Falling in love as an adult can be terrifying, mysterious and sublime. Nearly thirty years old, a single father and never married, in many ways I had given up such notions as romantic love or falling in love. However, on the 4th of July in 2007 that changed. I did not really acknowledge or appreciate the idea of fate, but that did not seem to matter. Standing on the wisdom of almost thirty years experience, I soon discovered that despite my very rational evaluation of romantic love I had missed something, maybe even the most important something that romantic love has to offer.
The air was heavy with summer and the sunset stretched its final calls across the sky. Distant stars began appearing, beckoning nightfall. I was meeting an old friend downtown when I was suddenly embraced by a woman I had long adored, but never had a chance to really get to know. It seemed we were both in a lucid state, poised for something momentous. She and her friend folded effortlessly into our company. The discussion was vibrant and genuine. It had the exuberance of high school without all the awkwardness. The exchange between us was deep and clear like it had been there all along, a forgotten signal on an old car stereo. My friend glanced at me with a nod of satisfaction and approval. Suddenly, bursts of sound and light erupted from the rooftop behind us, showering everyone in glowing embers. Fireworks. Just in case I had any doubts.
By my late twenties I had pretty much decided that romantic love was misleading and a fallacy. It was like a great party that regardless of its brilliance and grandeur eventually must end. The longing and heartache eventually left me calloused and somewhat resentful of the cultural product I had blindly consumed. It doesn’t take much insight to realize America’s obsession with romantic love. Our movie theaters are virtual temples of worship to the contemporary cult. I began cultivating an interest in seemingly less ambitions and more realistic experiences like, commitment and abiding friendship. What I did not realize was that with the loss of romantic love I had also lost touch with my vulnerability, my sensibility, and that intangible yet essential animating experience of a man’s soul, what Carl Jung called Anima.
As a practicing psychotherapist I have found that contemporary clinical approaches to romantic love can be pretty brutal. Clinicians often cite the latest research in neurobiology to offer scientific explanations identifying chemicals, neural pathways and regions of the brain to account for the experience of falling in love. While these models often end up providing more concrete terms than say Freud’s psychosexual perspective, it may also be that current approaches have only replaced metaphors and symbols with explanations and data. Although in their own right useful, these things often have an invalidating effect on one’s most meaningful experiences. The question might become, what best honors the human experience? The old language of the Greeks Freud employed (Oedipus, Eros, Thanatos) opens the world of imagination, pointing us toward the mysterious and imaginal realm. Often, explanations disconnect and reduce while metaphors link and deepen.
A renewed perspective and experience of romantic love may offer something invaluable to human existence and our ability to contribute to relationships and culture. When we take the experience of romantic love literally, in other words when we do not recognize the archetypal projections it activates, and we do not embrace it as a symbol pointing toward something powerful, invigorating, mysterious and ultimately life-affirming, but beyond the literal, it is rendered lifeless. When the experience of romantic love can be appropriated to be a deeper calling into intrapersonal experience of the Self it can be freed from the immediate demands of the ego–the expectations that a human meet god/godess-like expectations. Romantic love can appropriate, make room for a deep and powerful relationship with another human being, because of the awakening and awareness it offers. Romantic love has the unique ability to initiate the individual into an inner journey. Experiencing romantic love as an adult was not something I had expected. But until I had the experience I had not realized how much of life’s everyday richness I had been missing, and I did not realize how much still laid asleep deep inside me waiting patiently to surface.
Although the relationship that summer did not last, and I was left with an enduring, dull ache in my heart–perhaps she was as well–it was an initiatory experience I treasure with little regret. Romantic love seems to touch upon an essential human experience. It engages a lost, perhaps shadow–unconscious–part of the psyche. Romantic love can offer the sacred opportunity of authentically experiencing the other while also being open to a new experience of oneself. A call to a deeper relationship with with Self is never completed, however, to answer the call of romantic love is a golden opportunity to engage that courageous inward journey.
