Yeah, I’m finally calling it: I simply don’t believe in romantic “love” like that!

  5 views  

A better title for this post would be “Why it is dangerous to lead with love and romance in a relationship even if like me that is what you are looking for”.

On this blog, I’ve been struggling with the concept of “romantic love” for many years, and I have been quite clear about the fact that I don’t understand it. Today, it finally crystallised that it just is not a thing the way it is usually thought to be (it has probably crystallised before long before today, I have probably written about it, but if so I have clearly forgotten!)

The essential things that are needed in relationships are these:
Compatibility and commitment.

Platonic relationships / roommates
I sometimes think about what it would take for a platonic friendship or roommates situation to work.  So if I wanted to commit to living with a male flatmate in a platonic sense (which would be the worst idea ever!) – or if I wanted to platonically “marry” (legally) and move in with a a male friend in a lifelong sexless and unromantic commitment (because I think through ideas like that) – what would it take for it to work?  I think romance, sex and feelings are obviously essential for most relationships, very much including my own, to be clear, but they also complicate what I consider to be the underlying problem or challenge of marriage which is about two people living together and navigating life together.  These problems would largely be the same for any two adults living together*.  That said, there would also be certain issues that are specific to male/female dynamics that would be absent in male/male or female/female dynamics even if there are no romantic or sexual overtones to the interaction at all.

So I personally think that if you could solve or understand these basic dynamics, then you could superimpose over them the romantic and sexual considerations.
Apologies if this is all a bit wordy – as usual! I’m going to try to think of ways to simplify what I am saying.

So what I’m saying is that when people think of marriage, they tend to get caught up in romance, and feelings. Or at least I do.  But the more basic aspect of marriage is about knowing how to live together with another human being, and specifically another human being of the opposite sex; how to compromise, how to communicate, how to cooperate to achieve tasks, how to tolerate one another in day to day living and keep the whole thing humming along harmoniously. And then romance and feelings are secondary considerations.  I’m not saying that they are less important necessarily. I am saying that practically speaking they will take up far less time than these more practical aspects. Furthermore, off the top of my head I am just thinking about the dozens, if not hundreds, of accounts I have read, and watched, of people talking about their marriage struggles or what ended their marriages. And almost without fail, 9 times out of 10, or perhaps say 7 out of 10 times, it will be these practical considerations that ended their marriages rather than anything lovey or dovey.

This reminds me of an external post that I posted here years ago:  “the practical considerations that keep you in love” (I’ve just tried to find it to link it, without success. I’ve been saying it for years but I very much need to organise this blog better so that content is easier to find!)  Edit: On deeper searching I’ve been able to find my post, the link  was actually called ” The 36 questions to make you stay in love” However my post is currently unpublished, perhaps because the underlying link itself is no longer available 🙁
Off the top of my head though, it was filled with practical questions like “Do you know what days the bins are taken out?” and it was written in response to a viral article/book/something called  36 Questions to make you fall in love.  So the initial “fall in love” post was filled with all manner of deep and profound questions that were supposedly all but guaranteed to stimulate love between two compatible people, especially if you stared deeply into the other person’s eyes when asking the questions, (which was actually recommended as part of the guidelines for using the questions, and probably accounted for at least 50% of the feelings of falling in love!)  And then the “stay in love” article, the one I linked to, was written as a practical, witty rebuttal to that as in “Yeah, it’s all very well to fall in love, and relatively simple to do. The bigger question is whether you manage to stay in love after living together!” And somehow, I strongly suspect that this second article, the one I linked, was written by a woman, while the initial “fall in love” questions were authored by a man, or a husband and wife team. These gender dynamics are important. As women we are the ones who allow ourselves to be swept off our feet by these deep and passionate feelings of being in love, and these passionate declarations, and romance, and flowers, and chocolates and stirring music – probably often influenced by binge-watching Kdramas too! However, ultimately we are also the ones who after actually getting married often have to deal with the far less glamorous reality of then living with these previously romantic men who too often turn out to be insufficiently domesticated, or who unsubtly expect us to single-handedly do all the work of managing the household. Which is probably why close to 50% of marriages fail, and of those that fail, 70% of those divorces are initiated by women.

