• SUBJECT: Jon, male, 35
  • NUMBER OF TIMES IN LOVE: 4
  • SUBMISSION DATE: 2017.10.09

"My answer to this question is anything but straightforward because of what love has come to mean for me over time. For me, now, love is not something you feel. It transcends the physical and emotional experience to a point that it actually becomes the container in which your experience unfolds. The closest I can get to explaining what that feels like is to say that it is effortless. That doesn’t mean the day-to-day experience is always easy, or that it stops taking significant work and commitment to uphold the relationship, but you learn to trust that all the ups and downs are unfolding within the safe shelter of a space you each hold for one another to grow. 

That may not be particularly helpful because that kind of love requires having it before you can know what it is—my wife and I had already been married for nearly 10 years before we were really capable of holding that kind of space for one another. But we were ‘in love’ before that. Had anyone told us when we got married that we weren’t in love yet, we would have rightly told them they were crazy. So for most of us, I think being 'in love' just means that we're on the path toward growing that kind of deeper love with one another. 

So what does that feel like? Well, that path is wrought with feelings and physical sensations. It’s confusing and heavy, and it can be hard to see what’s really going on through the rollercoaster of emotion that goes with it. It’s wonderful, passionate, rewarding, and crushing—sometimes all at once. It can feel like long strings of deep confusion punctuated by brief moments of passionate clarity, and it’s difficult to tell if all the chaos is even moving in the right direction. It’s torture and bliss all at once, but it’s all completely necessary to prepare us to answer a very simple but pivotal question that allows real love to grow: Can you give yourself to the other person?

Real love, the kind I described at the beginning, can only grow when you have each answered ‘yes' to that question. Not because you’re giving up your sense of self, but because the other person inspires you so deeply to be a better version of yourself that you choose to reshape your own hopes and dreams just so you can grow together. It leads you to take responsibility for your own growth, for your own inspiration, and to nurture what you find within your partner to ensure that your paths stay intertwined. It’s magic.

So, if you go through that roller coaster of relationship and ultimately decide your answer to that pivotal question is ’no,' is it still love? I say absolutely. It’s all love. It all counts. Every experiment, every risk, every leap of faith, every fall... every attempt at love, no matter how trivial, has something to teach us that ultimately increases our capacity to grow real love with another person. If we’re in it, we’re in it. And then one day we say 'yes.’

P.S. I just read this to my wife and we both started crying… it may not be what you need for your website, but there’s something in it that’s really true for us."

Kristen Ruth Smith