Fear In Love
Let me write about fear for a little bit. It’s got a grip on me this morning and it is an ugly little fucker – a sharp toothed sprite that gnaws my focus to shreds. Annihilates my ability to be in the present moment - right here, right now. For me, fear stems almost entirely from insecurity. Most often, it stems from insecurity in the stability of my relationships with others. This morning, I’m fearful about my relationship with the man I have come to love. He’s gone dark now for about sixteen hours and, although I realize that is certainly not a long period of time, it’s atypical for him. Normally, we respond to each other’s text messages within a few hours of receiving them and then we check in with each other every night either through Facetime or a telephone call. Yesterday, he stopped responding right after lunch. I sent him photos mid-day – no response. I waited until 11:00pm and then sent him a text message to let him know that I was going to bed and that I loved and missed him. No response. Just now, I sent him a follow-up text asking if he was okay. That he has been silent and I’m not sure if I should worry. No response yet.
Yet. That’s the word that has my stomach turned inside out. Like an organ is protruding from my belly – raw and exposed and quivering. Will yet become eventually? Or is yet going to turn in to never because he’s dead as a result of a head-on collision, or because he had a brain aneurism, or because he decided he made a mistake and doesn’t love me anymore and is going back to the wife he left two years ago? Or will he text me back eventually to say “sorry, just being absent-minded?”
Which, it turns out, is exactly what he just texted me, as I was writing that last paragraph. “I am so sorry. Everything is okay. Got home later than I wanted to yesterday and I was exhausted……just going to say it again – you are always in my thoughts. Love, love, love you.”
A sweet message and one that should set my mind at ease – which it has because now I know that he’s alive and well. Yet, immediate relief was followed almost simultaneously with prickly irritation. Irritation that swung back and forth between placing blame first on myself and then on him. Why did I let myself lose precious sleep over senseless worry? Why don’t I have enough confidence to trust that he loves me, to have faith in our relationship? And then the thought train veered in another direction. Shouldn’t he have been considerate enough to at least given my goodnight text a thumbs up when he saw it upon waking this morning? Considerate enough to take a moment mid-stream yesterday to at least say, Hey, photos look great. Really tired and hitting the hay early tonight. Will catch up with you tomorrow. But he didn’t do those things; instead, he left me to twist in the wind until I came forward to say that I was worried, that I needed reassurance.
Then my mind leapt to another thought, and a cautionary one this time: let it be, Elizabeth. He fell asleep early and that’s his due. He slept in late and that’s also his due. He didn’t leave you twisting in the wind, you left yourself twisting in the wind. Cut him some slack and don’t introduce unnecessary pressure to such a new relationship – especially one that has been established in a time of immense change for both of you: pending divorce, uncertain finances because of continued negotiations in divorce proceedings, adjusting to split custody, adjusting to single parenting, anticipation of introducing our kids, shifts in professional life, deaths of immediate family members, care for aging parents, etc., etc. For fuck’s sake, Elizabeth! Get a grip and take a breath. Be patient. Don’t take a voluntary and loving relationship and twist it into one of obligation. Both of you are currently, right in this moment, trying to extricate yourselves from your previous obligatory relationships. Are you really going to dive immediately into the next when you haven’t even closed out your last?
So, I heeded my own advice and I let it be. Instead of getting angry or pouty, I simply stated, clearly and without disproportionate emotion, that I had been worried about him. He apologized and said he should not have left me wondering, and I could sense that he meant it. We moved on. Enough said. No need to rehash or reiterate a need that had just been stated and then graciously acknowledged. Fast forward four days and he has been consistently loving, expressive, complimentary and invested. All is well. All has been tended to, and I am just fine.
