I fell in love. You fell in love. In some manner or other, each of us has, at one time or the other, fallen in love. On those occasions where the other has fallen in love with us in return, anything becomes possible. I asked my wife what is different now than during our first years together when we would risk being nude in nature such as on a mountain, or on a solitary beach in the northern wilderness, or even in our home. She replied that the answer was simple. We had fallen in love. In love both of us dared what we would never have considered before that time.
” … with whom can we let ourselves go completely if not with the beloved? … love liberates, frees us to express uninhibitedly not only our emotions but also our inclination to the negative … an aspect of the shadow.”Aldo Carotenuto, Eros and Pathos, p. 8
All the rules are thrown out. Our literature and video productions are replete with such stories of love, usually of love gone wrong. For those outside of the throes of love, such stories serve to warn us of what just might be laying beneath the surface of our own psyche. The last thing we want as mature adults is to lose control, even if the controlling force is within us. So we push back and deny the shadows, the desires whether they are holy or demonic, consciously not able to distinguish. The more we push back, the more vulnerable we become.
Study after study point to boredom and anger being the reasons for cheating for both men and women, especially in the modern world where women have more power and a level of independence.
” But why do modern husbands and wives have affairs? Most adulterers questioned by scientists say it’s ‘lust’, ‘love’ or — pathetically — ‘I don’t know’. … Astonishingly, a 1985 study found that 56 per cent of male adulterers rated their marriage as ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’. For women, the figure dropped to 34 per cent. So, many men and some women jeopardise happy marriages for the sake of a tumble or two. Why?Helen Fisher, The Daily Mail, Feb. 18, 2017
Not surprisingly, these relationships break within three of four years of their forming a relationship. To make it simple to understand, when the glow fades, when the rose-coloured glasses are taken off, we feel cheated. This stranger who emerges from behind our projections is not who or what we want. We get so caught up in the projected image of other, a magical other, that a real person doesn’t stand a chance in comparison.
Happily, more than half risk learning just who this stranger that emerges is. It becomes a conscious choice to risk love with a difference, not the earth-shaking love-at-first-sight, a conscious love.