Fixation and the Nature of Love

(Going through old Word docs and I found this, clearly written as an intended blog post, but somehow never published.  So here it is!)

Fixation and the Nature of Love.

As I get older, I am starting to become convicted of the fact that my emotions cannot entirely be trusted as a total guide for my life.  This would have staggered the 17-year-old version of myself, but the more I think on it, the more I realize it must be true.  While the younger, starry-eyed idealist in me lived, breathed, and died by her emotional compass alone (or so she thought) the version of me who now has 20/20 hindsight, is starting to notice some things.

For the sake of being clear in this post, I think I need to establish how I have broken attraction down.  I have split it into five basic categories that explain how we are attracted to people:

Physical:  This is the most basic of the five.  I would define physical attraction as a purely visual phenomena.  Liking the way a person looks only.   This is the way we feel about movie stars, rock stars, and other gorgeous people we will probably never meet but have small obsessions with.  Generally once you’ve met someone, the physical attraction will then be coupled with at least one of the other kinds.

Chemical: I am making a distinction from physical attraction here, because I truly believe there are two elements to it, and this is the other half.  The reason for this is the “handsome bastard” syndrome.  I have certainly known guys that I could objectively say were handsome, but I did not want touching me, and may even have repelled my senses.  Being chemically attracted to someone goes deeper than physical attraction in my opinion.  To be chemically attracted to someone involves responding automatically, even against your will in some cases, to a person’s touch, smell, voice, etc.  While physical attraction can leave off as a visual only, chemical attraction is a combination of all the senses.  As a result it is both very strong, and often very fleeting.  This is the hardest part of attraction to hold on to, and I don’t think our bodies are able to maintain it consistently at its highest levels for any one person for an entire lifetime, but that by its very nature it is more often sporadic.  Also the most addicting.

Emotional: This is perhaps the hardest to define, and in my opinion one of the strongest, and therefore most confusing, if not coupled with any of the others.  It involves your sensibilities.  To be emotionally attracted to someone means to understand each other on a level where words will connect you, but there is much more “unsaid” that connects you as well.   The interesting thing about emotional attraction is that you don’t have to share all your main ideals, just as long as they are complimentary.  Strong feelings are aroused without physical stimulation.  Unfortunately, if not combined with some kind of physical attraction, it is very hard to base a lasting romantic relationship solely on this.  Based on what your heart feels, unfiltered by reason.  Possibly the most unstable.

Mental: A meeting of the minds, as it were.  You do not have to be at the same place intellectually, but again, like emotional attraction, if this is not equal it must at least be complimentary.  I think this blends too easily with emotional attraction, and is hard to make distinct.  They steal elements from each other.  Ideals play a part here too, but are more basic.  Sharing the same views on politics would be an example of mental attraction in my book.  Based on what your mind thinks about another person.  This element is perhaps best exemplified when you can produce a list of reasons for why the relationship is a good one and will work out.  Respect would also go here.

Spiritual: This one would not be strictly required to make everyone happy, so perhaps for spiritual we could even include “lack” of spirituality in the loosest sense.  For example, an atheist prefers to be with another atheist in a relationship, so they are on the same page about those expectations.  On another side of the die, Christians desire to end up with other Christians, so their lifetime goals will be the same, and they can raise their children in an agreed manner.  In my opinion this is the most lasting and concrete of the five types of attraction, because spiritual often goes beyond what our five senses perceive, or our hearts and brains can completely understand.

Now back to the narrative.

The scariest thing about examining my romantic history, is all the times I can remember being attracted to someone (the beginnings of love) only to have that change radically one day, for no obvious reason I could track or trace.  The best example that comes to mind for me is my friend Andy-roo.  I met him at a church dance, and we talked a good portion of the evening, but that first night I was nothing more than intrigued.  But the second time I saw him is quite memorable.  It was right when I was probably feeling my most confident in my teenage life outside of senior year.  I remember, because it was after the fiasco of having put too much sun-in in my hair, turning me into a trailer-trash-looking blonde, and I had just gotten a permanent dye job to cover the horror that had been my hair.  As a result, the dye took so wildly, that my hair was a super cool reddish-black color that looked nothing like the color on the box, and that I adored and have never been able to replicate to this day.

Andy-roo recognized me right away, despite my drastic change in hair color, and we spent the night both becoming rather smitten with each other.  That was in the fall, and it was followed by months of phone conversations, chance meetings in the hall at church, dances; the usual trappings of a teenage romance.

And then, right around my 16th birthday, I suddenly woke up one day, saw Andy-roo, and was terrified of the idea that he might ask me out, because I suddenly had no interest in him.  I certainly didn't hate him, so I won't say it was a complete reversal of my feelings, but all the physical and emotional attraction that had been so overwhelming before, was gone.