Off the top of my head there are a few successful marriages I can think of where the people do not seem to be in love in the conventional sense, or giddy with excitement about one another, or particularly passionate about one another. However, their marriages are clearly successful and I believe that this above all is because they have managed to work out how to get along in what could essentially amount to a platonic sense.  Additionally, in practice, many couples apparently manage to live without romance, love or sex altogether – or at least sex. And some marriages continue for years like this. I once watched a sad, sad story of a man who endured a sexless marriage for years, I can’t remember how long. That story was sad because his wife did it deliberately as a means of of control, if I remember correctly. What made it even sadder was that he had previously been a man of sincere Christian faith and this experience caused him to lose his faith and walk away. He did not make it explicit that he had lost his faith. However, reading between the lines and listening to the account of his newly sexually liberated life made me suspect that he had indeed walked away from faith.  That said, I’m not talking about situations like that where one partner deliberately deprives another. I’m thinking more of situations where it is more mutual, perhaps caused by tiredness or losing the spark of sexual passion.

You know what? I believe that the average person would have a far higher chance of success, and ultimately happiness, in their marriage, if they approached it as finding a platonic friend to live with that you would sometimes agree to have sex with, emphasis on living together. The problem with leading with romance and love is that marriage is not truly or primarily about romance and love. Rather it is about the challenges of living together and communicating and cooperating. Romance and feelings and sex and love are like the lubrication that makes this all more fun, but in practice many couples who manage to live together well find that they can exist without those things.

The complication for me:
The big complication for me in all this is that romance, sex and all things lovey dovey are precisely the reason why I want to get married. So for me it is ultimately irrelevant that other people manage to carry on living together for decades without these things. These are the things that I personally need, and if I did not need them then I would not get married at all.
As important as a partnership is, I am not particularly driven by the hope or need for that.
So a solution that I have thought of in my own life is this: to dispense with the living together and the complications of that to focus on the actual romance. Perhaps this might be by having our own separate but joined residences. In this way the marriage could be less about the living together and more about the lovey and the dovey which is what I truly care about.
I think that each of us within our own marriage has the right to configure what works for us and our spouse.  As long as the legal fundamentals are in place, no-one needs to be constrained to follow societal rules or expectations.

And yet, even as someone who deeply wants and needs these things, I still don’t believe that love as a noun is a real thing or a single coherent and consistent idea. Rather the idea of love within relationships is a corruption of the Christian commandment to love people, to love “everyone”.
Admittedly familial love is definitely a real thing that goes beyond the general command to love everyone. What I mean when I say that I love my family is that I feel a deep sense of compassion towards them, I feel a sense of connection to them, I feel committed to their well-being.  But I believe that that comes about from close interaction with people. I believe that this is the way we as human beings are wired. You start caring about the people you live in close community with. You start caring about your neighbours and looking out for them if you have not seen them in a while. You start noticing and caring about the people with whom you share your commute.  And I believe that exactly the same care and compassion would start growing for a spouse, if you can bear living in close proximity with them. Some people put you off so much that you simply cannot bear to live with them. On this blog a few months ago I wrote about how I was essentially forced to “marry” (platonically) someone (female) for a few months by living in close proximity with her. And it was sheer hell. More on her below!

OK, bearing in mind that I don’t particularly need the “living together” part of marriage but also bearing in mind that I don’t believe that romantic love is a thing in the way it is usually sold to us, how could I best think of a relationship in a way that best makes sense for my hopes of a marriage? Actually, I have just had an idea. Perhaps I could apply the aspects of familial love I have identified above to any potential spouse. Perhaps a key would be to separate romantic feelings from familial love and consider them separately.
So perhaps the questions I could ask of my spouse are these: – but only after knowing them for two full years:
Do I love him the way I understand familial love?
– Do I feel a deep and sincere sense of compassion and care towards him?
– Do I feel a sense of connection towards him?
– Do I feel a genuine sense of commitment towards his wellbeing?

