(3.) Analyzing the Great Fall
A "scientific" scrutiny of my being in love
I fell in love at 22 and again at 26. And while I’m hyperaware of the fact that love, especially love as a twenty-something is perhaps an overwrought topic, it’s a feeling still so remarkable to me that I feel compelled to contribute to the bottomless canon. This is not a love letter. This is my perhaps hamfisted attempt, as a forever student (though six years distanced from my last science class) to tear into this great concept emotionally and academically.
It was with wet eyes that I beat around the bush, hinting to my boyfriend that I wanted to say something I wasn’t sure I was ready for, that when we parted ways or hung up the phone that some certain word might slip out. Weeks later, the sun was setting and I told him outright I loved him and I did it while crying. He held me and said it back, and we stood on his back porch, the sun finally set by the time I got the words out of my mouth. But all of my spirit’s resistance to saying it point-blank like the chill, enigmatic hot queen I want to be was not because of a fear of rejection, but a fear of how safe I felt.
22 gave me my first love, one that ended at 24. It was a feeling so overwhelming and profound and earth-shaking as all the songs, poems, and personal testimonies I’d heard for years. It swallowed me and I bathed in it and reveled it and feared it. Of course now I can only look back on my first relationship with 20/20 hindsight, and the frayed hem of emotional blows I happily took on the chin are constantly continuing to unravel as my memory sharpens with time.
But when I was in the love — active in it — I didn’t know I was overlooking or withstanding anything. I thought I was floating in perfection. Love was new and delicious and it covered me completely. I don’t know if it was the firstness of it all, the youngness, or maybe (probably) both. But it felt adult: the overnights at each others’ Very Grown Up apartments, the meals cooked together with his cat standing at the back door (domestic as ever), the top floor hotel room we booked for our one year anniversary. He introduced to me to fine fragrances, sex, and the feeling of having a someone, but the whole time, kept me in a corner of constantly wondering when he’d move on. He was a love that I’d never known, and one that still feels quite notable, even as I pull the fabric out of the closet to find it peppered with moth holes and utterly unwearable.
And now I am in love again. Deeply and profoundly; comfortably and confidently. But it’s different. I don’t feel like I’ve been thrust offshore into choppy waters. I feel wrapped in velvet drapery. It’s what I want love to feel like, but for the longest I felt jarred by it. Every relationship brings new dynamics and feelings, but being in love is a feeling itself, and I had been burdened by the fact that it doesn’t feel that same. Shouldn’t it?
There are types of happiness, sadness, and distinctions between sympathy and empathy. There are even the denoted differences of platonic and romantic love. But romantic love is just called love. Why does no one talk about how being in love, in the throes of it, can feel so disparate? I reflect on my relationships, at 22 and now 26, through the eyes of me at my most swoony — without hindsight or blushing shades of newness — and still, I find polarities. Chaos then, calm now.
My therapist tells me comparison is only going to drag me down and back, and I agree. However, analysis (by healthy, creative means of course) is my lifeblood, and so I’m here, typing beside a steaming plate of pork fried rice and smiling at the photo of my man and I on my birthday. My mind is one that works and operates like a listicle, and so for your pleasure dear reader, I’ll format my investigation as such.
But first, a refresher on the scientific method:
Observation: The act of being in the midst of, rather than the reflection of, love feels different my second time around.
Hypothesis: If romantic love doesn’t operate in the transferrable manner that platonic love does, then it is a truly singular emotion defined by its unique experience because all other variations of feelings are given separate denotations (i.e. sadness — grief, depression, anguish, etc., happiness — joy, contentment, elation, etc.), whilst love is just love.
Experiment: Falling in love again (an unintentional though cherished event).
Data Analysis: Let’s get into it… (conclusion to eventually follow).
Exhibit A: These are different men
Perhaps the most obvious evidence, but alas I’d be beyond remiss not to dig into this. I won’t tally up similarities and differences because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to me at all, nor does it influence my little study. What I investigate for this piece is my own swollen heart, how it feels now, how it felt then. My hypothesis is about the emotion, not the subject. So of course, quotidian interactions and expressions, frustrations and jubilations, dates and conversations…they’ll all be different.
But when I think of two of my best friends, one I’ve known longer than any of the others and one I’ve lived with for going on eight years, these principles still ring true, and yet, when I compare the love and care I have for the both of them, it’s identical. The feeling of loving these women I cherish, people who I’d certainly be different without, feels the same in my heart and body, and reads the same in my mind. The two men, who I have loved and love currently, and who have each in their own ways added to my biography, are nowhere near transferrable feelings. Love inhabits my body differently, it reads in different fonts. Exhibit A is therefore acknowledged, but not essential to the outcome of my research.
