There is something that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable about the "falling in love" metaphor. It's not the "in love" part since that is wonderful, but the idea that one "fell" into it; that somehow it was like an involuntary act of slipping on a banana skin. It highlights the idea that one did not have a choice in love; it just happened, that somehow one is a victim of one's feelings and that we love whomever our "emotions" want us to love.

I would like to believe that to love is a conscious act of the psyche that involves both freedom and responsibility, where one moves into love through choice. The idea of "falling in love" denies both freedom and choice since people use it to deny that they have choice in who they love. This metaphor might also deny personal responsibility since it allows people to believe that the matter was out of their hands and beyond their control. I may have said in an earlier piece that I felt love was an act of will. Notions of will, intellect and feelings working separately are unattractive (to me) since they suggest that areas of one's being might be compartmentalised and operate separately. I am certain that this is not helpful: It might be like "I work with my intellect", "I love my partner with my feelings" and "my acts of assertion, achievement or success are achieved by my will". How saddening this is, to break up one's self in a way that allows one to express only a part of oneself in given contexts. This compartmentalisation is perhaps the product of post-industrial man, a new machine culture, where work, loving and social being, and success operate in separate personal domains. It is for this reason that I prefer the notion of consciousness where all of our faculties might operate together.

An inversion of the Descartian principle of "Cogito ergo sum" ("Je pense, donc je suis", "I think, therefore I am") that informs all western phenomenological philosophy provides a clue. It follows that if one has no consciousness, then one does not exist. That's blindingly obvious in a way. My wild extrapolation, therefore, might be that if I am not conscious, should I not know, understand or be aware of my feelings, then I cannot love. I believe that idea.

I know I might be theorising here to evade the revelation of what I find most difficult. I shall evade a little longer by doing humour. If one was to land on earth as an alien with a copy of the 'Oxford English Dictionary', then one might believe that love was some savage practice of sadomasochism, in which humans are "set on fire', "burnt", "their hearts scorched", "their souls devoured" and all by love.

It is here that I might embrace the falling metaphor, falling is painful and love is a human risk that carries with it the most awful prospect of pain. I know how much that hurts. There's a thought that keeps moving through me that comes up again and again. I am sure it was a quotation from somewhere, although I would not guarantee that my feelings had not rewritten it. It goes something like "Eros's arrow strikes beyond love's deepest wound". I am also sure that my interpretation might not be the one intended by the writer of this quote. But there is a sense for me that love's arrow in order to find a place in one's heart and one's truth must go beyond all the pain that one has felt before, that one recognizes, knows and embraces that pain, and nurtures one's being beyond it, not denying it, but not ignoring or trampling on it either. That would hurt…but if only it was that.

True love brings with it the most terrifying risks. There's trust…I remember another quote but I cannot attribute it. It is "In all trust lies the seed of betrayal". I tried to find that quote on the internet, I believe it may have come from one of my life's inspirations, James Hillman, but I came up with 'star trek'. This is how the 'star trek' quote went:

Picard, "With all trust comes the possibility of betrayal."
Data, "Then perhaps it is better not to trust."

I have not watched star trek that much, but I believe that 'Data' is a sort of humanised super-android, a computer in human form and that says it all for me.

It's a funny thing about trust but it's something that I have had going on inside me for more than fifteen years now. It is this feeling that love transcends trust, that love is more reliable, more accepting and more generous than trust. Trust is also there in language to mean the relationship that one might have with one's banker or accountant that I do not feel means that much.

But back to those fears, love may also signify so many doubts, so many risks, so much fear and apprehension. There is the fear of betrayal, loss, desertion, distrust and suspicion, rejection and worse. There are also the difficulties in moving towards love; that one might make the journey and find emptiness, that one travels faster than another and they cannot meet and embrace their feelings as they wish to, or that they are scared by the intensity or awareness of the other in fear even though they are reaching out to them. These are not everyday fears; they are the stuff of the death of love. I feel I may have understated them here since they frighten me beyond belief.

There's the journey of low self-esteem that love may heal also. I have been critical of that in the past too in that I believe that someone who does not love himself cannot possibly love another. I believe that to be true, although I have met a number of women whose wonderful flowers and potential have been crushed so badly by insensitive men in unconscious and harmful relationships; such that merely allowing them to be themselves allows them to love again. I have learned much humility of late.

But the fears and apprehensions of love should not be underestimated. In my view, they are the worse fears and apprehensions known to! humankind.

Later I'll go on and write of the joys of mature love and desire. But for now I'll quote from the work of Barbara Kofford, a wonderful and inspirational colleague in psychotherapy who is involved in running the women's center in Jacksonville, Tennessee:

"Love extends ourselves beyond our fear of being vulnerable to seek the good we each desire within ourselves and in the other. To have our love endure, there is a need to develop the strength and resources to survive times of famine. To love another is to relinquish the hope that the other will be our idealized beloved; therefore, mature love rises like a Phoenix from the ashes of lost illusions.

Mature love began for Cupid when he resolved his ambivalence about leaving his childhood home. Legend also tells us that when Venus tired of Cupid's immaturity, released him from his only-child status through the birth of his brother, Anteros, the god of reciprocal love. Therefore, love that lasts requires an acknowledgement that adult relationships are independent of those we have with parents, children, and friends. Mature love does not grow from a posture of dependency and physical appearances; it builds upon the growing autonomy of each so that one will survive the death of the other. To love another is to relinquish the intention to change the beloved. Mature love arises from the death of belief in one's own god-like powers as it flies towards the future on autonomous wings.

What can the story of Cupid and Psyche tell us about how to live "happily ever after"? Their story demonstrates that romantic love begins with idealized passions and physical attraction. And yet, it is only through the commitment of each lover to a process of integrating the internal awareness of love and soul individually that a mature union can emerge between them. It is mature love that provides children with a model by which to develop future relationships. Therefore, it is mature love that lives happily ever after in the generations yet to come."

Tags: Psychology of Love, Trust, Mature Love, Love, Romance