I was looking at Sarah Selecky’s writing blog and thinking about her ideas about how people want to love when I decided to write about what that looks like. Understanding love is hard for me, because it comes in so many different varieties that it is truly difficult to pin down what it means to love.
There is a natural distinction between romantic and plutonic love, but even that becomes blurred over time. We define that distinction by the question, do you want to be intimate with that person, but the question feels false. What does intimate mean. I am intimate with my closest male friend in the sense that I share secrets and feelings with him that I wouldn’t share with hardly any other human on the planet. That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with him. So then there is the question of sex. Does intimacy mean sex or wanting to have sex with someone? I’d be quite fine developing a sexual relationship with Kate Beckinsale or Rhona Mitri but I don’t know them and don’t feel any particular connection with them short of the physical attraction (which I am aware is largely manufactured by television). Therefore, that is an incomplete diagnosis of love. In fact, the question of sex itself largely ignores the why. I’ve been part of conversations with women who speak of sex with their partners that is something driven by an emotional connection to them but not a physical one in any sense of the word.
Maybe love looks like giving of yourself to another human being selflessly. It is simple to get bogged down in the specifics of gender, sexuality, and attraction and ignore the basic currency of love, which is to give. Another part of that currency is to strive to understand, and so love must look like caring and respect and understanding. It must feel like a soft touch on the shoulder, a squeeze of the hand, even an unexpected hug.
I fear our lack of understanding of love is a huge part of why it is so often impermanent; why it all too quickly falls into disappointment, distrust, and despair. As one who has loved, lost, hurt, and healed I think I have at least a basic understanding of how I love. I don’t begin to suggest that I understand how to always see it in others.