amen.
mad, passionate love ‘n kisses to Tara Gentile for e-mailing this print by theloveshop to me today – and for knowing that I’d adore it. mwah.
Mad, Passionate, Extraordinary Love
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- Pingback: Regret Is A Luxury And A Vice | Cleavage by Kelly Diels. on June 12, 2010
While I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, I think it’s setting up a false choice. We’re rarely faced with the option of Mad, Passionate, Extraordinary Love or Mediocre Love. If those were the choices the answer is obvious.
But we’re faced with three choices Mediocre Love, No Love and The Possibility of Mad Love sometime in the future. Our assumption about the possibility of Mad Love in the future is informed by our experiences in the past.
Depending on our experiences, we may feel Mad Love is remote possibility in which case it’s better to have Mediocre Love. This sign is a plug for a worldview that says, you chances of finding Mad Love are better than you think. Wait for it.
I subscribe to the more practical view of, don’t set your sights so high and you’re more likely to be satisfied.
We should all get Mad Love, we should all have healthy children, we should all be able to eat decedent desserts without gaining weight but we have to be prepared for the fact life doesn’t always turn out the way we want it to.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on June 11th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
@Siddhartha, I’m inevitably delighted when you throw your two cents in…because it is always more like a dollar.
I used to be obsessed with butterflies, infatuation, New Relationship Energy. I thought those things were indicators that Mad, Passionate, Extraordinary Love was imminent.
Now, I’m thinking Mad, Passionate, Extraordinary love is way more mundane than we think.
It is a choice. It is an action. It radical devotion. It is defending your lover to someone else even before checking to see if the story is true or if your lover is in the wrong or in the right. It is showing up even when you don’t feel like it. It is giving space even when you’d like a hit of attention but the other person just tapped out. It is giving attention even when every cell in your body screams I Vant To Be Alone. It is making someone a meal – with love – just to make them feel good.
Mad Passionate Love, I think, is actually quite boring in execution but fierce in commitment and presence. It is an ethos.
And that’s what makes me weak in the knees.
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Now I get it. Expect Mad Love, but know that Mad Love is a state of mind not an Earth shattering event. I like that a lot more. After all, we can all live in a way that makes other people feel supremely loved.
As you said, it can be a decision we make rather than something that happens to us.
But now I’m faced with: Mad Love sounds like a lot of work.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on June 11th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
@Siddhartha, indeed. Mad Love IS a lot of work.
I have mad love for my kids, and for writing, and this community thang. I have mad love for Dave Doolin. I have mad love for my sisters. I have mad love for Julie Roads, my bff Heather, and Amanda Farough. I’m mad-loving my League of Extraordinary Bloggers clients (I stalk them and provide unsolicited advice. As does Dave. With love, of course). I think I kinda might be getting to maybe mad-loving my new ‘friend’ F. And zut alors, all of it IS a lot of work.
As Dave would say, “High-quality problem.”
I can live with this kind of abundance. I may need more naps, but I can do it. I don’t drink at the fountain of ‘balance’.
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And that is *exactly* the kind of mad love I was thinking when I read it the first time.
Mad love for your life, and all the parts in it. And I’ve got that, baby, except for just one part (one part, which, sadly, at the moment, pays the bills). The trick I have trouble with sometimes is saving some of that sapped energy from the mediocre necessity to throw at the mad love when I can.
I’m working on it.
And I’m feeling your mad love in every word.
Hugs and butterflies,
~T~
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first, mad passionate love ‘n kisses right back at ya, kelly!
and second, love that conversation. ya know why i like this blog so much? posts AND comments: i can just absorb. what i want to say has been said and i can appreciate all the mad passionate thought & consideration going around. love that.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on June 11th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
@tara – scoutie girl, @maggiedammit just tweeted this:
The people who read my blog are clearly smarter than I am. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
I have the same “problem”. And it is a grrrrreat one to have.
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Oh I love this! But much more so when taken into the context of the comments between you and Siddhartha.
It seems to me that the temptation to accept Mediocre love is less a matter of Mad Love being unobtainable/unrealistic (and thus leading one to settle for something less), and more a matter of an incomplete definition of Mad Love.
