The Perils of Being Human (and trying to find love...)

Are we meant to be in a relationship?  Does God intend for us to find a loving mate to spend our days...and our nights with?  I think so but, it's so damn hard.

And what is love, exactly?  Is it merely a hormonal reaction to further the species or is it the romantic notion of being incomplete without the other?  Or is it something in between?

Are we bound to go through life bumping into one another and falling for a chemical reaction? Is it true that procreation comes from matching hormones or pheromones and that what we call love is simply just natures way of saying you’d make good babies? And now that I’m so past that point is there any point at all in bumping into others at all?

Years ago a man sat in front of me telling me how he had fallen out of love with his wife. As he spoke he continued to speak of her with affection but he was convinced that they couldn’t go on because the love was gone.  As we saw each other week after week it came down to a miscommunication – they were speaking past one another.  It ends up that they were truly in love and both had been speaking in love but the other wasn’t able to hear it.  For one of them, intimacy and sex equaled love and if they weren’t present then love couldn’t be either.  For the other the early morning pot of coffee, carefully prepared lunches for the road and dinners to come home to was love.  That spouse was screaming I LOVE YOU with every cup, every sandwich, and every pot roast but might have well been speaking Greek.

How often we speak past each other.  How often we miss the signs because we don’t speak Greek.  How often do we not hear the other as they are yelling I LOVE YOU just because we expect sex instead of sandwiches or we want independence and any offers of thoughtfulness are experienced as oppressive?

What was God thinking, really, putting us here expecting to find someone to love.  What was God thinking having us bump up against each other and need to navigate the pheromone minefield as well as learning yet another love language to speak AND to understand it!

I live in a world of words – one where thoughts are not only easily expressed but necessary to say out loud (or in writing). The older I get the more I understand how freakish this makes me but love to me means being fully known by another – and loved anyway.

I don’t believe that there is one right person out there.  I don’t believe that we need to be in love to be complete.  I don’t believe that those of us who live single are somehow merely a half of a whole. I don’t believe that hormones and pheromones trump all else but that they should be there for a relationship to work. But no matter the trials, I do believe that we are meant to be in relationship – that we are meant to be fully known and fully loved by another – but I also wish it wasn’t so damn hard.