Love, part 2 (What's it like to be in love?)

Well the steroids have me awake at 3am again (where were these when I needed them when I was teaching?), so what better thing to do than write about Love. That's Love with a capital 'L', the big 'love of your life' kind of love, that kind of thing.

I did write once earlier about love. (How do we fall in love?). You may have noticed that during this blog I have drifted quite a long way from the subject of cancer, which I use to reel people in unknowingly so that I can share all my non-cancer thoughts with them. But give me some leeway here, because if you have been reading you will understand that I view the cancer as one of the least interesting things about my life, past or present. And I am very happy with life, past and present. 

Life, as I think about it, is the big story here. Frankly I don't even think of death as anything other than the end of Life (with a capital 'L', natch), and I don't give it much house room. But life, or Life, is a different matter. It's not that we have of desperate 'It's all we've got' attitude to it. It is just that life, in its glories and discoveries and meetings and coincidences, is just so bloody good. And it makes us who we are, mortal and all. And sadly, in this week a good friend of mine has died suddenly, but he certainly was respectful of life and loves and the joy of life with his family, and always went out to see what more he could find in it. 

And within that lovely life that we have, one of the most lovely things can be falling in love with someone and being in love with them. I have been lucky in this. I wrote earlier about what makes us fall in love (the way I see it), but now I would like to roll up my teen-song writer sleeves and say what I think being in love feels like, and why it matters. I don't think it is quite as simple as 'Three steps to Heaven' do wop do wop.

First off, for most people and for me, love comes with and includes a real physical attraction. And that may sound just like Page 3 or Rap videos or  "nice tits" (or "nice arse" maybe if the subject doesn't have tits). But physical attraction seems much more than that. If you see your loved one and there is something about the way they hold themselves, the way that their face crinkles into a smile, the expression they use when they are really concentrating, and it just fills you with joy, then that is physical attraction  as well, and a big part of what love is. I remember seeing a couple on a TV programme who were so far from TV's idea of an ideal weight, but you could see the sparkle in their eyes when the other walked in. "Love im to bits, I do". And he did. And she did. Or think of the weight of your partner against your side in the dark when you wake in the night. I'm sure your sleeping body knows who is there. That's the physical attraction too. 

Love has a lot more things to it, even if you are just talking (say with your eyes closed, to rule out physical attraction). When you feel real love I think you listen properly to each other. And you can tell when someone is being playful and when they actually speak from the heart. And when they do the latter you are always listening carefully, not because you want to be a 'good girl' or 'good boy' but because you want to know what they think. It is part of getting to know each other, and it can carry on your whole life. And not ever completely knowing someone is part of the nature of love and what makes us want it. 

When we talk and when we trust each other, we are also willing to open ourselves up. It's not confessional, but there is a really natural urge to - in the parlance of millennials I'd say - 'be seen'. It is simply someone knowing who you are. Some people do this in a very public way (I confess) but it is much more possible, and convincing to speaker and listener, when there is just an audience of one. The person you love will hold your heart safe because they value it as much as or above their own. And the fact that you trust each other enough to open your heart is one of the huge joys of love. You don't have to have a solution to worries or pains, any more than you have to provide a 'solution' to joys, but being there and taking it in is an exchange full of balm. Like a message in a bottle, it won't necessarily be seen by anyone else, but you have set it afloat. 

The next aspect I would mention, and one of these words comes up in the previous paragraph, is that Love involves trust and kindness. I think that is one of the reasons that adultery and betrayal hurt so much. It is not so much that the hurt is caused by sexual jealousy or self-loathing on the part of the person betrayed, it is that the question arises naturally "Why would you do that to me? I thought you loved me". And when it is clear that trust was never really there, nor kindness, it makes all the other genuine and good bits of your love fall off like decorations on an old Christmas tree. But when you have that trust to your core and you find out time after time that it is justified, it works like foundations under your house. Everything else is based on strength and it can climb and grow. And the kindness is apparent in many things. Not just coffee in the morning, or remembering your favourite colour, drink or perfume/aftershave. It is there in the kindness of asking you about something that has been worrying you, because it matters to both of you. It is there in giving you time alone when you need it, and never feeling put out. It is there in the way that you won't dodge tough decisions because you are in this together. And in never blaming the other person when one of your adventures lands you up at the worst toilets in Sichuan province (or wherever). 

The other thing that strikes me about real true love is that it is not selfish or possessive about the person you love. Now this may go against the wordings of many pop songs where you just want to have that person to yourself all the time for ever and ever ("If you were the only girl in the world", I'm looking at you here, but I'm sure you can all add some more for every decade). 

We see in the news, and know in our daily lives, of cases where love - if it ever was love- slides over into controlling behaviour. Wanting to know where they are; putting barriers between them and their friends and family; getting them to do what you want all the time; and much much worse. And I stress this is not at all sex-dependent, even if the tragically violent unravellings are usually perpetrated by men. I had a female partner once who did not speak to me for ten months because I went out when she didn't want me to.

But if we can draw back from all the bad side of possessiveness, what is the good and love-affirming side of wanting our loved one to be free and whole and not in any way 'owned' by us, nor we by them? We'll there are several sides to this. For a start, no matter how overlapped and entangled and hive-minded love can make us, we are still two separate beings. Death will prove this of course, though the other person is still there in your heart, like the message through a stick of seaside rock. I have a lovely poem that Cro wrote about the kind of ghost she would be, and she touched on this. I also offer as witness William Blake again, as his words apply to this joy too:

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

And the other thing that I'd say about the importance of not being possessive about the person that you love is that if by your actions you are making them less themselves, then who is it that you really love? Can you love the person they really are, or only the person you seek to make them? It's OK to complain about their sock choice or their love for Sepultura metal rock, but leave it at that point. If you love them, then you should try to let them be themselves, whatever that self may be. I offer as final evidence the last verse of that lovely song 'Beeswing', by Richard Thompson.

Beeswing

I am no expert on love, and I would certainly love to hear in the comments about other things that love does for you, or what you think its nature contains. But I am a happy amateur, and very grateful for all the love that I have found in life. And again, to be boring, consider myself blessed.