Now that I have sidestepped the temptation to leap into emotional reactivity (a place that rarely generates a positive outcome), I can step back from the situation and consider it from a place of security and grounding – newly objective and measured in my thinking. [1]
Here is my question, then: to what degree, if any, does a loving relationship obligate person A to person B? What, if anything, do we owe each other in terms of consideration? Is love meant to be forever free and unbound, or does it also come with a degree of consideration, obligation and responsibility to the other person? Can love still be free and unbound even while being at least partly informed by mutual obligation? And, if so, at what point in the relationship do you step from no strings attached to strings attached? Furthermore, is obligation even synonymous with attached strings? “Strings attached” is typically negative in association. Is it the same for consideration and obligation? Can obligation to a loved one be simply an expression and manifestation of love, and not one of unwelcomed and unwanted duty?
It probably feels as if I am splitting hairs here, but I think these questions are worth some careful exploration. When I sit for a moment with these musings, the answer that continually rolls to the surface of my mind is: yes, obligation can and should be one of the many expressions of love. Or, better yet, any kind of loving relationship – whether it be with a partner, sibling, parent, child or friend – comes with an intrinsic responsibility to be considerate of the other person precisely because you love them.
It’s relatively easy to love someone cheaply. You know…have fun together. Share some laughs, some adventures, some misadventures. Feel mutual attraction, even passion. Help each other out. Loan camping equipment, share a holiday, run a few errands on behalf of the other person. But these actions in and of themselves, even though they may feel inspired or provide a sense of joy, does not necessarily mean that you are in a loving relationship with that person. It’s more akin to going to the theatre together. Like watching a romantic comedy. It’s an amateurish kind of love – one that is relatively simple and easy and pretty much accessible to the majority of us. In all likelihood, most amorous relationships start here, and thank god for that, because it’s fun and it’s sexy. But then, in what I have witnessed and experienced of love so far, the relationship shifts and can evolve or devolve in various ways. What follows is an exploration of two such possible (d)evolutions.
Co-dependent love: this variety tends to be toxic. You depend on the other person to source your life’s happiness for you, and they often expect the same from you. Your mistakes become their personal insult. Their blunders become your source of depression or rage. Their actions determine your sadness, your joy, your frustration, your sense of worthiness. What they do, or do not do, determines your primary emotional state. All the time. Because you have developed the habit of perceiving that person’s behavior as the barometer for your own emotional weather forecast, you have become incapable of re-positioning yourself by your own merit. You’re adrift because you have allowed yourself to be at the mercy of another. You’re tumbleweed tossed around in a storm. You have essentially lost yourself and, in so doing, both you and your partner have nothing left to relate to. Your love will inevitably begin to erode and decay.
But there is another direction in which love can evolve, and this is the love that I aspire to. It is a love that, in its truest form, is communion between one person and another. So, this begs the question: what does communion actually mean, and how does it encapsulate the act of love? What follows is the Merriam-Webster definition for communion – the one I personally like the best (full disclosure: I omitted the Christian definitions because this exploration of the word communion is not a treatise on God or Jesus Christ, but on the act of love; thus the omission of definitions # 2 & 4).
Definition of communion
1: an act or instance of sharing
3: intimate fellowship or rapport : COMMUNICATION sat alone on the mountain, in communion with the wilderness.
In my experience, loving well has many manifestations. Love can be an act of giving: as simple as making a coffee for the person you love just because you want to spoil him; treating him to a new adventure or experience; taking him to a concert he has long since wanted to see. Love can also be supportive: it might require you to take the lead on an organizational project that he has postponed again and again; holding his hand through a difficult medical consultation; learning about something that interests him even when it doesn’t interest you. Love can also be challenging: it can mean gently pushing each other out of one another’s comfort zones; pointing out alternate perspectives or playing devil’s advocate. Finally, and this is the bit we all crave, love can be sexy and fun – from dressing up for special occasions, to playing footsie beneath the table at an especially boring dinner party, to running together through a rain pour and stopping for a long, drawn out kiss because you both feel so…well… alive. But first and foremost, loving is an act – something that we do more so than something that we feel. The residual feeling, which we also call love, is the product of the act itself.
