It’s difficult to answer this question without first defining what ‘love is’, which in itself is difficult enough, which possibly explains why we tend to fall back on analogies and examples, like with the well known ‘love is’ comic strip.
The blurb to this week's question steers us towards romantic relationships, and that kind of love involves a desire for a close, special relationship with one significant other, and that desire for closeness I think generally has three elements
- Mutual Personal affirmation – where you share your ‘passions’ with your partner and they recognise those passions in you, and vice versa – ideally these coincide and you end up building something together (the typical buildy thing being starting a family).
- Mutual emotional support – where you partner acts as your counsellor, keeps you going and prevents you from feeling alone. This is more of your slow burn, probably quite one sided most of the time, and inequality in this dimension is the main reason for eventual relationship breakdowns, I think.
- Mutual Sexual attraction – I think a lot people associate this with number two above, but it’s probably better when it’s just about rutting and more associated with number one above – ‘building a good sex life’. There is also a crude physical element to this, so it is more than either one or two above.
I think if we're honest with ourselves, at least if we're not inclined to become monks and settle for an ordinary human life, these three elements exist at the level of need, and they are needs that can only be fulfilled, realistically, by other people.
Hence if we meet someone that's capable of mutually assisting us in meeting any of these pretty basic needs, I guess there's a chance we'll fall in love with them.
If we meet someone who ticks all three boxes, there's our soul-mate, just be careful to check they're not really a unicorn first, because that shit is pretty rare!
Or are such people rare? I've met two, maybe three women in my life who I could say tick all three boxes above, which isn't bad going for someone not even in his 50s, plenty people never even meet one.
If we accept these basic truths then I think it's fairly obvious why we fall in love - we've just found a mutual partner than can help us through life, which is a bit shit much of the time after all.
Just one person?
For me, I don't think it's realistic to find one person exclusively to fulfil all of these needs - probably why it never worked out with any of those women I mentioned above.
I actually prefer to have a range of people fulfilling them, many of them men, just not number three for me, man smell just doesn't do it for me I'm afraid.
I think this is also increasingly the norm in postmodern society - people happily single with friends rather than couples loved up, I think the former might be easier!
Falling in Love with Fantasies
Something else to watch out for is falling in love with fantasies - by idealising a particular person, hence falling in love with the ideal image of them you're projecting rather than the person themselves, or falling in love with the idea of love itself, and serially moving from partner to partner.
I think I'm quite lucky in that the way my brain is wired means I don't develop close emotional attachments easily, so this love topic is quite an easy one for me to stay calm and collected about!
So why do we fall in love?
It just comes down to stumbling across someone we connect with who we think (mutually) can meet one or more of our very basic needs as outlined above.
Why is it so hard to get over someone?
I'm not really in a position to answer this part of the question - I rarely dwell on the past, so I've never found it particularly difficult to get over past loves - I just get on with my life.
Sounds harsh, but that's what I do, that also probably explains why I haven't been able to hold down anything like a LTR for 40 odd years!
But at least I know myself now and I've stopped looking for one!