Even if that has not happened to you, you've probably read a book or two, or perhaps you know someone that this has happened to. A head over heels love at first sight meeting. And it didn't stop there. Oh no! They did something drastic like getting married while riding elephants at the zoo or running away to Brazil. I know, you're sighing and thinking "that's so romantic!". But is it really?
I'm of two minds about this one, probably because I've been there. In my younger, yet equally head strong, days, I completely lost it over a man who was 15 years older than me. We'd been dating for just three months when in a flurry of emotion I sublet my amazing apartment, packed my bags and moved in with him.
A month after that, he attacked me. In retrospect, it wasn't such a good move after all. I'm glib about it now (coping mechanism, anyone?) but the truth is, at the time, it felt like my world had fallen apart: I was suddenly loveless, homeless and completely doubting my ability to read my feelings and instincts, something I had been very sure of my whole life up to this point. The whole thing was sudden, intense and just like a movie, in both the good and bad ways. And I had totally eaten it up.
Should I have been more discerning about what could possibly lie ahead? Perhaps. But seeing as how I did make it out alive, I'm not sure if I would do things any differently if I could go back. Sometimes putting a buffer on happenstances of the heart like this also puts a buffer on the amount of emotion you get to experience.
The reasoning behind leaping before looking is really not very complicated. You can't have all the good without risking getting some of the bad. And they don't sacrifice the good for the sake of saving themselves from the potential bad. Doing otherwise could leave you with nothing more than middle ground. Life's just too short to not risk some extremes from time to time.
Like everything, there are two sides to this debate. Sure, I'm all in favor of following one's heart, especially if it leads you to some unexpected places away from your chosen path. But there is a world of difference between being someone who has a chance encounter with someone amazing and someone who makes it a habit of thriving on the drama of falling in and out of love.
People like this most certainly exist. I call them "love-bleweeds". They make a life out of tumbling around, building up one relationship and life, only to completely uproot and reconfigure when the next one comes along. After you've done this for long enough, it's very possible to forget how to be calm, comfortable and exercise any follow through.
If it makes some people happy to live like this then that's all well and good. What isn't okay is the mess they leave behind when they, once again, pull up stakes. When one sets up a life, others get pulled into that life; friends, coworkers, lovers, neighbors and pets. When the next "soulmate" comes along and they drop everything, they're leaving a lot of people in their wake who are going to be missing them when they're gone.
It's too rare and too unspeakably joyful to fall in love in a fast and intense way to not do it when it comes along. If you're lucky (and go around the block enough times), you'll perchance learn how to protect the rest of your life when it does, without sacrificing any of the amazing feelings. - 32510
I'm of two minds about this one, probably because I've been there. In my younger, yet equally head strong, days, I completely lost it over a man who was 15 years older than me. We'd been dating for just three months when in a flurry of emotion I sublet my amazing apartment, packed my bags and moved in with him.
A month after that, he attacked me. In retrospect, it wasn't such a good move after all. I'm glib about it now (coping mechanism, anyone?) but the truth is, at the time, it felt like my world had fallen apart: I was suddenly loveless, homeless and completely doubting my ability to read my feelings and instincts, something I had been very sure of my whole life up to this point. The whole thing was sudden, intense and just like a movie, in both the good and bad ways. And I had totally eaten it up.
Should I have been more discerning about what could possibly lie ahead? Perhaps. But seeing as how I did make it out alive, I'm not sure if I would do things any differently if I could go back. Sometimes putting a buffer on happenstances of the heart like this also puts a buffer on the amount of emotion you get to experience.
The reasoning behind leaping before looking is really not very complicated. You can't have all the good without risking getting some of the bad. And they don't sacrifice the good for the sake of saving themselves from the potential bad. Doing otherwise could leave you with nothing more than middle ground. Life's just too short to not risk some extremes from time to time.
Like everything, there are two sides to this debate. Sure, I'm all in favor of following one's heart, especially if it leads you to some unexpected places away from your chosen path. But there is a world of difference between being someone who has a chance encounter with someone amazing and someone who makes it a habit of thriving on the drama of falling in and out of love.
People like this most certainly exist. I call them "love-bleweeds". They make a life out of tumbling around, building up one relationship and life, only to completely uproot and reconfigure when the next one comes along. After you've done this for long enough, it's very possible to forget how to be calm, comfortable and exercise any follow through.
If it makes some people happy to live like this then that's all well and good. What isn't okay is the mess they leave behind when they, once again, pull up stakes. When one sets up a life, others get pulled into that life; friends, coworkers, lovers, neighbors and pets. When the next "soulmate" comes along and they drop everything, they're leaving a lot of people in their wake who are going to be missing them when they're gone.
It's too rare and too unspeakably joyful to fall in love in a fast and intense way to not do it when it comes along. If you're lucky (and go around the block enough times), you'll perchance learn how to protect the rest of your life when it does, without sacrificing any of the amazing feelings. - 32510
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