The Immutability of Love - "Where Did the Love Go?"

(Photo by Lisa Munkeby - Lmunkeby on Instagram)

So, is Love immutable (unchangeable)?

Meaning, can we fall out of love with someone? Can love end once it begins?

Deep inside of me I know that love IS immutable. That love can NOT end. This is a knowing. Knowings are very different then intellectual understandings for me. I often can not explain them. My mind seeks to discredit them, but I find it most useful to instead use my mind to figure out some real life examples to prove or disprove this.

I have two relationships that come to mind for me concerning this “thesis” (the Immutability of Love). One was a long-term romantic relationship the other was a long-term friendship. I’ll talk about each.

Near the “end” of the romantic relationship I said the words “I don’t feel love for you anymore.” (ouch) It was the closest I could get to my truth at that moment. But, was this true? My heart has been troubled about these words since I said them… so I therefore know it was not true.

What was true? Where had the love gone?

If love had not gone, then perhaps the extent of the love that I felt was in question. Meaning, the inaccurate part was the word “anymore.” What was more true would have been to say “I am waking up to the knowing that I have not had as much love as I need to have for you.”

OR …

If love had not gone, then perhaps it was a statement having to do with the love I COULD feel in THAT MOMENT. So it would have been more accurate for me to have said “Right now, I can not feel love for you.”

OR … even dicier

Perhaps, I shut down to the love in order to be able to LEAVE the relationship that had reached a limitation for me. Which means what I was really saying was “I need to leave; and I love you; so I have to shut this love down to even enable me to leave.”

(sigh)

This was the most true. (for me in this situation) and, interestingly, the other two alternative truths in some way as well; I couldn’t feel the love at the moment and the feeling of deep, deep love that I craved I had not felt before. Had I understood the immutability of love at that time, I could have consoled myself and him much better.

Then I think of the second relationship, the long-term friendship. After the friendship essentially “ended,” I found myself literally plagued with thoughts of my ex-friend. They were often judgmental thoughts, angry thoughts, not good things to be carrying around inside of me. As much as I would desire to let this go, forgive myself and her, it just freakin’ hung on. and hung on… THIS is when I got curious.

If it was hanging on and forgiveness didn’t move it… then why?

Finally, I hit on my answer, an answer very similar to the previous situation. My belief system had connected needing to “end or leave a relationship” with the belief that no love presently existed (or conversely - if love exists then the relationship must as well - this has kept me in many an unhealthy friendship).

I admit, that co-existing in love and the end of a relationship is painful - it is frankly close to the experience of death of someone I love. In this situation, I have love and nowhere to outwardly manifest it. This is the essence of grief.

I finally found peace when I realized that, Yes, I have love for her and we have no relationship presently. I reopened the love channel allowing myself to feel the grief.

Love can not be ended. Once it is opened. It is opened. It can be covered over (causing ourselves suffering) by patterns, beliefs, shutting down a part of our heart. But it can not be ended.

Being able to love whole-heartedly when the recipient is not tangibly in your life; this is the healing path.

I learned this when my Dad passed away this year; letting myself feel all the love I feel for him (period). I’m discovering the gift of honestly whole-heartedly loving without any other requirement for the relationship.

(The good /bad news is) Love doesn’t end. But relationships do. Some through death, some through conscious decisions, and some through patterns.

In the end (for my own life and heart) it is my ability to keep the love channel completely open that keeps me moving towards wholeness.

It is what was meant by “love thy enemies.”

It is also why love is SO vulnerable - because we know on some level that it is a “One Way Ticket” and that on the other end will likely be a loss, grief. I suspect it is why I like happy ending movies - so I can avoid looking into the future. This is why so many of us don’t risk fully loving.

The question is - How long do I need to love fully to make it worth the risk of loss? a decade? a year? a week? a day?

is a micro-second of full love worth the risk?

(Sink into your own knowing for your answer to that) ;)