Love Bhakti #4: Hopelessly Devoted

I’ll never forget the first time I was conscious of being attracted to another woman.

I was probably about 18 or so, and had driven down for the weekend to Rutgers to visit the curious world of college life and a couple of my high school friends currently living it. We were making our way to a round of frat house parties, but had stopped at one of the student centers to hear someone’s band playing in the basement.

I can’t remember a thing about the band anymore. But I remember, vividly, sitting in the back on a wide windowsill, hugging a knee to my chest and chilling out, when I caught sight of a girl amongst the dancers. She was petite, as delicately built as a pixie, and in fact that’s what I called her in my head, the Pixie. She had on the long tiered skirt and oversized shapeless sweater of your average arty hippie college chick, and long pale cornsilk hair in an unhindered fall down her back, with Bettie Page bangs over beautiful features. She danced so unselfconsciously, swooping in circles and swishing her hair, Doc Martened feet keeping rhythm on the floor, dancing in the joyful uninhibited way children do when they don’t know anyone’s watching.

Before then I’d thought of myself as pretty solidly on the side of the penis– in fact I’m pretty sure I was visiting that weekend partly to nurture a crush on one of my friends’ guy friends– but I couldn’t take my eyes off this girl. There was something so compelling, so guileless and lovely about her, and I became aware that I was completely falling in love with her.

I had no idea who she was, and to be honest, I had no intention of finding out. I made no move towards her, never tried to introduce myself or even to catch her eye. It wasn’t fear on my part, or any sense of being weirded out about crushing on a girl (if anything, I thought something along the lines of “cool, maybe I’m bi!” Heh…) but rather it was like seeing a deer, or a butterfly. All I wanted to do was watch her, be immersed in the sight of her and in the gently breaking waves of desire, wondering what it would be like just to be closer to her, feel her energy, be smiled at by her, hold her. Those daydreams were their own reward. It was an experience of the sublime, like looking at a beautiful work of art. I was suffused by it, completely content to sit there and admire her and bask in these lovely feelings.

One of my friends today asked, can you be in love if the other person doesn’t know it, or doesn’t return it?

Absolutely.

And not only can you, but in the right frame of mind, it can utterly feed your soul.

Let me dispel right up front any misconceptions that I’m talking about dangerously delusional states of unrequited “love”, or about stalking someone, or making a pest of yourself, or suffering in a most dramatically emo manner over the person you adore who doesn’t know you’re alive. I’m not talking about unequal or dangerously unstable relationships, about emotional masochism, or about obsessive delusions. Even if you haven’t crossed the line into stalkeriffic behavior, if you go about trying to impose your “love” onto an unwilling other or torturing yourself with need for a particular unavailable person, you’re not a tragic lover, you’re someone with serious problems and you should get help.

What I’m talking about is more along the lines of a harmless crush, though I think that term makes it sound wispy and insubstantial. I like to describe being in love as “blissful absorption in another being”, and that’s really more what I mean here.

There are really two problems with the experience of falling in love with someone, as we are taught to understand it in our culture. One is that it’s very goal-oriented, with a goal of some sort of union. The desire for union itself is not a bad thing– it’s part and parcel of falling in love– but when it’s framed as a goal, then there are two possibilities, Succeed and Fail. And as we all know, it is Bad to Fail, and makes us feel miserably unworthy and unlovable. But the cruel joke is that we might not actually want to succeed, either. There might be a thousand reasons why achieving any kind of union with a given person might be the worst thing for them or for us. But that kind of no-win situation makes the idea of falling in love a risky, anxious, troubling thing with very low odds of happiness.

The second problem is that our big nosy egos have to go tromping in and get all up in our shit about it. What could be a fairly simple experience of admiring and enjoying the existence of a person we find in some way beautiful and attractive, ends up becoming all about us. “What about *MY* NEEEEEEEDS?” whines the ego, pouting at being denied sex. It all has to Mean Something, says the ego. What are we Getting Out Of This? And should it seem like a soulmate relationship isn’t imminently in bloom, it’s still all about us. We’re not lovable enough, we must smell bad, we must suck, or maybe they’re horrible and they just want to hurt us, and why can’t they think about us for a change, anyway? And so what starts out as lovely and sweet can so quickly become bitter, jaded, angry, defensive…or turn into an immediate gratification that might not have been a good choice.