And here is where love gets especially vigorous. When I truly and genuinely care for someone, meaning above and beyond my own self-interest, then I am not only capable of but actually desirous of seeing them exactly as they are. I see their beauty, but I also see their faults and imperfections. I witness their seasons – their productive springs, their robust summers, their wilting autumns and their introspective winters. I observe their various weather patterns - from empathy and generosity, to miserliness and stubbornness, from inspired action to crumbled resignation. In essence, I see their humanity replete with all the innate contradictions that being human entails. Yet, I still accept them, still gravitate toward them, still respect them, still love them. But this love can only be the product of a willingness to be in communion with the other person: to give of your true self and then to receive their true selves; to try with earnestness to communicate – gently and lovingly – our needs, wants, fears and dreams and then to let them do the same. And to try our best, in ways that are reasonable, to meet some of those needs, wants and dreams and to understand those fears. It requires a willingness to expose our wilderness, our vulnerability, our rawness, our nervousness.
And then, from this careful and deliberate act of communion, stems fellowship and rapport. This is when I start to love someone even more deeply precisely because of their faults and weaknesses. I see this other person in their true human form – in 3D, with wrinkles, farts and all. A deep understanding of the other surfaces, and beneath that surface lays a deep well of love.
But communion is not always easy. Because we are human and not always in command of our better selves, we can, from time to time, be at the mercy of our most base feelings: we can be critical, impatient, intolerant, insecure, jealous, petty or mean. In order to be successful at communicating in these raw moments, sometimes communication has to be delayed. This is where our emotional reactivity spars with our measured response. And a measured response, in my experience, is always the best response. Sometimes space and distance - for yourself or for the other – must be provided before you can safely reconvene and address the topic, experience or event that has left one, or both of you, triggered.
Every loving relationship will have difficult, even excruciating moments. Something will be said that leaves one of you prickled, with weapons drawn; one of you will do something that leaves the other feeling deeply hurt, even stunned. Or something might happen outside of the relationship that will rock you to your core, shaking the very foundations of the love you have so carefully built: prolonged illness, loss of a job or home, difficult children, meddling relatives. But it is in these trying, painful moments that we most need to remember each other’s humanity. It is a cake-walk to remember the other person’s humanity when we are feeling loved and supported, but considerably less so when we are feeling threatened, disappointed or angry. That kind of love is hard work. [2]
A close girlfriend said something to me the other day that struck me and I would like to share it here. During the course of our discussion, she recognized that, in a relationship, some sort of perceived insult will occur that will leave you wanting to harden toward the other. Freeze them out; give them the cold shoulder; punish them for whatever slight you feel by withholding your love and affection. But if we harden toward our loved-one one too many times, the love we feel for them will grow rigid. It will atrophy. It will dehydrate and become brittle, like old snake skin. Like autumn leaves. And if too many leaves fall, then the tree is stark and naked. It can no longer provide its own cooling shade or blanketing warmth. Its open, waiting leaves can no longer capture sunlight or droplets of rain to direct back toward the stem, providing nourishment and hydration. In short, the tree will begin to wither. It will lose its color and vitality and become a husk.
So, despite the perceived slight or insult we might feel in the moment that a relationship is challenged, what we ought to do instead is the opposite of hardening: we should soften. This doesn’t mean to opt out of defending ourselves when we are worthy of defending, or to stay silent and fail to call out the other person when they are misbehaving. We must continue to uphold the essential need for mutual respect and maintain our vigil over high-standards of behavior both within ourselves and in the other. But we can pause in the heat of the moment precisely because we understand that it is a hot moment, fraught with friction. We all know not to touch a hot pan or exposed wire.
In the same vein, then, we can forgive each other for momentary lapses of better judgment. Because we are all human and therefore flawed, we can allow the person we love to momentarily misbehave or act-out, wait a moment for the dust to settle, consider their humanity and possible sources for the slight or injury, soften our edges and then, and only then, start talking. I know, for one, that if I were in some way misbehaving or offending, I would want the opportunity to be seen, understood and forgiven. So, why not offer the person you love the very same?
