Love is so strange.

It is not always the most sensible thing, nor is it particularly useful if we think about it, yet so many of our lives revolve around this peculiar feeling.

Even if we have given up on love, it was love that made us give up on love in the first place.

A friend told me recently, “Love is at the heart of truth.” This meant a lot to me, for surely love is nested in the very fabric of our souls—embedded in the deepest dimensions of our being—whether we are aware of it or not. The truth of who we are seems to be most wholly expressed through, and in, love.

Our experience of love will be as diverse and broad-ranging as people tend to be. Perhaps we will meet the love of our life when we’re young and go on to stay connected with them forever. Or we will go through life with a series of non-monogamous relationships and build connections with many people.

There are so many possibilities for how our romantic lives might unfold, and it is important that we remain open to this vast field of possibility if we seek to garner the most from our relationships.

Some loves hit us harder than others—as I’m sure most of us know quite well.

We will invariably meet certain people who have a much deeper impact on us than others, and I don’t mean this in a strictly positive way.

We are going to find lovers who knock us off our feet. Something about who they are will trigger something deep inside of us and make us feel things we have never felt before. There will be something deeply familiar about them, and it will evoke a sensation that likely traces back to some early childhood experience.

These are some of the most beautiful relationships we will ever have—as well as the most tragic. To me, beauty and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. It is our ability to experience tragedy that makes life so beautiful, and it is our ability to experience beauty that makes life so tragic. This is reflected in love, particularly with those who hit us harder than others.

In my experience, this kind of love isn’t the most sustainable. There is too much emotion involved to really build an abiding structure around the relationship.

I really wonder whether this has to be the case, or if I am simply too young and too early on in my romantic endeavors to know for sure. I hope this is not the case, because if these deep connections could be transmuted into sustainable and adaptable relationships, they would surely be all the more special.

When we meet someone who makes us feel this way, who shakes us up and makes our insides feel warm, it is important that we tread with caution. As powerful as the connection may be, as good as we might feel when we are around this person, we should approach them with tremendous care and consideration for these are the relationships that could hurt us most deeply.

Keep a level head; awareness is key.

Of course, there is a time and a place to just immerse ourselves in the attraction, but it gets tricky if we do not check ourselves. I would humbly put forth the advice that we ought to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

These loves are also the ones who can teach us the most about ourselves if we allow them to. They strike us so deep—cut to the very core of our being—and thereby offer us the rare opportunity to look within ourselves and make an honest assessment of where we stand spiritually and where we ought to be going.

I had something similar to this happen to me recently, where I enveloped myself in a connection that ultimately didn’t last. I thought the connection might be strong enough to transcend the conditions of our lives. I was wrong, and it hurt a lot.

This love hit me harder than others. It awakened something inside of me that had been dormant since I was a child. In dealing with this, I found myself able to inquire much more deeply into my psyche—to garner a more holistic sense of why I am as I am. Ultimately, it has been helpful in improving myself as a person, particularly in regards to how I love.

Some loves hit us harder than others, and whether or not they last is secondary to what they teach us about ourselves. If we can allow these experiences to take us into deeper and more intrinsic realms of experience, we will inexorably learn a great deal about who we are and how we ought to conduct ourselves.

It is all a learning process. Let’s get the most out of this life.
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Author: Samuel Kronen
Image: Pixabay
Editor: Danielle Beutell
Copy Editor: Nicole Cameron
Social Editor: Yoli Rammazina