“I just want to love you in all of the ways that you wanted, but were too afraid to believe that you deserved.”
~ JM Storm

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Love. We spend our whole lives trying to figure it out—and hoping to acquire it.

We spend money on it, and go without so many other things to have just a meager taste of it.

But in reality, all of this, all of these feelings called love exist for one of two reasons: we love someone because we should, or we love someone because we can’t help it.

It doesn’t get any more complicated or difficult than that, and we can categorize any relationship that’s falling apart, or even growing together, as one or the other.

We either love someone because we think we should, or we love someone because there is simply no way not to.

Perhaps even more simply, there’s the logical love or the crazy love.

In the end, sometimes love is just love, but for many of us the reasons why we possess those feelings become more important than the actual emotions.

Do any of us really want to be loved because someone feels obligated to?

Logical love—the love we feel toward someone because we think we should—is more commonplace than many of us would anticipate.

It’s the kind of love that holds together two people who have fallen out of love but don’t want to separate because of the children. Logical love binds two people together over financial distress and insecurity about the future, because sometimes the known, even if slightly miserable, is preferable. This is the kind of love that changes a one-night stand into a marriage proposal once two little lines appear on a pregnancy test.

Perhaps even scarier is the love that’s easy but never passionate. The one who comes from the right family, has the right job, and looks like the person you were raised thinking you would marry. You know the one. The person your family would approve of.

Whatever the reason, we love them because we think we should. We love them out of obligation, conformity, wanting life to be easy even though we all know it’s not meant to be.

This kind of love is physically there, but it lacks emotional and mental connection.

It’s not present, energetic or even passionate, but it’s there—just like a statue in a garden, collecting moss and making everything look good even as all those who see it wonder what its true purpose is.

The funny thing is that those of us in comparable situations think that no one can tell. We believe we cover it well, that the hand-holding and kisses on cheeks will somehow pass for true intimacy and connection.

In reality, though, love can masquerade as many things, but if it ain’t real, there ain’t nothing in the world we can do to make it feel like that.

That’s kind of the amazing thing about true love. It either is, or it isn’t.

There’s no in between, no maybes—just love that rocks us off our feet.

And that’s the second type of love we can experience—the crazy, nonsensical, “not loving you just isn’t an option” type of love.

This kind of love is apparent between two people before they even say they’re together. When they look at one another, it’s as if they’re saying more than they could with words, conveying more feelings through their eyes than all the sentences they utter.

It’s the kind of love that sneaks up on people. You know the kind. We pledge over and over again how wrong this person is for us, and we spend far too long outrunning them—only to finally surrender and realize they are everything we never hoped to find.

Yep, it’s that kind of love.

The kind that makes us move in together after a month, and marry after a few. Crazy love leaves others shaking their heads. They think we’re surely headed for divorce court, but that’s okay. They don’t know the secret that the best of things can’t ever be explained.

It’s love at first sight, or maybe first kiss.

It’s a fire in our bellies and a tug on our hearts.

Crazy love is what it is because there is no reason for it. It defies the rational, but that’s exactly what the exceptional is supposed to do. It’s the kind of love that many of us give up hope of finding—until we actually find it.

It’s a love that requires staggering vulnerability and confidence to keep it from becoming a missed opportunity.

When we love someone because it comes as naturally as breathing, then we have faith that our love,if tended carefully, will only ever grow. Despite what may change around them, this kind of love between two people will be their one constant.

Love is messy, and it’s often over-complicated because we try to make it something other than what it’s meant to be—a gift.

Maybe we need that logical love sometimes, because anything else seems too scary. And perhaps there are those other times where nothing but crazy will do; after all, how can we possibly feel alive if our love doesn’t inspire us?

No matter how times we say “I love you,” it all comes down to why we love someone…

Or maybe, in the end, it doesn’t matter as long as love is felt—unless, of course, we can’t settle for less than having it all.

“Loving someone with your heart and loving someone with your mind are two very different kinds of love.”
~ BgT

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Author: Kate Rose

Images: Pixabay

Editor: Toby Israel

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