And then, on top of that, do I feel attracted to him?
Now these are not by any means the same question, and for me I cannot afford to deceive myself. If someone just wanted to get married for the sake of getting married and having a partner, then perhaps the question of attraction is not as important to them.
Actually, scratch all that about attraction. The real question for me instead of attraction is “Could I be emotionally intimate with him or emotionally vulnerable with him?”

No mention of character!
Thus far in this post I have not mentioned character (have I? Not on first writing, but after editing and adding content yes I have mentioned it.) Here is the thing: this is all dependent on his character. So I need to wait two years first to confirm his character, and it is only when I have assured myself of his strong character that I can then proceed to ask myself the necessary questions above love above.  But even that familial love is not essential! 

So then, these are the essential things that I believe that I would personally need to have a successful relationship:
What everyone needs:
[Character]
Compatibility
Communication
Respect

All these things above decide whether or not we can stand living with one another.  I believe that these are all the things which those successful marriages have, even if they are not openly full of love and romantic feelings.
As long as a marriage has these basics locked firmly in place, then the romantic or sexual aspect of the marriage could probably exist anywhere along a spectrum from absolute zero to blazing red hot, or endlessly fluctuate back and forth and for many couples their marriage would continue to thrive and succeed regardless. However, for me because I deeply need these things, even a marriage that is otherwise successful would seem like a failure if those things were not consistently strong.
However, I appreciate that I am writing these things as a single woman. Who knows, perhaps after a few years of marriage I might find that my need for these things is also reduced or disappears altogether as apparently happens to many people.
But here’s the thing though. Even though I have identified that these things are deeply important to me, even then I am not leading with romance, sex or emotional intimacy. Rather I am leading with these essentials which are important to everyone, and then from those hoping to build romance etc.

As things currently stand, what I personally think I need additionally compared to what everyone needs are these:

Genuine Connection
Emotional intimacy
Intellectual compatibility

I don’t personally think I need love, even the familial kind at least to start with, as I believe that that grows over time. And men are always shouting that they prefer respect and need to be respected more than they need to be loved anyway. However my husband might still require love of me.  He might ask me “Do you love me?” And he might only feel comfortable moving forward with a marriage if I can categorically and emphatically answer him that I do.  That is where the “two-year” evaluation comes in. I can only sincerely say that I genuinely feel these things towards him if I have given myself time to sincerely sound out his character, so I categorically say that I know who he truly is and I can sincerely tell him that I genuinely care about the person he has demonstrated himself to be.

Many people have uncompelling character so that the idea of living together with them and being in close proximity to them and making myself vulnerable from close proximity to them is a huge no. So my “getting away from them” instinct and the self-preservation instinct that they trigger within me is greater than and vastly outweighs any natural instinct I might have towards compassion. And please believe me that I would never deceive myself about that with anyone! So when I think about them, all I can think about is getting away from them.

Regarding the story I related above about being forcibly, platonically and hellishly married to someone for a few months: I had managed to get on quite well with this person up until being forced to live together. And yet I had always known that living with her would be hell. Because looking beyond the smiles and Christian platitudes I had failed to see any evidence of true depth of character or understanding, listening, self-evaluation or true Christian maturity. The truth about the Christian faith is that it is so easy to stand up in front of a crowd of people and spew a succession of Christian platitudes without taking the private time with God to make sure that these Christian values truly shape your heart, outlook and behaviour. So this person came, and unsurprisingly revealed her true, unsurprising colours very quickly. What a surprise, this was the kind of person who demanded respect no matter how poorly she treated me – and she did treat me poorly. I am ashamed of myself that at one point I got sufficiently provoked to scream back at her. And I truly screamed, the way I have not screamed at anyone in years.

