What Is LOVE Anyhow?

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By Lyralen Kaye

Many of the people I’ve dated, and certainly the one I was married to for many, many, many, many, many, many, too many, years claimed that love was a feeling.  They felt all warm about me, found me to be precious, admirable, irritating, sexy, fun, smart…they felt, felt, felt. They expressed their feelings with gifts, sweet notes, dates, surprises, touch, sex. It was all very lovely. Right?

Of course not! There were disagreements. Break ups. Incompatibilities. Human frailty. Inexplicable farting and snoring. (We all do have bodies, remember!)

So, no. No, I don’t believe that love is a feeling. Besides, people don’t think about their feelings enough, and then their emotions run their lives and that means they’re saying and doing things that confuse the hell out of me like 2908ufzajhvlhjagt7y!!!!!!

However, in this very moment, since I have become somewhat coherent (which I do for a portion of each day) I can say that love is like yoga.  (I do yoga, a lot.)  Love is a practice.  It comes to life only in how we behave, in what we say and do, and the choices we make regarding the people in our lives. Love, for me, leads to attempts to be better, to be conscious, honest, kind, holding my ground, listening, always building stamina for sitting with my own triggers so I can, when necessary, make hard decisions that take both myself and other people into consideration, even when said decisions break my heart or scare me down to my bones. Love, for me, bonds in actions that lead to a shared life. (Or a couple months at the beach.)

Now, if you believe that love is feeling, then you probably love the romance of love. You might even believe what your feelings tell you about the other person (even as those messages shift and shift again). If you’re me, on the other hand, you don’t trust emotions worth shit.  I believe in listening to them, considering the information, and then making decisions separately from what they tell me. I like to live from my incredibly vocal gut.  (No! I’m not talking about the scatological and middle aged digestive problems! I’m saying my intuition speaks loud and clear, a lot, even when I’d rather ignore it.) I come into life sensing from what I know.

But let’s say, that for our investigative purposes, love is a practice.  All joking aside, it’s the practice of acknowledging your crazy, telling on your crazy to the people you love, acting out of generosity and mindfulness, and then continually putting out the welcome mat for what irritates, triggers you, and drives you out of your mind in other people. It’s a conscious practice of wisdom, humor, courage, insight, vulnerability and the choice to trust the deep in you to and with other people.  Which brings us to intimacy, a word to which I have a rather profound allergic reaction (on my bad days…on my good days, I crave it. Or maybe it’s the reverse?) Intimacy requires discipline, because it’s the scariest and most vulnerable thing around. It’s the ultimate adventure.

So in preparation for this adventure, let’s say love is a practice of kindness and risk, motivated by a feeling of deep caring that makes us want to get closer.

That ought to make all the feeling lovers happy.

Let’s also say that relationships are agreements we share within that practice.

I will have more to say about this as we go on…and a lot to say about what love is not, and what relationships are not. I’m sure I will be discovering more ways to practice love. I will make mistakes. I will be trying to heal my sensitive fae heart.

We will get triggered.  We will fall out of kindness and into blame.  We will tell ourselves impossible and ridiculous stories about the people we love. Sometimes it won’t be all that funny. But as long as we know we’re crazy, we have a path back to kindness. Like, hey, I’m just doing the best I can in my own crazy way. You, too?

We are ridiculous beings.  Capable of kindness, of open hearts, of courage, all the while telling ourselves insane untruths, and, hopefully, knowing it.