As a romantic (to the nth degree), I love being in love, falling in love. I watch movies and read books where characters fall in love over and over again. Not the same characters, but a variety of books and movies. Just to be clear.
I’ve fallen in love, am in love now (with my husband); I know the pull of love. I also know the difference between being in love and feeling an attraction for someone, chemistry with someone.
When we are falling in love with someone, we feel all that exciting chemistry pulsing through our bodies, muddling our brains. It’s wonderful! Especially when that other person is feeling the same thing with us. But be careful not to mistake falling in love and chemistry and attraction with BEING in love. The old “love at first sight”, so we got married. That’s just the attraction stage, what happens next is what leads to love.
That’s where you need to be careful and mindful of your circumstances before you act on that initial attraction. Clear your mind before you make a move.
You can’t help who you fall in love with. That’s only partly true.
I would agree you can’t control who you feel attracted to (or who you don’t feel attracted to), but you can absolutely keep from falling in love. How? You walk away. People do it all the time. Married, committed people do it all the time. If you follow the attraction, you will likely fall in love. That’s where the choice comes in.
We don’t just fall in love with someone the way we might trip and fall while walking and not paying attention. At some point, we make a choice that allows us (or leads us) to fall for someone. We act on our attraction, or we walk away.
You can recognize your attraction, but you absolutely don’t need to do anything about it. In fact, I would argue that if you are in a committed relationship, most especially a marriage, you should NOT act on your outside attractions. You may not be able to help that you have them, being human and all, but you have absolute power as to how you behave from that point on.
Movies will often have us believing a character was powerless when they met another character that pulled them from the original person they were with and presumably loved. That it was all out of their control, it just happened.
But that is false. It’s always in our control. We lose control if we follow the attraction, but not before that point. Always keep in mind that if you play the game and mindlessly follow your attraction, you risk breaking your partner’s heart, or your marriage vows. Now, if marriage vows aren’t that important to you, then don’t make them in the first place.
The bottom line is that you need to ask yourself how important your current relationship is to you. Because there is a huge difference between chemistry/attraction with someone, and being/falling in love with someone. Don’t confuse the two, or use the attraction as an excuse to destroy a relationship when you had a choice all along.
You have a choice. Make your choice, don’t make excuses or false claims. Your choice, your fault.
But most of all, getting back to being a hopeless romantic, I want you to fall in love, to be in love, to treasure that relationship and not take it for granted, or walk away because you miss falling in love, or whatever myriad reasons you can come up with for following the fleeting attraction (if you let it be) to a lovely stranger who clearly feels the same attraction for you.
I hope for all of you the best of luck in love!
Happy reading!
Inspirational quote:
“If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.”—Princess Diana
Book Recommendation/suggestion:
Everything that has us falling in love along with the characters while simultaneously treasuring what and who we have in our real lives.
Here are some suggestions of books that have a strong love story element within a story:
“The Kiss Quotient” by Helen Hoang
“Heart Bones” by Colleen Hoover
“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
“London Falling” by Emma Carr
“Along The Infinite Sea” by Beatriz Williams
“The Great Alone” by Kristin Hannah
And of course “Cadence Beach” by Linda Juliano…
And so many millions of other wonderful books to be discovered. I can’t possibly list even half of the ones I’ve read and enjoyed. Not even close!
Images provided by Unsplash Free, Nick Fewings and Anthony Tran