As I say I am ashamed that I was provoked into screaming, but honestly I am also a bit glad that it happened. Because now she knows that I am not going to take that. And I will tell her exactly as it is if she were to ever try that again.  I came right out and said “I thought you were supposed to be a Christian!” I also said other things.  Just remembering that incident is elevating my heart-rate. So I already know that I cannot live with this person ever again, not even “manage” together in the same space for a few months. Because my self-preservation instinct and “please stay away from me” instinct just drown out every last shred of compassion or care I might ordinarily have had for her.

And then there was another individual, this time male, that I knew in a related context to this first lady. This man deserves a whole rant to himself. And here’s the thing:  I can’t even identify what it is about this man that provokes so much anger and frustration in me. Or rather, I can identify what it is about him that I found so provoking, but even I myself cannot work out why these character traits he showed should warrant such a deep level of anger and frustration in me. In fact, the truth is that I should be deeply grateful to this man. But gratitude is not what springs to mind when I think about him. With him I just did not have any respect for his approach to different matters or his reasoning and there was just no way I was going to put my life and future at the mercy of thinking or a general approach to life that I respected so little. There was no way I was even going to keep myself in close proximity to that, much less make myself even more vulnerable by marrying him. Which is relevant because he and I were both conspicuously single in a small place and people were starting to make suggestions – including the first lady. To me he seemed so painfully clueless, yet so falsely and loudly convinced of his own wisdom, that my life, or simply my mental well-being, seemed in danger by simply remaining around him and waiting for the next ill-thought out or insensitive thing he might utter or insist upon.
And then to make it worse, it seemed like he was trying to get closer to me. Talk about not reading the room. After I had done my best to politely put distance between us and keep him at arm’s length. This is one of the drawbacks of being known to be sincere about your Christian commitment. Other people, including supposed Christians, who are supposed to be equally sincere, read it as stupidity, and think you will just sit there and take their nonsense indefinitely. So this man would stand there saying “Sister Toe-sin!” Ultimately I “Sister Toe-sin”ed my way out of there. And then people were upset but shrug – sorry! Sorry you just have to put yourself first and I make no apologies whatsoever for that.

So I talk about these people to illustrate what it looks like when I know that I cannot say that I love someone in a way that is necessary for living together. That is, they trigger my self-preservation instinct and “getting away from them” instinct so strongly that that is all I can see and hear when I think of them.
Please note that both of these people not only claimed strong Christian commitment, and deep Christian maturity, but also called themselves ministers. If this represents Christian leadership, then no wonder the state of global Christianity is so poor.
And there have been many such people I have met in supposedly Christian contexts.  Love?  No, love is not the first thing that I think of when I think of you! The honest truth is that I would not even stick around to be having that conversation in the first place. And yet as a Christian I still have to love them, that is, extend grace and kindness towards them.. But I would do it from a far, safe distance where who they are cannot get close to my life to touch my life.

For me, a better question than “Do I love him” is (after knowing him for a period of at least two years so I can be sure I know who he truly is) “Can I bear to be around him? Can I trust in his character, his common-sense, wisdom, lack of ignorance, clued-upness (ie, the opposite of cluelessness) enough that being around him does not trigger my self-preservation instincts or my “please stay away from me, you [insert decidedly unChristian ways to describe people here] man!” instincts?”

For me, liking someone platonically – anyone, male or female, is largely a matter of their character. If someone has good character then I will like them! If someone does not have good character then I will not like them!

And then going beyond to consider a husband specifically: knowing that I can bear to be around him, and I would actively seek more of his presence rather than less of it, can I cultivate emotional intimacy with this man? Would I want to spend time pouring out my heart to him, does that make sense?

*(I’m struggling to concentrate while writing this as I am simultaneously listening to an AfroK Drama and up until a few minutes ago I was also praying! “”Wait!” Zoraya cried out desperately!  What does he want from me?!” Ironically, the plot of that specific drama is about a woman being forcibly moved into a man’s penthouse as collateral for her father’s thefts from him, and it starts off platonically of course, but we all know that it is not going to stay that way! Anyway, drama has now been paused, hopefully I’ll be able to concentrate better now!)