What does love feel like?

When I was a kid, I would sometimes be falling asleep late, after having secretly read a book long past bedtime, and I would think about the fact that it was 2am or 3am and my father should be coming home soon. He was a musician; he worked evening gigs, and when they were far away, like in Seattle, he would get home quite late. So I’d lie there in bed, wondering if he were coming home yet — now?... what about now?... and think of him driving on the freeway in the rain, which I knew was dangerous, especially this late when there were drunk drivers and he was tired after working. And sometimes my mind would slip into a dark fear — fear that he had crashed, that he wasn’t coming back home. I would start to cry, grasping for him. Sometimes I would stay awake until I would hear the crunch of gravel and glimpse headlights through the curtains. Rarely, that wasn’t enough, and I’d get out of bed to ensure it was he who had come home.

I’ve often found love feels strongest for me when associated with loss.

People feel love differently. I have a friend who is an easy crier. But he doesn’t just cry about the hard things, he also cries about the beautiful things. Like when he has a wonderful day, or when his friends are being so delightfully themselves. And I’ve had at least two serious partners who would describe themselves as romantics — you go out on a nice date with them, to a fancy, candlelit restaurant, and they gaze at you passionately from across the table, beaming love and desire.

I have my moments of feeling this way — a walk back through beloved Berkeley after a late-night hang with a dear friend, heart full, my mind wandering to my parents and sister and job and how blessed I am, and I’ll start crying with love as the moon comes out and the scent of jasmine hits me. I find it easiest to feel this type of open-hearted love when I’m on my own, when my cups are full,¹ and I feel at ease to let myself focus on whatever drifts into awareness.²

Notably, I had a very hard time dropping into this kind of love-feeling during Jhourney. Even though they pamper you, relax you, and gently point you in the open love direction (as a potential stepping stone on the path to jhana), I stubbornly refused to go there. And in fact, this is generally true for me — as soon as I feel like there is some social expectation or demand that I feel love, I find it difficult to locate within. As if I shut down in some kind of fierce denial of being coerced, or in fear of “getting it wrong.”

This is… not very helpful when your partner is sad and asking for love and comfort. It is not helpful at Jhourney. It is not helpful at services to remember those who have passed away.

I found myself crying a few months ago at a friend’s engagement party, with the overwhelm love feeling. I think it was partially because they announced to a room packed to the brim with people (there were people on the people on the people on the people). I could be more under-the-radar, there; nobody was expecting anything of me.

I wish I could transcend this pattern.

Let’s go back to love. Particularly romantic love.

I am not convinced that romantic love is very much different from any other kind of love. It’s all just love.³ I think perhaps romantic love means “you love them and you want to fuck them”? No, that’s not quite right. “You love them and you want to do romantic love type things with them, like go on dates and/or be life partners and/or fuck.” Maybe that’s closer.

You might expect this kind of attitude from someone who is naturally quite open/poly.

It’s funny, though. If I don’t believe in romantic love as its own special category of feeling, then why not… just date whichever close friend seems like the best match on paper? Why have I (historically) demanded something like the feeling of NRE sparkles before entering into a serious romantic relationship?

It’s a bit of a stumper. At first I want to say that there’s some relationship like:

• NRE sparkles track who I really want to fuck
• Good sex is (currently) a necessary component of romantic relationships for me
• So if the NRE sparkles aren’t there, then maybe the good sex won’t be there, so I move on

Is that true? I’m thinking back through who I’ve felt NRE sparkles for over the years. Was it all just tracking… sex?

No, I think it’s more complicated than that.

I’m remembering a comment a friend recently made. They said that they used to select friends mostly based on who was smart.⁴ And eventually, they found themselves in communities where there were tons of smart people. So then they started selecting friends who were smart and kind. You can guess what happened. And the next frontier they’re selecting on is brave.

Perhaps NRE sparkles are a bit like this, for me. They track the attraction ingredients that I am most missing. When I was younger, that was a lot of things! I could get fired up about a super smart nerdy friend, even if they weren’t very physically attractive to me. I could also get fired up about Russell Crowe or the cute charismatic football player who liked to harass me in class.

I fell in love with my first long-term partner in large part because he had a beautiful mind, and at that point in my life, I was desperately craving complexity and poetry, the weaving together of the analytical and the associative. I didn’t realize that until I met him, and I started drinking in the ingredient I’d been missing.

I fell in love with my second long-term partner in large part because he had mastered the art of sex, and through his own mastery, he helped me discover myself. I was craving incredible, hot, dark and dominant sex that matched my particular kinks, and he provided.

