Love vs. Potential Love
My job is a lonely one. I sit for 9.5 hours alone, reading, sketching, and occasionally handing out bundles of money to desperate people willing to pay the exorbitant interest rate. Today, I had the thankless and mindless task of going back and stamping PAID all of the 21096 contracts we've garnered over the three and a half years we've been open. Needless to say, I had a lot of brainpower left over in the absence of any real intellectual task.
So, I think of attraction, and affection, and love. The differences, or at least the perceived differences. I come to the realization that I can sum up the reason I ended a nearly five-year relationship in one sentence:
I didn't like the person I had had to become to fit his needs.
Bam. That's it. The concise way to shut up nosy inquirers.
Now, at 23, I have more experience, more maturity. And I still neither know or understand anything about the phenomenon of love. My difficulty lies in the Love vs. Potential Love struggle. Where is the line between attraction and love? How can we tell when it's been crossed? When can a person or couple (or even group, for the polyamorous) officially declare themselves "in love"? My father says love is when there is no one else you'd rather do stuff with, and real love is when it's reciprocated. I think that's a good place to start, but that can describe my best friend or even my cat if I'm lonely enough.
The internet has an interesting dynamic. Instead of love at first sight, attraction is based on attitude and/or intellect. In real life, appearance throws up roadblocks, for both the physically blessed and the cursed and everyone in between. You may dismiss someone who could make you supremely happy for not meeting your tall-dark-and-handsome standards, or be too intimidated to speak to that perfectly sweet but ravishing girl in the checkout. The internet eliminates that. We say things we would never say if eyes were met, if the words couldn't be edited, erased before being understood. We speak to people daily that we wouldn't give a second glance to on the street, if we were ever fortunate to meet them at all since many are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. The world of opportunity opens for the lonely ones like me, the ones who don't meet standards of beauty or aren't extroverts to mingle with the masses.
Which is not to say the internet is perfect, not by a long shot. It can be difficult to overcome the issue of trust when you can't judge nuance or body language. Also, expectations can be built that are way too high. Expectations of physical attributes, of attitude, of faults never noticed, never mentioned, not to mention the problem of geographical distance. How do you overcome that? My friend Kathy was able to; she moved from Wisconsin to California to marry a man she met in a chatroom. Last I heard, they were still happily hitched. What amazing courage, I thought, to make that leap of faith, to turn her attraction into love.
So, how do you know when it's love instead of infatuation, instead of loneliness? How do you learn to judge that? Or is the concept of love too idealistic? Anyone reading, please feel free to comment on this.
So, I think of attraction, and affection, and love. The differences, or at least the perceived differences. I come to the realization that I can sum up the reason I ended a nearly five-year relationship in one sentence:
I didn't like the person I had had to become to fit his needs.
Bam. That's it. The concise way to shut up nosy inquirers.
Now, at 23, I have more experience, more maturity. And I still neither know or understand anything about the phenomenon of love. My difficulty lies in the Love vs. Potential Love struggle. Where is the line between attraction and love? How can we tell when it's been crossed? When can a person or couple (or even group, for the polyamorous) officially declare themselves "in love"? My father says love is when there is no one else you'd rather do stuff with, and real love is when it's reciprocated. I think that's a good place to start, but that can describe my best friend or even my cat if I'm lonely enough.
The internet has an interesting dynamic. Instead of love at first sight, attraction is based on attitude and/or intellect. In real life, appearance throws up roadblocks, for both the physically blessed and the cursed and everyone in between. You may dismiss someone who could make you supremely happy for not meeting your tall-dark-and-handsome standards, or be too intimidated to speak to that perfectly sweet but ravishing girl in the checkout. The internet eliminates that. We say things we would never say if eyes were met, if the words couldn't be edited, erased before being understood. We speak to people daily that we wouldn't give a second glance to on the street, if we were ever fortunate to meet them at all since many are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. The world of opportunity opens for the lonely ones like me, the ones who don't meet standards of beauty or aren't extroverts to mingle with the masses.
Which is not to say the internet is perfect, not by a long shot. It can be difficult to overcome the issue of trust when you can't judge nuance or body language. Also, expectations can be built that are way too high. Expectations of physical attributes, of attitude, of faults never noticed, never mentioned, not to mention the problem of geographical distance. How do you overcome that? My friend Kathy was able to; she moved from Wisconsin to California to marry a man she met in a chatroom. Last I heard, they were still happily hitched. What amazing courage, I thought, to make that leap of faith, to turn her attraction into love.
So, how do you know when it's love instead of infatuation, instead of loneliness? How do you learn to judge that? Or is the concept of love too idealistic? Anyone reading, please feel free to comment on this.