6/29/2011 - when we talk about love. . .

This post will be about love.

I'm not sure if that is supposed to be a disclaimer, a selling point, or a warning, but I thought I should put it out there.  I should probably also say that I have no idea where this is going (in contract to, you know, my other posts which are all so masterfully planned).  Oh, and that I am not good at writing about love, and really, it's all been said before anyway (and let me count the ways. . .).

Of course, I am grateful for all the love in my life--the love of family, friends, partner and pet.  But I've been compelled to think heavily on love in its romantic sense after a conversation I had with a 'sometimes-acquaintance.'

Jack and I met a long time ago at the gym (which seems to be one of the only places I meet new people).  We get along fine, but I would never think to seek him out for conversation, and I haven't seen him in person for over a year, ever since we stopped going to the same gym.  We probably chat through Gmail once or twice a month, usually when he initiates a conversation, and usually when he is caught in the throes of relationship turbulence.

Yesterday, his little orange chat window popped up on my Gmail screen late in the afternoon, and sparing any greeting, he launched right into the meat of his thoughts: "OK, Mr. Psych Major, I have a hypothetical question for you, just something I'm wondering."

Already, my mental red flag started waving; my bullshit radar beeped.

"Do you think it's possible to be in love with two people at the same time?"  I didn't have to be a psychology major to deduce that this question was not hypothetical at all.  "His name is Brian, and we met at a party," he explained after I pressed for details.

And I don't think I have to go into any more detail to really describe the situation at hand.  Again, it's all been said before.

He wanted advice.  I think.  What he didn't know was that I hate giving advice on relationships.  Who am I to even entertain the possibility that I might have an answer to love's constantly evolving questions?  We talked around and around.  Jack and his partner love each other, but neither are happy.  They have trouble communicating, so neither wants to broach any sensitive subject for fear of chaos.  They have an "open" relationship, where they are free to sleep with whomever they choose (within set parameters), and while it has been problematic, neither are willing to sacrifice this freedom in order to possibly fix those problems.

I "listened," toggled between my Gmail window and the in-progress business requirements document I had due by the end of the day.  What I heard was a lot of talk about love: Jack's love for his partner, his blossoming love for the new guy, a love for himself, even, and the responsibility he feels to pursue his own happiness.  He quantified love at various points of their relationship, how it measured less now than a year ago, which was less than when they first met.  He described love as a desire to make the other person happy, but only to the extent that he would be mutually satisfied.  To love, he said, is to make sacrifices.

I read through the transcript of our chat before I started writing this post, and it would seem that one of us knew a lot about love.  The other did not.

I don't know what love means.  The more I think about it, the less I can say with certainty that I ever had any idea.  I don't remember the last time I told Sam that I love him, even though I do.  I can't even think back to a time when I thought of myself as being in love with Sam;.what does that even mean?  We live our lives together, come home to each other, care for a dog together, but is that love?  We have sex; is that love?  Fight, laugh, plan; love?

Raymond Carver wrote a short story called "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," and when I read it in college, I remember thinking that it disclosed nothing to me about love that I either could use to define love or didn't already know.  Now, I wonder if that is all there is to love: unknown, and to define it, capture it in words is to slowly choke the life out of it.

Jack and I ended our conversation with no real resolution, and I had not expected to reach one.  I asked him if he really loved his partner.  He said yes.  I then asked if he would consider leaving his partner for the new guy, and he replied, "Yes, if I thought it could be beneficial to the both of us."

Is that love?