To be clear, these are simplistic reductions.⁵ But both gave me something I very much wanted, and I had an intense awe, respect, and appreciation for them as a result.

I say above that I “fell in love,” and although that is how we speak, I’m tempted to reserve the term “falling in love” for the middle of relationships, not the beginning. I want the phrase to point to the attachment that grows, to whatever remains after the sparkles fade. (They will always fade.)

In the last two years, I’ve had sparkles develop for…

• Someone who engaged in a ranging, witty banter; conversation with him was easy, delightful
• Someone who was deeply, deeply good. I felt his compassion, care, integrity, and diligence.
• Someone who was extremely physically attractive
• And more!

So there are still a lot of different traits that can bring that feeling about.⁶

Yet over time I’ve gained some wisdom, and people who I would’ve had crazy NRE for previously now throw up warning flags if they don’t have other traits I care about in partners, like strong communication, emotional intelligence, thoughtfulness, openness, listening skills, kinky sexual energy, etc. I may still be attracted to them, but I’m also wary; it’s a much more mixed reaction.

Gosh, this is a long essay on love. And when exactly are we going to get to the love part?

NRE sparkles are not love. If there is one lesson I ought to have learned from my turbulent romantic history, this must be it. (This, and “share everything.”⁷)

But I think NRE sparkles are very useful for creating circumstances that lead to love. They make you want to spend every second with your target. We all know the argument here: you spend intense amounts of time together, you see each other deeply, you attach. How can you not love someone, up close?

Were I back on the market, would I now be willing to date someone who had all the key traits I look for in a long-term partner, but who I just didn’t feel the sparkles for? I think so. I’d still want to feel some pull, some sense of promise, “this could be very harmonious.” A curiosity in the heart. But no need for the sparkles. I expect, with time, I would love them.⁸

It’s not the story of romance we’re often sold. But it is a story I have deep fondness for. (I am about to spoil a movie, so skip to the next paragraph if you do not want that.) One of my favorite films is A Painted Veil. It’s set in the early 1900s. We follow the story of Kitty, who marries a man because she’s tired of being stuck at home; she wants adventure. She doesn’t love him. She meets another man, and she cheats on her new husband. He finds out. He’s furious, and he takes her far away into the countryside, where they both volunteer in a town facing a cholera epidemic. Over time, they fall in love — maturing together, seeing the virtues in the other that they had each missed before. Passion alights. I adore this deeper, truer commitment they find.

There might be dangers in skipping NRE. A couples therapist I once saw with an ex asked us at one point to think back to the beginning of our relationship, to our excitement about each other. “Tap into that,” she guided us. If one didn’t have that source of early strong positive sentiment to draw from, would you be lost during hard times? Perhaps it’s a useful foundation upon which the rest of the relationship can sit?

And there are intuitive things our bodies know that our brains do not. Perhaps NRE is also tracking something there?

And yet, I know couples that seem to be doing perfectly fine without it. I know one couple where I don’t think either party experienced much NRE for the other at all. I remember I used to look at their relationship and feel a bit sad, wondering if they were “settling,” or if someday a missing perfect match would come and sweep one of them away, leaving the other hurt and abandoned. But they’ve been together for years, and I grow fonder and fonder of their relationship as time goes on — they seem sweet and sturdy, committed and connected.

Also, the sparkles can come and go. Yes, I expect they will, for most people, be strongest at the start of a relationship (if you have them at all). But I’ve personally had the experience of dismissing someone early on who I wasn’t feeling the sparkles for, and then finding a few months later that I was suddenly fixated on him; my heart beat fast when we were together. I’ve heard from tenured couples that our model of attraction is flawed — it does not simply spike at the beginning of a relationship and then fade to some stable base. It wavers with the happenings of life. Witness your partner in their element, and you may find yourself full of heat for them again.⁹ Some people speak of the experience of falling in love with their partner again, and again, and again.¹⁰ And I have friends who are more demisexual, and they definitely don’t feel any sparkles until they’ve gotten to know someone.

Why am I still talking about sparkles? Above I said “they are not love.” And I really believe that! But I think they are what is sold as love, or at least what I interpreted as the path to love, for a very long time. It is hard to shake. They are an intense drug, and I have very much enjoyed my hits.¹¹

What is love, then?

Late last year, I hosted a small circling retreat. I felt quite safe, in that circle — perhaps I really trusted the group to hold whatever was there, or be able to repair if they couldn’t hold it? I’m not quite sure. But in that environment, I was able to just be. I didn’t need to force any kind of reaction. I could be quiet and say nothing if that’s what I wanted. I could get riled up. Whatever was there.

