Love is a temporary form of insanity

Love is….an inexplicable and complex emotion. It creates drama in our lives and perhaps that is its true function. Without it, we are bereft and plunged into a black hole of despair. With it, we are either floating on a cloud, going weak at the knees, having butterflies in our stomach, looking at the world anew, dreaming of our beloved and just feeling good to be alive.

Love makes you feel soft and warm inside and sparks fly when eyes meet and when lips touch its blinding…ooh! There’s a light in your eyes and the world seems different….even when a car whizzes past  and covers you in mud…..you just don’t care. That’s what love does to you. You forget the details and concentrate on the bigger picture. The big picture is that you’ve found “the one” and the detail is that he’s a jerk!

Romance, to the uninitiated, is a something you have to come down from to realise that you were being fooled big time. Oh yes, love is a game that rarely has two winners….that’s if you choose to see it as competitive. Let’s face it….guys mostly buy into this romance thing so that they have an arena to flex their ego and exercise their libido. What cynicism I hear you all cry?

love god or love rat?

My guy loves me and will walk to the end of room to switch on the computer and show me by sending me an email (even though we’re in the same room).  
My guy will lie on the sofa and happily tap his toe in time to me chinking the dishes as I wash up. 
My guy leaves his clothes on the chair – the shirt and trousers I bought for his birthday – so that he can fully appreciate his wonderful present. My guy will never put anything away in case I need to use it – that’s thoughtfulness! 
My guy checks my mobile phone to make sure I’m not getting nuisance calls or unwanted male attention. 
My guy holds the remote control very tightly and vets the TV I watch in case I see something unsavoury. 
My guy doesn’t like me spending time with my friends – that’s taking away from “us” time – that how much he wants me. 
My guy follows me everywhere so I have 24 hour personal security. 
My guy doesn’t get on with my sister so I’m no longer close to her – he wants me all to himself because….he loves me!

Someone's playing with my mind!

C’mon, admit it – one or all of us have had some experience of some or all of the above. Someone, at some time in our life, has made us accept what, under normal circumstances, would be considered emotional abuse. We’ve followed the dictates of “our beloved” and  doubted and sacrificed ourselves. We’re so in love with love that we forget that love begins with ourselves. The clues are there but we don’t want to see them. This is one boat that we don’t want to rock.

Pain after the pleasure

The truth is staring us in the face but we choose the lie. The lie allows us to save face and even preserve some distorted self-esteem. We like being a couple, a twosome, me-for-you-and-you-for me-some! We delude ourselves with a million little things that other people can see. Close friends will share some of their misgivings about our significant other but all we do is become defensive. The illusion is preferable to the pain of reality. Our cowardice is ultimately our downfall and when that fall comes….we know the searing pain of love lost.

To understand what love is we have to learn what love is not. This kind of education happens through painful experience and hindsight. There’s no easy route to find out what love is not. Only when you’ve been emotionally wrung dry and sat in the tunnel searching for the light at the end of it will you know. Next time you’ll be careful or wiser or lucky or cynical! The foolhardy and eternal optimists will do it again and again. Others will dwell on past mistakes, some become serial daters and some eventually find the real thing.

True love doesn’t hurt and doesn’t erode your self esteem. In fact, the force of love should lift you up and support you in bad times. Love is something that you are never without and that’s the madness of it all. We look for something that is already within. We’re like a man who travels the whole world looking for the object of his desire only to find it waiting for him at home. If that’s not verging on insanity then I don’t know what is!

Thankfully, it’s not permanent...you will see through the romantic haze and stop deluding yourself. One day when you’re minding your own business you’ll stumble across love in the most unexpected way....and ....it might be the kind that allows you to hang on to your brain cells or maybe not....but that's what love is!