Love and How Little We Know About It

Yesterday I saw a movie entitled, “Beginners.”  The protagonist discovers that his father is gay when his mother dies. His parents were married for 45 years.  The revelation explains lots about his parents’ unhappy marriage, but nevertheless leaves him with the damage wreaked by being told over and over that nothing was wrong.  Although the marriage of my parents wasn’t as fraught as this one, it was certainly not a happy one.  I have always believed that my mother suffered several heart attacks to slow herself down, since her energy, spirit, and  curiosity left him far behind.  Though I was determined not to do what she did, I had no idea what to do in a relationship.  What was love, anyway? Ever since I left the movie theater, I’ve been thinking about that.  Sometimes we just connect with another person, and feel as if we have reached inside to touch them, and they have done the same with us.  Is this love?  I have felt so excited when I have met a new man, my heart has pounded in my chest until I thought it would burst.  Is this love? In “Dance of Intimacy” Harriet Lerner say “An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way.”  Is intimacy love?    At the end of the movie yesterday I realized that I, too, have wondered each time I thought I loved another human being, “What do we do now?”   Like the protagonist, I hadn’t had proper training.  If I can manage what Lerner suggests is intimacy, I will have come a long way.  My last thought:  After all the disappointments in love I have already experienced, am I brave enough to let someone love me, and feel that love in the depth of my being?  I don’t know.