Guest post by Jay Vincent
Love. Thanks to a recent Success Lifestyle Makeover I attended, I know that love is often tainted by limerence.
Limerence is actually a drug-induced state, where the world is perfect IF the love is reciprocal. And romantic love starts out that way. There are two parties dancing around each other, with mutual respect, honor, and reward. And yet, as time goes on, the desire to retain the love turns from a desire to be with the other, into a need to control the relationship so that the “love” is not lost.
It is at this certain point (where the excitement of pursuit turns to the fear of loss) that the joinder is no longer a relationship, but a prison. For when one walls up the union into a construct that cannot be escaped without the permission of the other person, that is, by textbook definition, CONTROL.
And this control lasts for various spans of time, and for various reasons. Insurance, children, societal expectations, fear of “divorce”, and many other reasons are the bars of a prison that lasts until one of the parties feels the self-betrayal to their own desires and begin to plan their escape. The deep irony is that many times, the escaping parties escape to an identical cycle of limerence and love, turning into bitterness and suffocation.
We humans CRAVE variety. Just observe a day of normal life. One leaves the house, parting ways with their alleged beloved. The moment they enter their workplace doors, they are noticing other beings with sexual energy that is being expended. “Damn, that ass looks hot!” he thinks, or “I would love to go down on him!” she thinks.
All the while ignoring that their own marriage or monogamous situation has turned into a prision, yet feeling the anger because they cannot (with their current set of values) be true to their desires…
And this builds and builds until one day, that person at work, or the person at the bar has just the right variables to bring about a yielding of desire unto the so-called “unfaithfulness” of one of the parties.
Why do I look on “adultery” with scorn? Well, mostly based on personal experience, and yet, my observance of many other stories shows me that this construct is a most damaging thing that breaks up many marriages, when if there were honesty in the marriage to begin with, this wouldn’t even need to be an issue.
Love is allowance. Love is not control or ownership. And no amount of glitter or glamour can hide the fact that when one person pledges their sexuality to another exclusively, it may appear to be for the best of reasons. But it totally ignores the fact that humans are easily distracted with sex, bored with monotony, and determined to be true to themselves on some level, consequences be damned.
And so, either the affairs and “cheating” will continue, or the world will come to realize that they are really “cheating” themselves by even pledging such an impossible thing as sexual exclusivity.
Further Reading : The Invention Of Marriage
Jay Vincent and his wife (parents of five children together) are the authors of Gourmet – Love Without Labels and they are working on another book to be released this year – The Mantra Of Love
