Love Misplaced

So I was looking through a big box of old receipts, bills and other miscellaneous paperwork and I came across a letter I’d written to a woman more than a few years ago and never sent.  Actually, it was part of a series of written attempts to express my feelings, all of which I thought I’d disposed of by now.  This was an early attempt and like the later ones, I never actually managed to make it say what I wanted to say.  In the scheme of things, it is no great importance.  We eventually came to an understanding and my suspicion that my feelings were unrequited was confirmed.  Yet, when I came across the letter yesterday I was unable to toss it in the pile with years-old Panera Bread receipts and old envelopes. 

I gave it a quick read and wasn’t sorry that I’d not sent it.  For one, I had later found out that when I was writing it would have been a very inopportune time to send it.  Beyond that, it seems to me now an immature and needy piece of work.  There is too much of my own insecurity in it.  Perhaps it betrayed the rejection I’d already felt but it doesn’t convey the feelings that were driving me crazy: the doubts and insecurities, the faint and ultimately false hopes that she’d feel the same, and most importantly, how crazy I was about this woman I thought I knew well enough to love.

Okay, so love is probably not the right term here.  I’d say infatuation was clearly at work but history has not shown the things for which I held the woman to high esteem to be untrue, so there may have been some substance of love.   Some might have said that I was in love with the idea of being in love but to me that concept seems really silly.  In reality, the letter wasn’t a love letter but more of a “I think you’re swell and here’s some non-threatening reasons why” with some “I’d like to get to know you better” thrown in for a rather tepid result.  Mercifully, it doesn’t say “Hey, I’m stalking you and am going to be impossible to avoid until you agree to go out with me or take out a restraining order” but nor does it say “Hey I really dig you and your smile makes me unable to think clearly.”   (maybe that’s creepy too?)

So, right about now if you are still reading you may be asking where I am going with this… I actually found two letters and already tossed the first one.  It, perhaps, held the clue as to why the letters remain long after the chance of relationship has been long over.  I made it clear in the first attempt, which I wisely abandoned, that it was because my feelings were driving me nuts that I felt the need to share them.  In the second, more complete, letter, it isn’t said explicitly but it is really all about me.  Knowing what I know now, I don’t think it would have mattered what I wrote since her heart wasn’t looking for what mine wanted to offer.  What does strike me though, is how unlike love the message conveyed in the letter actually was.  I have to admit that it, like most of my awkward college infatuations were the result of my wanting something I didn’t understand.  In some cases, I think of some of the women I’d hoped to attract and wonder how I could have been so blind to obvious roadblocks. Time does sometimes make us wiser and just because we love someone doesn’t mean that we are meant to spend our lives with them.   The latter point is especially true when we love someone who doesn’t love us in the same manner or perhaps at all.  

In “Love Stinks” by the J. Geils Band, the lyrics seem to ring true to my experience:

You love her
But she loves him
And he loves somebody else
You just can't win
And so it goes
Till the day you die
This thing they call love
It's gonna make you cry
I've had the blues
The reds and the pinks
One thing for sure
Love stinks

I can laugh at the song but when it comes to romantic love, perhaps it resonates a bit too well with how I actually feel.  After all, it is sometimes easier to joke about things we wouldn’t admit to in a serious conversation.  The song goes on to say:

Two by two and side by side
Love's gonna find you yes it is
You just can't hide
You'll hear it call
Your heart will fall
Then love will fly
It's gonna soar
I don't care for any casanova thing
All I can say is
Love stinks

Even to the jaded, it seems that love is inescapable.  That reality seems to be especially frustrating for those of use who’d like to be Casanova but tend to be Charlie Brown instead. Charlie Brown is basically a good guy but he spent all that time interested in the little red-haired girl but never got to know her. (Disclosure: One of the first women I ever liked was a little red-haired childhood friend of mine.  She is now a red-haired woman and we long ago learned that we are much better suited as friends.)   To make things more frustrating, God seems to have played a bit of a joke on our human understanding of romantic love, Eros.  To loosely paraphrase C. S. Lewis, one lover may be in love and the other is not and then they switch roles.  It is a joke at our expense and it kind of stinks.  And to think that Seth Justman and Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band seem to have understood it the same way!

To stop there is an injustice for if love is only what I need, than it is far from complete.  This truth may be more eloquently expressed by the words of C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves:

“Need-love says of a woman, "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection...appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.”

It seems to me, (and I must write seems as I am a long way from practicing this truth) that my love life would be far more enjoyable if I could bypass the question of whether a woman is willing or able to reciprocate my feelings and instead be thankful for the opportunity to have known her at all.  If I look at most of my past interests, they’ve not really progressed beyond the first state of need-love-at least until it was clear that no hope of a relationship other than friendship was to be had.  Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I wasn’t looking just to what I could get from the relationship.  I had the opportunity to get to know and, in my better moments, encourage women whose hearts attracted me and I wanted the honor of knowing more.  Unfortunately the way I eventually shared my feelings was mostly about me; I needed to get my feelings out in the open so I wouldn’t have to analyze them anymore and they wouldn’t drive ME crazy.  It was of little consequence until later when I sometimes realized that my timing was hardly appropriate and my delivery could have been better-designed so give credibility to the feelings I was struggling to profess.  After all, I chose to analyze rather than live and see where the road took me.

When I look back on them, my feelings did not get far past my own needs I suppose.  As Lewis makes clear, love must be more than just that, indeed it must be even beyond appreciation alone.  I am not saying that we are to put any woman we love on a pedestal to be admired but never known.  I am saying that a thankful heart, enriched by the experience of knowing others who helped bring it to life, seems a far more appealing prospect to the selfish, me-centered heart that seems to prefer analysis and fear to authenticity and vulnerability.