Irv

When I finally met my husband, there was a stage of floating euphoria following by more of what @Irving Podolsky described,”Ah, there he is.” Knowing, trust. He proposed four weeks after we met, and that knowing has kept us through the boring and difficult times.

So I think infatuation works differently for different folks.

“All is well, my friend. Everything IS, as it should be.” And they reminded me that I had known her forever, in the past, and into the future.”

Image all of us living in such an experience with each other.

Ironically a feeling that is intangible yet seems very real, like oxygen.

I believe the feeling of which the word “infatuation” implies can be and will be interpreted differently by all of us based on our experiences such as loves, crushes, desires and yes beliefs. Otherwise known as our attachments.

The only reason any of us may challenge, argue or agree with each other on what infatuation is, is because of our attachment to the word.

If I live without attachment then I am to live without infatuation, accumulation and the puppy dog love we imply it to be about. But yet I can still have the experience without an attachment to the word.

Talk about infatuation to a movie star who has a stalker, they would have a much different definition (attachment) to it than a woman who is infatuated with her BF who adores her and provides for her in ways that she feels fulfilled and loved.

Embrace your infatuation whatever it means to you without the word. What you may resist persists and therefore you may head for unhealthy heights of attachment. Attempting to box it in may inhibit your ability to be open to the next experience.

I’m just choosing to experience love as it comes in it’s many forms. Doing my best without attachments. I appreciate it for the experience but I’m not attached to keeping it. In my past that’s when I’ve created the most suffering.

Maybe that’s love, maybe that’s crazy. I feel good about it and that’s what matters to me.

I love what Irving said above:

“So from my own limited experience, for me, infatuation is needing. Love is knowing.”

Much of what he shared resonates with me. Because he implies living “without” attachment or to meaning. At least to me

Wonderful thoughtful and intelligent post. Makes for great conversation.

Much love Kelly

Three times in my life, in my teens, my twenties and again in my thirties, I’ve felt like I was floating off the ground in a glowing bliss, wrapped in ecstasy, but also painfully craving the rush that made me feel more alive and yet more wanting than ever before. As if I were dying of thirst, I needed to kiss and inhale the energy in their their lips. I needed to drink it, and there was never enough. I needed to be inside their minds and souls, and I needed them in me. It took only minutes for the trance to envelope my will in tightening shrouds, and days to fight my way out of those suffocating cocoons. Why did I need to escape my coffin of gloom? Because I had lost the source that fed the flames. In all three experiences, my physical connection to those feminine fire-souls lasted only hours, but the embers left in my heart glowed for days. And that hurt. Badly. During that time, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I could not think of anything else but gulping the air for more of the love that had left me. Was I infatuated? I don’t know. But to this day I wonder, did those girls feel what I felt? Or did I create my own heaven and hell?

Interestingly, there was no cascade of heaven and hell when I met the girl I later married; no rush of hot fire, no cravings, no pulses of lust, no vacuum that needed to be filled by a butterfly soul. What I did feel, was the lightness of freedom, the freedom to be me, nurtured by a confidence where I could expose my deepest secrets, doubts and fears, knowing I was safe within her kind soul cradling my heart. Those knowing blue eyes spoke to me. They said, “All is well, my friend. Everything IS, as it should be.” And they reminded me that I had known her forever, in the past, and into the future. From deep inside I knew I could trust her. I KNEW that! Because no yearning did I have to be one with this girl. I WAS one with her! And I felt so comfortable understanding this truth, that every cell of my body screamed, “YES! Marry her!” And I did, in a two-person ceremony meant only for us, three and half weeks after we met. You see, there was no doubt that we were meant to be together. Not even a hint. And there isn’t today, many years later.

So from my own limited experience, for me, infatuation is needing. Love is knowing.

Irv

Infatuation is the spark, the beginning, the catalyst that turns two thinking beings into a hot melt of together. Anyone can claim they don’t believe in it, and it’s denial, plain and simple. It exists, we feel its glow, its heat, its resonance…

And when it fades, a lot of us react and think we aren’t melted together anymore, that somehow without that constant application of heat that we become asunder. But that doesn’t have to be.

I am grateful everyday that that was not, is not, the story of my man and I.

Why did it work for us? Who knows! Youth and all its lack of baggage? Respect? Patience (really?)? I can’t tell you the answer, only that every day I am grateful to be on this journey with my best friend beside me, connected to me, in so many ways.

Even still, I love that you wrote this! You’ve reminded me that it’s time for a date night. Yippeee!

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~