Fantastically lucky for me, about a month after this realization, (during which I spent avoiding him) he finally cornered me one day and let me know that he didn't really feel that way for me, either.  The two of us were massively relieved, and from ever onward, it was a pleasant inside joke between us that we loved to go back to and laugh at.

This does not make sense to me.  Why would I be so obsessed with someone for so long, then one day wake up and not be interested in them anymore, for no reason that I can name?

This alone leaves me to believe that on their own, emotions cannot entirely be trusted.

That's not to say that they shouldn't still be a strong guide.  I tend to think of Jane Austen's heroines here.  These were ladies who always were in enough command of themselves to make wise decisions of who to fall in love with.  They were not so appalling as to be able to completely control their emotions, but had just enough control that they could strongly regulate them.  The more I think on this, the more I see it as wisdom.

And it does seem curious that I can choose not to still love my ex boyfriends.  Ben is perhaps easier explained because we spent so much time making each other miserable, but if I still loved him I would certainly not be the first girl in history to care for a boy who had continually hurt her.  But Jason is harder to explain away, because the several months I spent with him were the stuff of addiction, and I would never voluntarily have given him up if he had not forced me to by leaving himself, after showing me why I needed to leave Ben, and that I could love someone other than my high school sweetheart, not to mention that I deserved to be treated well.  Yet how is it that, being happily married now, I no longer love either of them as ardently as I once did?

The fact of the matter is, feelings change.  In an emotional moment we can be deceived to think we will never feel anything different, but there are other factors that play into things.  Physical and chemical attraction especially can be deceptive.  I can be physically or chemically drawn to someone, but if no other claims of the emotional or mental type are there, it will never be anything more than hormones which, mind you, are highly susceptible to baffling change at any moment.

I realize how terribly unromantic it sounds.  But I cannot escape some of the observations that are now forcing themselves to the forefront of my mind, to be listed in this treatise, of sorts.

The main force behind these experiences seems to be one of fixation.  I fixated on Ben for two years, to so much of an extreme that when we started to become abusive towards each other, I was willing to ignore it.  I was so desperately in love with him, because I repeated to myself over and over again that I was.  I had already told everyone how much I loved him, and that I was determined to marry my high school sweetheart.  To back off after all that would be embarrassing, difficult, and show me for a sentimental fool.  And then when Jason arrived, who had stronger claims on me chemically, even if he couldn’t match the emotional history I shared with Ben, I fixated on him to the point of dangerous obsession, so it was child's play to find I felt I loved him more than Ben.  The physical needs in that relationship trumped any other bits of rational reason my brain might introduce; particularly dangerous, since Jason was not very compatible with me spiritually or emotionally, and we wanted vastly different things in life.  To stay with him based purely on these physical feelings I encouraged daily and would not regulate, would have been to doom myself to a special kind of misery.

I think, too, of my ex-boyfriend, Pi, who I was more emotionally attracted to than any male in my life, until I met my husband.  Pi and I dated for three and a half blissful weeks and then I broke up with him as hurriedly as possible, before he could stop me.  Why?  Because I was suddenly faced with the terrifying conviction that I was not physically attracted to him, and to carry on in the way we had started, in such a fire of emotion, would only burn us both very badly in the end.  But after the breakup, once he had forgiven me, we carried on a friendship that to many eyes looked like a secret romance, and made Ben extremely jealous.

Or perhaps the angle I have approached these relationships from is not one of fixation, but really just that I misunderstood the nature of love until I met my husband.  I would be willing to believe that all the ways I felt about these other boys was still not true love, and that I only obtained that in my life with the man who became my husband, because he was the only one in whom all the elements of attraction truly culminated.  With Pi I was emotionally attracted only.  With Andy-roo it was a weird mix of emotional and physical attraction that burnt out when the attraction unexpectedly left.  With Ben it was an unstable combination of emotionally, physically, and spiritually being attracted, which is why I think it held out so long, and yet could not hold up to the onslaught that was the massive chemical and physical attraction I experienced with Jason, coupled with the pointed dose of mental attraction that made me think rationally about Ben for the first time, ever.

But with my husband, all these elements combine.  I have every single one: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, chemical, and all in much stronger doses than any of the others' qualities could provide even if all put together.

So maybe, as Jane Austen has always said, it is not mercenary to marry a man based on how many points your brain agrees he meets you on.  Maybe it is the best way.  Fixation on a person, or constant fixation away from them can change how we feel about someone.  But a meeting of the minds, hearts, and souls, is something concrete one can build a life on.

I can say this after 8 years of constant love, 5 of which have been of married bliss.  I don't always understand it on the surface, but at heart, I believe this is what it is.