What does it mean to be in love?

-Hey, sweetheart.

-Hey, how are you doing?

-Good, we are here together after all.

-I have to tell you something upfront.

-Yes?

-I’m in love with someone …

-What do you mean you are love?

-I mean I want to possess him like a ghost, his body, his mind, his life. I want it to all be mine.

-I have the same feelings about you.

-You are in trouble!

-I know.

I guess he is right in putting this into question, what does it really mean to love someone. I have a handful of good friends from both sexes, we go out, spend time together, watch movies, hold hands, walk leisurely, sped special moments, and yet these are all friends, intimate or close or casual. Then there is the one person whom we love, and in the surface we do all the same things together plus sex, or better say we make love, but then the difference is huge, it is not only sex.

I really am not concerned with the question of why we love who we love, which is under the context of “The Social Animal”, all I want to share in here is the experience of being in love and how it is different from other experiences both in external and internal manifestation.

First and foremost I believe, being in love is about becoming selfless and carless about oneself, in a sense that the other takes priority in everything. For instance watching a movie that, in principle, can be a joyful experience if it is to our taste, becomes a chore that we will happily go through if the other enjoys it and we will painfully tolerate if the other does not enjoy it. To me, this is applicable to whatever we do, be it walking, eating, making love or dancing under rain. The concept of being in love is about losing oneself, being aimless, or floating on the surface and letting the other take you wherever he goes.

Secondly, it is a bout possession. Being in love is not about being selfish and wanting to have most of the other, it is about a desire that cannot be controlled to the point of insanity. In love, we do not only want the ownership, or dominance, we want it all, flesh, bone, and soul. I am not sure if that can even be possible, but who says that love is rational. I think that is another angle of looking at it: in love we do not urge ourselves to be rational, to the contrary, we allow ourselves to drift to the margins of wisdom and insanity. It is the love after all that is in charge.

Lastly, being in love is being in pain with the intense feeling of uncertainty and ambiguity that overshadows all other feelings and takes the joy out of life like the vampire that sucks the livelihood out of body. Without the feeling of pain, we can’t really claim that we are experiencing love.

Am I really in love? Now, I am not sure! I really am not ...