Mostly, I wanted to be quiet. To sit back and enjoy these excellent people.

And lo and behold, once I dropped any sense of needing to perform or act or try to go searching for love, I found myself looking at other people in the circle and feeling an immense amount of… yeah. I started crying, twice, seeing the humanity and beauty in others. It felt like a soft opening, like gently nudging the yolk of a lightly fried egg and suddenly the golden center is spilling out. It felt so good, to be able to feel that. To remember, again, that this gentle love was always there, if I let it be.

So I know that feeling. That’s love.

Love is also when I feel a fierce protectiveness for my sister, my mother, my lover. Love is when I look at my partner and my heart is swelling and I want him to know, really, in his soul, how good he is, and how much I hope that everything will be good for him too, and I know I won’t be able to communicate it right, that feeling, but it’s there.

Love is love. You know it when you feel it.

Or sometimes you don’t. I don’t always live in great awareness of the feeling of love.¹² Sometimes I can feel a bit defensive, when people call me cold. They’re poking at something painful. I’m afraid it’s true; I judge myself for it. It’s bad to be cold. And sometimes I hear “you’re cold” as “you don’t feel love.” But I know that’s not true. My love sometimes feels like a deep river running in the caves beneath what I do. I’m not always tapped into it, immersed in it. But I know it’s there, powerful and available to be found.

To be fair, though, I would like the river to be out in the sunlight more. I would like to more easily jump in. (Without forcing.)

When my father died, I wondered if he knew how much I loved him. Did he really know? Did he really really know? I wish that I had expressed more of my love to him. It felt like one of the most vital things I was seeing, after he died. The importance of expressing my love, to everyone in my life.

I feel like there is something to say, about love often being intertwined with grief, again. This is why it can often come along with an aching. Attachment means possibility of loss. (I’m back where I started.)

I want to talk about romantic love a little more. I am afraid that by talking about love as a general force that stretches across many kinds of relating, I’ll alienate those who have some more specialized, grand vision of romantic love. I suspect those models of romantic love are often conflating love with NRE, but maybe there’s no way to ever know (again, people experience love differently).

I attempted to gesture at my sense of what romantic love really means above; it wasn’t quite right. I said that I don’t believe in romantic love as its own special category of feeling. That’s not… quite right.¹³

I want to say: romantic love is the feeling of love + “I have chosen you.” I have chosen you, as the person that I will build a beautiful life with.

There are other chosen people — for instance, I choose my friends for roles in my life too. I love my friends, and, yes, in many ways, the love I feel for them feels similar to the love I have for a partner. Indeed, for many of my friends, it doesn’t seem too ludicrous to imagine that there are worlds close by where we’re going on dates or having casual sex or whatnot. (I mean this for the women & genderqueer too — I’ve so far taken a more heterosexual path in this world, but I don’t think that’s at all fundamental to me.)

But while I might hope that my friends will have long-lasting, sustaining roles in my life, the connection is less committed.¹⁴ There’s something about knowing “you are my person, I have chosen you” that leads me to a flavor of love — complex, deep, settled — that is… romantic love?

No, that’s not quite it either. Because sometimes people choose platonic life partners.¹⁵ And sometimes people feel romantic love for less fully committed styles of partnership (e.g., a mistress, who might last a while, but doesn’t have the same level of life partnership as one’s spouse).

I chatted with Claude about this, and Claude suggested that romantic love is “some combination of erotic charge, pair-bonding pull, the desire for that particular intimate exclusivity-or-quasi-exclusivity, the sense of ‘you in particular, in this particular kind of way.’” That feels right-ish to me. But this is why this is hard to pin down. “Romantic” is a cluster concept, that can include love (or not), sex (or not), commitment (or not), acts of affection (or not), intertwining your lives (or not), etc. Relating romantically to someone will probably include some of these, to some degree. Each pair will need to figure out what their version of romantic relating looks like.¹⁶

So I’m coming around to something like: for me, romantic loves means “love, + choosing, + for a romantic-shaped role in one’s life.”¹⁷

I’ve been especially feeling the power of the choosing piece lately. I am reminded of The Little Prince, when he encounters the fox. I’ll end with this excerpt, because I think it beautifully captures (in significantly fewer words) some of the themes of these reflections.

From the Prince’s first conversation with the fox:

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean—‘tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world ...”

And then a little later:

“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others.

Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ...”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please—tame me!” he said.

And then:

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near—

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you ...”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.”