and making the most of what you have today, is really the only way you can prepare for the future. Anyway, hasn’t your past experience taught you that worrying doesn’t ever stop the inevitable? Whatever will be, will be, but unlike everyone else who would have had a miserable time getting to that point,  you enjoyed many-a-macaroons.

2. Set some boundaries

First, internal boundaries. Repeat after me: I am only responsible for my own happiness. You care for your loved ones a lot, I get it. You worry for them, I get it. But you have to trust that they can take care of themselves. Don’t make everyone’s problem your problem – life is too hard that way, even for you, a strong, confident woman who is capable of handling a whole lot. Be selfish, focus on taking care of yourself. That’ll probably be the biggest favor you can do to everyone around you.

Second, external boundaries. Women are not very good at setting external boundaries, probably because a lot of us aren’t used to asking for what we want. But you have to. Don’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings – they’re grown-ups, they’ll be okay. Don’t worry about coming across as too demanding – you deserve only as much respect as you allow yourself to have. Don’t worry about getting “no” as an answer – once you throw it out there, you can always negotiate and meet each other in the middle. A simple “Hey, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I would like…” is a good way to start the conversation.

 

3. Make your own decisions

A lot of times relationships is about getting your way (or not getting your way), you know, what people call “compromise”. Whether you make your best decisions by listening to your head or your gut, it is important to know where you stand on a topic before trying to harmonize with your loved ones. Harmony is an illusion of things unsaid, unless you own your decision and stand by it through doubts raised by others. Rather than trying to appease conflicting parties, your primary goal should be to articulate what you want out of the situation. This clears the air for sound discussions, and prevent the talk from escalating into a battle of emotions and “he said/she said”.

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All of this sounds very romantic, no? Love is about romance, sure, but it’s also a lot (a loooot) of work. But if you approach it the right way, at least you won’t give it a reason to hurt as much.

And remember, you can always eat a macaroon.

Love,

V

 

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Making Love Manageable, Part 1: How to Know You’re in Love

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a taxi in San Francisco with a good friend of mine. Rain was steadily puttering down on the window, reflecting shards of bright headlights in our traffic jam.

“Have you ever been in love?” He asked me.

This question stunned me. “I don’t know,” I said, after a long period of silence.

“Being in love” is a strange phrase. It’s so ambiguous, but so overused in our society that we don’t really pause to think about all that it could mean. On the outset, people tend to associate it with infatuation -i.e. “Have you been so deeply infatuated with someone to the point of being dysfunctional? To the point that you can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t walk down the street without thinking that you’ve just seen him in the crowds? Do you think about him so much that every time you hear a song playing, you think it was written about him? Wake up so pumped because you might bump into him at school or work? Secretly check horoscopes and personality compatibility and social media pages like a die-hard pop star fan?”

Yes, yes, been there, done that. Never doing that again.

The thing is, what I just described is only a small part to “being in love”. It is perhaps most well-defined by Hollywood, most socially conditioned, and most romantic. Perhaps most importantly, it is glorified. When you say “I’m in love!” it induces a concoction of odd feelings, something like a mix of wonder, jealousy, melancholy and nostalgia. It is a powerful phrase, but often good for temporary self-reassurance and not much else.

What about the other more elusive and far less romanticized side of being in love? Keeping each other warm at night, doing grocery shopping and cooking in quiet synchronization, laughing together at something silly (“Ugh I just farted, again!”), laughing at the other person who’s crying at something you think is silly, and in between, all those almost completely mind-shattering, exasperating moments when you either want to hurt each other or someone else who’s messing with your relationship.

Because of my belief that being in love goes much deeper beyond the infatuation stage (which, let’s be realistic, may not end up as a healthy relationship at all!), I’ve basically stopped trying to ask myself “Do I love him?” or “Does he love me?” Like, so what?? What are you trying to prove here? Who are you trying to prove it to?

In light of it being almost Valentine’s Day, I thought I would do a different spin on love, to take a break from the self-focused, mushy, gift-giving culture that is slowly engulfing and suffocating us. Don’t worry about “being in love” for a second; pretend the question is moot. Instead, ask yourself:

1. Do you care about each other a lot? 

This is the bottom line. Are you interested in the other person’s life? Are you open to learning more about each other’s interests, even though sometimes they might seem boring or weird on the outset? Do you take time to listen to each other, and share your stories, jokes, everyday ups and downs? Do you cater to each other, let the small things go? Do you sometimes worry for each other’s safety, health, and well-being?

2. Do you care for each other willingly? 

Caring for someone is different from caring about someone. To me, caring about someone doesn’t necessitate you changing who you are as a person, whereas caring for someone else does. It calls for a shift in the boundaries that define you as a human being, in some level of self-sacrifice or at minimum, self-adjustment.

Growing up, my mom had put it best. She said, “Dating a woman is like taking care of a flower – you can like it a lot, and pluck it from the earth, smell it and keep it in your pocket and let it die, or you cherish it for what it is, and leave it in the garden, and water it and care for it. Which kind of relationship are you in?”

3. Do you respect each other?

Respect is so important. With respect comes a number of things – giving him space, understanding why she’s upset, being supportive, refraining from being overly critical, having rational discussions to sort through issues (versus crazy screaming matches to hurt each others’ egos). The list goes on.

Every time I catch up with a girlfriend of mine over brunch, we inevitably end up talking about relationships and men, and the story always follows the same trajectory: “We are in a weird place. Things were good before, right now I’m not so sure about him. He used to be XYZ, now he’s not XYZ. I don’t know.”

To which I’d ask, “Have you told him this?”

To which they’d answer, “Not really, not yet.”

Girls, before you decide to break up with the guy, please, talk to him. Recognize his role in the relationship, its importance (it is a partnership after all). Big decisions, such as breaking up, are not decisions for you to make alone, nor are they decisions for you to make for him. Sometimes, you naturally lose some respect for a guy when he stops trying to impress you, but it could just be that he’s gotten comfortable enough in a relationship to feel that he no longer needs to impress you. It doesn’t mean he’s a terrible boyfriend, let alone a terrible person. It just means you need to talk.

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In Part 2 of this blog series, I’ll be talking about how to make the irrational parts of love rational (and easier to deal with). Stay tuned!

Love,

V