What’s Love Got to Do With It?
We are in love with ourselves when we feel in love with someone else, for we fall in love first, because we like how the other person makes us feel. We want and expect that someone, the object of our desire, to continually make us feel good, and we hope to indefinitely experience the feelings of euphoria set-off by those feel good chemicals in the brain. When in love, we feel good, like everything is possible, because someone outside of us, makes us feel great. We do not have to take on the responsibility of causing ourselves to feel great, this job has been inadvertently assigned to someone else, the object of our love and desire.
Moving beyond the initial experience of ‘feeling great’; exactly what are the expectations respective to what about the object of desire enables you to ‘feel great?’ Meaning, what characteristics, core values, ideas and actions exhibited by the other person, have enabled you to feel love? What have they done and showed to you, that gives you the feeling of loving them? For instance, the object of your desire is compassionate and caring towards themselves, you and others. You admire these same core values in yourself, and therefore are attracted and enamored with this individual. Let’s say, there are several core values and characteristics that you share with the object of your desire, and you each feel mutual admiration, infatuation or love. Issues surrounding fairness, respect, trust, honesty, and unconditional acceptance are instinctual, and barely little to no challenges are proposed in the relationship — there are minor disagreements which are easily solved leaving no residual mutual resentments. Your partner does what you want, when you want, how you want, almost as if they are reading your mind. And your partner shares the same revelations, you are the perfect person for them, and you plan your lives together, always in agreement, and believe it will stay this way forever.
A relationship like this is possible, but not highly improbable. Your expectations, and those of your partner will change over time. Further, if you make your partner responsible for emitting feelings of love inside of you, your expectations will fall short of reality. Love has a tendency to make a person feel like everything else in life is in a good state. Even more so, intense feelings of love can make you forget about your life’s challenges and emotions. The career that you hate barely crosses your mind. The financial problems that may circulate in your daily transactions or interfere with your future plans, no longer seem important. You feel a surge of energy, and believe that none of your previous challenges of life are as important as finding and experiencing true love. Why has love superseded all other factors of your life? How and why has it become the central figure in your being? People have and show different sides of themselves to different people. A mother or father is not going to have the same experiences and perceptions of their (adult) child as a wife or husband. Some people bring out different feelings and motivational factors in us. Many people when in love say their partner brings out the best them. Those in love often feel more motivated to achieve and solve challenges and problems in their lives. The impression that one has more inspiration, motivation, and enthusiasm to excel when they experience love cannot be discounted or ignored in looking at the rationales used to explain the decision to cheat.
