Bell Hooks
BODY LANGUAGE
In her first book, The Bluest Eye, novelist Toni Morrison identifies the idea of romantic love as one ”of the most destructive ideas in the history of modern thought”. Its destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, perpetuated by so much romantic lore, stands in the way of our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy, we substitute romance for love.
The mass media would have us believe that women are the architects and the planners. Everyone likes to imagine that women are romantics, sentimental about love, that men follow where women lead. Even in non- heterosexual relationships, the paradigms of leader and follower often prevail, with one person assuming the role deemed feminine and another the designated masculine role.
No doubt it was someone playing the role of leader who conjured up the notion that we ”fall in love”, that we lack choice and decision when choosing a partner because when the chemistry is present, when the click is there, it just happens, it takes control. This way of thinking seems especially useful for men who are socialised to be out of touch with what they feel.
In the essay Love and Need, Thomas Merton contends: ”The expression to ‘fall in love’ reflects a peculiar attitude towards love and life itself – a mixture of fear, awe, fascination and confusion. It implies suspicion, doubt, hesitation in the presence of something unavoidable, yet not fully reliable.” If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fail. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.
Erotic attraction often serves as the catalyst for an intimate connection between two people, but it is not a sign of love. Exciting, pleasurable sex can take place between two people who do not even know each other. Yet the vast majority of males in our society are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love. Seduced by erotic desire, they often end up in relationships with partners with whom they share no common interests or values.
Women rarely choose men solely on the basis of erotic connection. While most females acknowledge the importance of sexual pleasure, they recognise that it is not the only ingredient needed to build strong relationships. The sexism of stereotyping women as care-givers did make it acceptable for women to articulate emotional needs. Women who have only named their erotic hunger in the wake of permission given by the feminist movement have always been able to speak their hunger for love. But this does not mean that we find the love we long for. Shared sexual passion can be a sustaining and binding force in a troubled relationship, but it is not the proving ground for love.
Even though sex matters, most of us are no more able to articulate sexual needs and longing than we are able to speak our desire for love. Ironically, the presence of life- threatening sexually transmitted diseases has become the reason more couples communicate with each other about erotic behaviour. Where once knowing nothing was the basis for excitement and erotic intensity, knowing more is now the basis.
Cultural acceptance of this shift shows that we are all capable of changing our attitudes about ”falling in love”. We can acknowledge the ”click” we feel when we meet someone new as just that – a mysterious sense of connection that may or may not have anything to do with love.
How different things might be if, rather than saying ”I am in love”, we said ”I am loving” or ”I will love”. Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language.
I have learned over the years that we may meet a true love and that our lives may be transformed by such an encounter even when it doesn’t lead to sexual pleasure, committed bonding or even sustained contact.The myth of true love – that fairy- tale vision of two souls who meet, join and live happily ever after – is the stuff of childhood fantasy. True love does not always lead to happily ever after, and when it does, sustaining love still takes work.
Usually we imagine that true love will be intensely pleasurable and romantic, full of love and light. In fact, true love is all about work. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wisely observed: ”Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure was more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work.”
The essence of true love is mutual recognition – two individuals seeing each other as they really are. We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When our real self appears in its entirety, when the good behaviour becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken away, disappointment comes. All too often, individuals feel, when feelings are hurt and hearts are broken, that it was a case of mistaken identity, that the loved one is a stranger. They saw what they wanted to see rather than what was really there.
True love is a different story. When it happens, individuals usually feel in touch with each other’s core identity. Embarking on such a relationship is frightening precisely because we feel there is no place to hide. We are known.
The heartbeat of true love is the willingness to reflect on one’s actions and to process and communicate this reflection with the loved one. Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.
Most of us have not been raised in homes where we have seen two deeply loving grown folks talking together. We do not see this on television or at the movies. And how can any of us communicate with men who have been told all their lives that they should not express what they feel? Choosing to be fully honest, to reveal ourselves, is risky. The experience of true love gives us the courage to risk.
As long as we are afraid to risk, we cannot know love. Hence the truism: ”Love is letting go of fear.” Our hearts connect with lots of folks in a lifetime, but most of us will go to our graves with no experience of true love. This is in no way tragic, as most of us run the other way when true love comes near. Since true love sheds light on those aspects of ourselves we may wish to deny or hide, enabling us to see ourselves clearly and without shame, it is not surprising that so many individuals who say they want to know love turn away when such love beckons.
No matter how often we turn our hearts away – or how stubbornly we refuse to believe in its magic – true love exists. Everyone wants it, even those who claim to have given up hope. But not everyone is ready. True love appears only when our hearts are ready.