I know that when I was younger, I thought that Mad Love was that thing you saw in movies and read about in romance novels. You know the type; two strangers meet, their eyes lock, invisible (or not, depending on the movie) fireworks explode as the realization hits them, “he/she is the one!” Her bosoms heave, his groin aches, they join bodies and become one person, one soul, blah blah blah…
Is it any wonder then, that I was so disappointed in my own first attempts at love? Once the sparks fizzled out, it just didn’t fit that definition of Mad Love anymore, so I assumed I must have fallen out of love.
The funny thing is, that sort of love is exhausting… even if I could find a love that matched that level of energy, unceasingly, I don’t think I would want it. And if I tried to want it, I think it would likely burn me to a crisp, till there was nothing left of me for anything else…
And thank you! for including our other loves in this definition; of course, the love I have for my Beau is the warmest snuggiest purringist kind of Mad Love
But I also have Mad Crazy Incredible Love for my mother, my sister, my insanely awesome niece. The Love I have for my pets is Ridiculously Laughingly Mad. And so many friends that I’m Crazy in Love with!
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Eros is in the mundane.
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You only get to experience MPEL when:
1 – you’ve decided you are willing to accept it,
2 – you’ve decided you are willing to give it,
3 – you’ve decided you are willing to work hard at it
Then, you do all the mundane little things, the small errands and chores, the little smiles and touches and warm words, over and over again like building a sand castle one little dribble at a time and reworking whatever gets washed away in the tide of life and eventually you find you have been building intimacy. And the intimacy builds into magic and eventually ecstasy and you have MPEL.
It’s not something that falls on your head. It’s something you decide to do and work hard at it. Yes, it’s an ethos, a state of being.
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“Love!” It has so many definitions. On this post I recognize, INTUITION, DEVOTION, LOYALTY, INFATUATION, ENTHUSIASM, ROMANCE, SEXUALITY and PASSION. I interpret Tara’s love poster as relating to a CONNECTION, whatever that union might be. In terms of a loving connection, what must it it contain to me be meaningful and constructive? A loving connection demands TRUTH. Without truth, love disintegrates into something else me might label as “love,” maybe even calling it mediocre love, but it is not love. It’s deception, or at the very least, delusion.
Reread that poster, substituting the word TRUTH for LOVE, and see if it still applies to your belief system.
Irv
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Loving my boyfriend (and being loved in return) makes me feel extraordinary. It also sometimes makes me mad. And there is room in our relationships for us both to live passionately.
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I can’t help but throw my hat in the ring! I agree with the idea that love, life is a matter of the mind. I see so many people with a mind set of mediocrity. Sure most days have a healthy dose of mediocrity, but we don’t have to be so damned willing to settle for it!
What’s wrong with wanting the breast heaving, nipple hardening, groin aching, hard-on desire for love and life? Will it come everyday, every moment? Only in the movies. Should we settle for mediocrity? Only in lives that spend most of their time in dark lifeless corners filled with longing and despair.
I choose to have a hard-on for life and sometimes being disappointed rather than settle for a mediocre life and and occasionally have my socks blown off!
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This is also like a lesson in how to wake up your existing love and make it more mad and extraordinary. Yes, I need to practice more radical devotion to my husband. Sometimes I poke fun and that’s just not mad love. I shall madly and deeply defend him, listen to him and love him, because he’s a really good man. I’m feelin’ it. Love your blog.
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Very perceptive and insightful people here. Glad I ran across the site in a Facebook re-post!
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I want that love – I keep losing it BUT, this reminded me I can have love “MAD love” for not just “romantic love”
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I love the conversation in the comments.
And the poster is amazing.
If it was mine I’d create two versions, one for love and one for life.
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Mad, passionate, extraordinary – all words I would use to describe life and love. You are so wise, Kelly. We work at what we love and that means we love the work we must do. It is so worth the work to have that feeling and that love.
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I absolutely love the poster. It is extraordinary. But yes, the “mad love” thing can be deceptive if taken at face value. I agree with what was said in the first few comments between Kelly and Siddhartha.
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