But if those things can be put aside, if the experience of joy at the existence of another human being can be an end in itself, the feelings can be exhilarating, fulfilling, and unbearably sweet all on their own. It really is very much like the emotional response aroused by a particularly compelling work of art. Do you have to own “Starry Night” or “David” in order to truly enjoy it? Of course not. Is it any less thrilling to hear the “Moonlight Sonata” or the “Chaconne” if you hear it in passing? Hardly.

In the same way, a wholehearted adoration of another person, enjoyed without any further motive, can be uplifting, pleasurable, joyful, energizing.

It’s possible to have this experience when encountering a random stranger you’ll never see again, as I did with the pixie dancer. But it’s also possible to enjoy it with people you know, who are a part of your everyday life.

It does, of course, help for you to have enough communication with such people that they understand that you really are just enjoying their presence, and not trying to emotionally manipulate them or get them into bed. It especially helps if you have a similar level of communication with their spouse or partner or current lover, and if everyone involved is able to be reasonably mature about it. It’s quite possible to have a lovely crush on someone you never intend to pursue, and simply never to let on to them that you feel it, but let’s face it– stories about secret longing aside, how often does someone in a given social circle not notice something like that? You may never actually acknowledge it, but that doesn’t mean that everyone isn’t fully aware of it. (Which isn’t necessarily a bad state to be in, as long as it isn’t causing any problems.)

More than once I found myself struggling with a relationship with a friend who, for one reason or another, was not available for a romantic relationship with me but with whom I was madly in love. I spent endless hours tormented over the whole thing, not wanting to violate boundaries, but swinging wildly between elation and desperation over them. I tortured myself for being stupid enough to fall for someone unavailable and wished to be free of it. It took me a long time to make peace with those situations, but what finally happened was that I was able to release my ego-wish to have them even partly to myself, and in accepting that a romantic liaison with them was neither possible nor wise, found that I was still in love with them but in a much sweeter way. I could enjoy their friendship, love, and companionship; bask in the qualities I found wonderful about them; do things to make them smile– and simply revel in the fact that they existed, and were marvelous and amazing to me, and that being around them and in their lives made me feel great. I was not waiting for anything, not wishing for something I couldn’t have, not beating myself up for feeling inappropriately, just offering them the flattering light of an admiring glow.

A more surprising revelation was that this could even apply to love relationships where there was a union or a strong possibility of it. Being in love with my beloved, for example, is not dependent on the goal of our life together, or on an anxious need for reassurance that he loves me back, but simply because he’s a handsome, clever, charming, wickedly smart and funny man whose presence is utterly compelling. I even like to watch him when we’re at parties and he’s holding court with friends across the room, paying absolutely no attention to me. It’s pleasing just to see his energy and his smile, the crinkle at the corners of his big blue eyes, to hear his ideas and see how people respond to his bright aura. And because he feels the same way about me, it just deepens the connection we have and enriches us both, and frees the things that are at the heart of our relationship from the constraints of insecurity or desperate need that would weigh us down if our feelings for each other were steeped in ego-needs.

This kind of love, requited or not, differs from anxiety-ridden obsessions by the peaceful contentment, pleasure, and energy it brings. The lover feels brighter and happier around the beloved, and thoughts of the beloved might inspire creativity or provide a diversion during boring waits or even provide inspiration to become a better person, especially if the beloved is also someone the lover looks up to in any way. It’s a rich fuel source, a reserve of strength and optimism that is sustaining and powerful. And for the beloved, if s/he is at all aware of being the object of love (even subconsciously), there is the pleasure of being admired and feeling adored, the confidence boost of feeling attractive, sometimes even a reciprocal striving to become better in some way so as to prove the lover’s admiration well-founded.

It’s an idea firmly rooted in what’s now called a “girl crush” between women, or the sort of romantic friendship that often happens between men who are constant companions. But I don’t think it’s widely discussed or understood, except in the vaguest terms, and it tends to get lost between any two people whose genders and orientations open them up to the possibility of an actual affair. Which is a shame, because while we’re all standing around cursing the universe that “all the good ones are married or gay”, we’re missing out on the opportunity to fall in love over and over, day after day, with countless people or even with everything in existence, just for the sheer pleasure of being lifted out of the everyday by a powerful joy.

With that, I remain in love with you all, just for the amazing fact of your existence. ;-)

*Blowing a kiss*