“I don’t believe I have ever experienced love,” says the woman opposite me.
I was sitting in a circle with five people I had never met before. We were answering the question, “How has my experience of love changed over my life?”
It was part of an event run by A StrangerKind and Lekker Chats to encourage deeper conversations.
We all stared at her. None of us truly believed this. We started asking questions.
What about your parents? No. Father gone. Mother hated me.
Lovers? Married twice. No love there.
Children? Yes. One. But we are friends. It’s not love.
Animals? A cat. And you know what cats are like.
Friends? One. I have one friend.
There was a silence. Regardless of whether there was, or wasn’t love in these relationships, she had never felt it.
A still reflective sadness fell on the group. What must that be like?
I started asking other questions. What about the non-specific love that comes from receiving a massage from a professional who can touch you in ways that let your body know it’s safe?
What about when you are floating in a Camps Bay tidal pool and looking at the Twelve Apostles as the sun rises, marvelling at the ridiculous magnificence of this Cape Town, this South Africa, this Earth?
What about when you eat food prepared by people who clearly love what they do? Salt in Kalk Bay does this to me. I don’t know who is in that kitchen, but they are in love.
I am not sure with what or whom, but you can taste it in every minty pea, flatbread and piece of pork belly.
She looked at me like I was insane. She didn’t know what I was talking about. I started to believe her.
She had never felt love. Not in an intimate way that happens between people, and not in a non-specific way when it starts inside you as you let the world and its delights into your body and heart.
But in a way I got it. This love I was describing isn’t the love we are told we deserve.
We live in a world obsessed with romantic love. We are looking for the lightning in the bottle moment of intense connection.
It’s frantic and compulsive and makes us take insane risks. It’s also isolating.
When I am in this feeling, I don’t want to share. Every moment away feels like it’s been stolen from me. But is this love?
The poets would call it passion. In my more cynical moments, I call it temporary psychosis.
What I do know is it doesn’t last. The French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, said that passion lasts up to three years.
If my experience is anything to go by, it’s mostly much shorter than that. But he wasn’t all doom and gloom.
The are two stages after passion, Intimacy and Stabilisation.
The thing for me is, I have all these stages in my friendships. It starts similar to a love affair.
“She is so funny, smart and insightful. I love her clothes and her hair and how she always knows what food to order. And her Instagram memes! So funny!”
Then it moves from this place to a real knowing and trusting. Seeing the imperfect human behind all it all and loving them for all of it. And finally the casual intimacy of forever friends.
More honest, more spacious, even less judgement and the best part, even more laughter.
I like these stages. I particularly like the stability phase, so why am I so scared of it when I think of falling in love with a potential romantic partner?
Why do I feel like passion alone needs to sustain the connection?
I can’t see that the depth of the next two stages are where the deliciousness is. I am sure we could work it out.
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