In defense of a casual love
I’d been wrongly taught that emotions were sorted into lists of Good and Bad; Love and Hate being the most powerful of each
This week’s essay is incredibly personal to my story as a human being; so personal in fact that I debated not sharing it at all, but nothing else felt genuine. I’ve written this for my own healing, but also knowing that 1 in 3 women have endured sexual abuse in their lifetime.
Trigger warning for those who might be sensitive to minor reference to sexual abuse as a concept, although there is nothing detailed or specific.
Thank you for allowing me this safe space every week <3
What complicated the abuse I endured from my high school boyfriend was that I loved him, and believed it so strongly at that impressionable age that the intensity of the sentiment disguised discomfort with consent.
The Christian tradition to which we both fell victim emphasized that choosing a partner was choosing a future spouse, so I felt a premature obligation to care for him in both sickness and in health—not realizing how very mentally ill he was already. I accepted his addictive personality, childhood trauma and severe depression as tests of my faith, and took reassurance in the many times I was told that God would never give me anything I couldn’t handle.
So naturally my will was strengthened to put up with just about anything—including coercion, emotional manipulation and suppressed rage—but not how to establish healthy boundaries. Feeling small, vulnerable and endangered were what I associated with love, and now serve time on my long list of emotional triggers.
With my creative imagination, I’d fantasized a lot about finding the love of my life when I was young. Many people have assumed that role and many have had it redacted, and the expectation of such a grand title became so burdensome that I’ve done away with the idea altogether.
This could very well be due to my contradictory personality as an emotionally sensitive, headstrong, highly-affectionate cynic with an avoidant attachment style or that my societal conditioning around Love has destined me for traumatic underwhelm.
I’d been taught to think all emotions were sorted into lengthy lists of Good and Bad, with Love and Hate being the most powerful of each. Unlike other feelings that could exist just as they were, Love was a gradual progression of sentiments; the logical step after Like, Really Like and Adore.
I’ve been reminded in my adulthood that emotions simply exist whether or not we will them to be, and I would go as far as to advocate for their being on a spectrum. I used to feel ashamed remembering all the times I’ve confessed my love for someone—or even something— because I melodramatically thought I was diminishing the word. I vaguely remember being told by some pastor somewhere that the more you say love, the more it loses its meaning.
Placing Love on a spectrum alleviates my self-criticism because it explains why we can say we love our favorite cereal and also our mothers and our lovers. It explains why I can fall in love at first sight and also organically over a course of many months. Neither is wrong, but instead hold true in different contexts and severity.
I wonder if a lot of heartbreak would lessen if we casualized love this way; if it would help any given person not be so hard on themselves when a relationship doesn’t work out or to have the courage to leave a failing one more quickly. I cathartically wonder if fewer teenage girls would be hurt if they were taught more about sex education than just to wait to do it with somebody they love.
This isn’t to say that I’m apathetic about love as a concept, because in actuality I think I’m more open to it than I ever have been. What I’m cynical about are the fabricated obligations that come with the multitude of definitions I’ve involuntarily absorbed all my life.
It’s bizarre for me to still admit that my abuser was my first love, but he was, although the transactional, fearful, anxious type of love is not one that I would ever want again. Nor is the unrealistically pure, unconditional and all-forgiving definition the church preaches. I’m optimistically content for something in between.
Feature Photo by Joyce Hankins on Unsplash