One of the strongest and most common desires is to fall in love. But is romantic love love or anesthesia?
Last update: October 07, 2019
If you are not in love, one of your dreams may be to experience this state and enjoy all that a relationship can bring to you. This is a very common desire. But is it love or anesthesia?
Romantic love is said to be the only great utopia of the postmodern era. It is also said to have become a kind of collective anesthesia, which in many cases ends in disappointment.
Romantic love: love or anesthesia?
There are those who go much further. It would seem that this desire to fall in love does not actually arise from an intrinsic need, but is the result of the weak manipulation of "an industry of affections". It would be a kind of "domestication" that aims to induce us to reduce our emotional world to a single level: romantic love.
For this reason there are hundreds of messages that indirectly advertise an idea: falling in love is equivalent to finding the panacea. They convey to us the idea that our life plan will not be complete until we have found the love of our life. Furthermore, this love is supposed to make us much stronger emotionally.
At this point, we can ask ourselves a question: are we in search of true love or what we aspire to is to fill our emotional void with a romantic ideal?
Sensuality often hastens the growth of love, just as the root remains weak and easy to tear.
-Friedrich Nietzsche-
Is the desire to fall in love love or anesthesia?
Many people have developed an uncontrollable thirst for intense emotions. They assume that trying a lot is also feeling alive. That need for intense emotions is more present in those who feel that their life is boring and meaningless. We therefore resort to the so-called extreme experiences.
These dizzying experiences are, however, fleeting by their very nature. It could not be otherwise. If they repeated themselves very often or if they lasted longer than they should, they would gradually lose their exciting and intense character.
As a result, they are bound to be volatile. They cause a moment to be experienced with considerably greater intensity, but at the same time they are short-lived. A lot of people want this kind of love. Blinding and brutal. They dream that they stay that long. Because of their expectations, they tend to be easily disappointed and in a very intense way. In these cases, you have to ask yourself if what they want is to fall in love or become anesthetized.
Selfishness for two
At the origin of these frustrating misunderstandings there is exactly a strong distortion of the concept of romantic love, typical of our times. There are many people who do not know how to solve the problems they encounter in the course of life and who seek a veil of illusion in romantic love.
Almost everyone has big plans for themselves, usually associated with success in the eyes of others. In this logic, the partner will be someone capable of stimulating or contributing to these goals. That is, a piece that fits into that narcissistic puzzle. Reducing life to this idea usually causes a feeling of existential emptiness: an icy cold that is accentuated whenever reality does not coincide with the pattern.
Those who think this way shy away from two ideas. The first is to understand that there are ideals and values ​​that go far beyond social success. The second, that a healthy and normal life is also made up of boredom, monotony, frustration and sadness at different times and in various circumstances.
Falling in love does not make us complete
Nobody lies when they say, in a romantic way, that love is everything, it is the essence of life. The often overlooked aspect is that this statement does not refer only to love as a couple, but to the multiple dimensions of this powerful feeling. From self-love, through love for work, to love for humanity and even for certain ideals.
Falling in love is not an experience that can only be lived as a couple. Relationships are only a small part of that immense constellation that defines love. And, it must be said, it is not necessarily the most complete expression of that love in capital letters that we tend to idealize so much.
It is important to understand that love does not cancel or eliminate other more bizarre aspects of life. Contradiction, emptiness or boredom do not automatically disappear by the work and grace of love. It is in those difficult realities that, in fact, a real affection is best able to assert itself and take root. Love - that of ourselves and that of others - does not lead to heaven, but to a deeper and more transcendental human reality.