Exhibit B: There are stages to romantic love
For the relevance of this study as it pertains to my personal experience, I’ll define the first three:
Infatuation - Characterized by intense emotional highs, often referred to as the "honeymoon phase." It involves heightened feelings of attraction, euphoria, and an idealized view of the other person. This stage can be fueled by the release of hormones like dopamine, which creates a sense of excitement and reward.
Commitment - The shift from infatuation to a more realistic and enduring love. It involves a conscious decision to be with the other person through both good and challenging times. Couples start to develop a deeper understanding of each other's needs, values, and goals.
Acceptance - The culmination of a healthy relationship, where couples have navigated the highs and lows and built a strong foundation of mutual respect, understanding, and acceptance.
This information is enlightening, but would only really shake things up in this experiment if I was comparing one relationship’s acceptance to another’s infatuation. Albeit, commitment and acceptance will find differences more idiosyncratic to the varied details of the relationships and factors more strongly linked to Exhibit A.
But my investigation of the throes of love pertain to the infatuated feelings and even the transition from stage one to two. I prod the former element 1 to 1, the falling, and find a jittery, lip biting gut punch sidled next to what I referred to as my embodiment of the “teehee monster.” And if I think about the early stages of love, that sweet little spot after commitment has been reached, the being in love, I find one version of myself splayed in the blistering sun, sweating and euphoric, swatting away gnats and eyeing butterflies, and another cozied in a rug by the fireplace, serene and elated, held, and digging my toes into the plush. Comparable joys but distinctly different. Exhibit B is therefore noted, but not accountable.
Exhibit C: Frame of reference does the dirty work
This can be nicknamed the “you live and you learn” database, influenced by the quotients of age, experience, and heartbreak (read: development, exercise, and recovery).
Being in love for the first time is jarring. No amount of novels or films can adequately prepare you for how flung into the ether it feels. You have no muscle built up to bear the weight of it. It’s an insecure and beautiful thing to walk the world feeling threaded with another person, so the utter violence of first heartbreak is equally profound. I remember crying so hard it felt like ulcers were eating holes in my gut.
To come back from that, to even reach homeostasis after a number of months, was an uphill battle. I had felt like a whole person before my first love; I was happy with being single, going on dates just for the fun of it. I didn’t feel completed by having a partner, but it’s a new muscle to flex to have to go from being with to without for the first time rather than vice versa.
To find fresh comfort in yourself and who you are without the person you’d shared so much life and love with (in my case, my early adulthood) is an isolating experience that forces you to restructure. Where do you spend all those formerly shared hours? With who? How happily? And by what means? The process of answering and fulfilling these questions is the endurance.
The muscle memory debuts with the new love. You’re more emotionally toned, so to speak, and the decision to let someone into the life you’ve rebuilt for yourself, for me, was an empowering feeling. As the emotions crept their way into my spirit, I found it more comforting this time around. I’m anxious by nature, so it’s not that fear plays no role. But because of my previous exercise and recovery, or maybe even due to a little more age, getting my hands dirty and putting myself out there are things I’ve become more secure in doing.
I do not fear being known. I’m willing to tear myself open just enough to let someone else inside. And maybe this new love-based self efficacy, the callouses I’ve earned through all the grit and glory of this emotion, have translated into a more comfortable (and therefore different) process of falling in love. Consider Exhibit C our most compelling evidence yet.
The Conclusion: At the end of the day, I’m overthinking. But a little routine nitpick of the human condition is riveting when all is healthy and good. This overthought dissection of our most tender emotion is not one that is even slightly close to shirking the love fest that stirs in my chest and iMessage app.
If anything, it has deepened for me the appreciation of the love I’m feeling. I was under the impression that there had to be some level of panic and uneasiness associated with the fall. This time I thought it felt “too easy” at first, but the problem is me, friends. I’m not a very reliable judge, and to be fair, no one is. Subjective experience is the beautiful and troubling thing that governs us.
Why was I wishing for some level of disorientation or discomfort to prove my feelings valid? This strikes me as a habit, as if I long to be weathered to feel that reward is earned, some strange allegiance to the concept of ROI perhaps. I’ve kneaded out the knots of that graceless expectation and am now simply grateful and enamored with the love I’m giving and given. It’s different this time, and I love that too.
love every aspect of this! <3
Beautifully written P :)