Of love and... Desire.

"Love is the yearning of loving and preserving the loved one. A centrifugal impulse; unlike the centripetal desire. It is an impulse towards expansion (...) it implies the impulse of protecting, nurturing, give shelter and caress and pamper, or protect jealously. (...) While 'desire' longs to consume, love wishes to possess. Desire is self-destructive; love, self-preserving." Zygmunt Bauman on "Liquid Love".

Two people meet, like each other and decide they want to know whether they can be compatible on other things besides aesthetics. They talk, laugh and find each other's company pleasant, even satisfactory. As the evening develops, they long to feel the other person and feel a fire whenever there is a surreptitious touch... When they say goodbye, they kiss and realise there is something there...

So, what do they do? Or rather, what can they do? 

This initial connection is a powerful desire which could consume both of them in a blazing fire (which I'm not saying is wrong). But what happens after the flames are gone? After that first attraction fades away and you see the person bare, without the mystery of the unknown that surrounded them. Desire centers one's attention towards itself... Or rather, oneself... Sometimes it takes longer for the blaze to expose what hides beneath, but it never fails. 

If let alone, desire can be too intense and scald the surface of whoever is feeling it, altering their perception and making them too sensitive to what comes afterwards; thus preventing them from exploring the newly discovered individual.

Love, on the other hand, is a feeling of growth; an impetus to become better and improve the one beside you. While Bauman says love is possession, and I agree, I also think it is creation. In a previous entry I talked about the 'admiration' component in a romantic relationship, I think that is what can keep the desire renovating itself; I believe it is a fire centered, not around devouring, but absorbing and making that part of whoever you love, yours. 

New love can never be as good as the one to come afterwards...

"The sudden abundance and apparent availability of love experiences (...) can make one believe that the ability to love grows with the accumulated experience and that the next 'love' will be and even more stimulating experience than the current one - though not as exciting and fascinating as the one to come after the next one"... Or so Mr. Zygmunt Bauman says in his book 'Liquid Love'.

This book was given to me by a dear friend since he knows that, as a psychologist, I'm very interested in the way relationships develop and evolve through time, as well as in the different ways society is changing. Little did I know, this book would have so many interesting ideas and such a deep insight into the way marketing and the media have transformed the idea of 'love'.

So, reflecting a bit on the quote I roughly translated above, I was thinking about how, in a way, the real thing can never beat the fantasy of what could be... And in our society of disposable everything, it's quite easy to get caught in that idea... This takes me back to the first time I fell in love with someone who felt the same way for me. It was that magical, Disney-movie-love, that makes everything seem right even though it may not be. He was like 21 years older than me or something like that and very reluctant to have a relationship with someone so young. At the time, I thought him mad for allowing such a petty detail get in the way of us being together. I didn't understand his point of view at all and did everything I could to prove him wrong - granted, I have been around people who are older than me all my life so it wasn't that difficult. Thus, being an economically-independent 19-year-old student, I found my way into his heart little by little. We were together for about four and a half years and lived together about 18 months. We had a great relationship and we complemented each other quite well; of course, we had our differences but what couple doesn't? Sometimes I think back and recall how, when I felt lost and frustrated, he had a way of hugging me and saying "everything will be okay" that really convinced me it was so.

So, what went wrong, you ask? Ah, it's quite simple. I was young and stupid. Hehehehe...

Towards the end of the relationship I started feeling the age-difference (or so I believed) issues... I began feeling like I wanted to go out and meet people, dance, go out for the weekend to some place just to be out of the city... Be spontaneous. He didn't want this. I felt like that Abba song 'One of us': "I saw myself as a concealed attraction, I felt you kept me away from the heat and the action".

I started thinking about the possibilities a new relationship could bring. Someone I could love and who would love me back, besides being compatible with me in these ways. 

Now, after reading this book, and in my current situation I understand this idea of love being similar to technology... In our current fast-moving world, we are immersed in a society in which everything is disposable and the idea of a long-lasting product was lost years ago, since the 'new and updated version' will be available in a short time. What I mean is, today I realize that I couldn't see how much that relationship gave me because of the expectations of what 'could be'.

The romantics and others who share their ideas will probably be appalled by my crude and 'cold-hearted' similes, but this is just my perception, not the gospel truth... 

This also goes along with something else Bauman says which is that, lately, the notion of  "till death do us part" has become old-fashioned... And this has had important implications on 'love'; it has made the requirements for an experience to be defined as 'love', much simpler... It also means that it's not that more people qualify to be 'good potential partners' but rather that we have lowered the standards for them to be just that - I mean, since one no longer thinks about a life-long partner, then it doesn't matter if he or she is not perfect, right? Also, it means that, if this one doesn't work, it's not like I need to get married right away, those standards have also changed and I can just date whoever I want for as long as it's convenient. This is, of course, a double-edged sword because, while it gives you more freedom, it also makes it harder to appreciate the one thing you do have.

I think this is all, in a way, sad. I remember the days when I fell in love thinking "this is the one I will be with for life" and believed it was the only way it could be. Today I wonder if that is still a feasible idea in a world like ours. 

Today I can see that I have been caught in this 'modern' lifestyle in which it's too easy to get what you think you want, despite sacrificing what you need.

Any thoughts on this? Do you think we have lowered our standards about what we call 'love'?