This is where the act of consideration steps in. Example: person A is behaving like an ass and now person B is pissed off. But before escalating the situation and making matters worse, B can announce the intention to step aside and give A some space. In that space, both A and B can consider the misbehavior. What is the source? What fear or sadness or insecurity is underlying what was said, done, or not said or not done? Or, perhaps it’s as simple as this: A is just having a bad day and that’s the extent of it. Maybe there is no underlying trauma – maybe it’s just a bad moment. We can forgive one another that, can’t we? It doesn’t mean that B should refrain from saying, “Hey, I see that you’re having a bad day and I’m sorry about that. Still, no need to take it out on me. So, I’m just going to be hanging out over here until we’ve given this some time. Let me know when you’re ready to talk or when I can help you in some way.” Allowing that space and time is perhaps in and of itself a loving act of consideration.
But so, too, is knowing what sorts of your own behavior might leave the person you love feeling relegated, dismissed, passed-over or wounded and then taking steps to avoid that behavior so that you can generously spare the feelings of the one you love. Example: B gets frustrated when A interrupts her, especially when she’s sharing something that she feels passionate about. Okay, maybe A should make a point of not interrupting. Or, A is prone to worry when B goes silent so, in order to consider his feelings, A can make a point to send a quick text, message, phone call, etc. to simply reassure B that “hey, busy and distracted but still very much here. No need to worry.”
Of course our emotional states are impacted by the people we love. We are impacted by what they do or say precisely because we love them. What they say or do matters to us because our lives are intertwined, because we have shared with the other our trust and faith, our hopes and our dreams. That being the case, I am not sure that our emotional vulnerability and exposure to the people we love automatically equates to dependence or co-dependence; and, in so doing, makes us somehow less than, unformed or psychically unevolved. Consideration of the other person’s feelings absolutely matters and is our mutual due or obligation. And, if we are lucky and have communed well, this act of mutual due or obligation doesn’t have to feel like an unwelcomed duty, but can instead feel like a welcomed act of love.
So I call bullshit on the claim that I should only source my own happiness; that the entire burden falls only on me. Yes, I absolutely need to continue to work on myself. We all do – every single one of us. We all need to know how to care for ourselves, how to find our own peace and self-confidence and self-worth and how to source our own moments of joy. And I believe that the majority of our happiness does come from within. It has to come from within, because wherever I go, there I am. I keep company with myself first.
But we can also lean on the people we love to give us an assist by treating us with consideration, with compassion and with empathy. We can watch out for one another and safeguard the emotional well-being of the person we love simply because their happiness matters to us. We can look outside ourselves and have fellowship. Why else would we be capable of feeling love? What would be the purpose? Just to ensure that we procreate, and that our species continues? Hardly. Love and lust are not the same. We can continue to love (and even feel lust) long after our ovaries have shriveled and our sperm counts have dwindled. Love can continue to bloom even when our reproductive years are in the rearview. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, there is a lot that is right with that. So, let’s indulge. Let’s willingly love one another with deliberate acts of mutual consideration and not worry that such an obligation makes us co-dependent or un-whole. We can be whole on our own right, and more than whole together.
[1] Side note: I am half deafened right now by the imaginary cringing of at least two of my closest girlfriends who, if they could read these words, would be hopping up and down in exasperated frustration, screaming “caution!” Here’s how they would advise me: if you were a whole person, Elizabeth, your sense of security and grounding would be born of internal design, and not at all dependent upon the reassuring words of your partner telling you that he loves you. You would be confident because you, and you alone, source your own happiness. But more on that subject later. It’s a complicated matter – the question of when, if ever, we can let go a little and lean on our partners to contribute to our happiness and if that leaning somehow makes us weak, unevolved, inadequate or less than.
[2] Let me be clear: recalling the other person’s humanity in moments of emotional pain does not mean passively accepting abuse or mistreatment and calling it love. Well-established patterns of mistreating, disrespecting or abusing another is decidedly not love; it is, simply said, Disrespect or Abuse, and disrespect or abuse is not, nor ever can be, love. Let’s not be fools; let us instead, and to the greatest extent that we are capable, be discerning, self-respecting and self-preserving.