A Love Story, Part Two: Learning to Love Stray Dogs
/“There isn’t anything in this world but mad love.
Not in this world.
No tame love, calm love, mild love, no so-so love.
And, of course, no reasonable love.
Also there are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving.
But, who wants easier?”
We don’t just fall in love, we fall for love—for the potential of realizing our ideal love in relationship with each other.
However, loving a person while sharing the responsibilities of day-to-day life is challenging, and often, decidedly unsexy.
You go from arguing about who’s going to pay the bill on a date to arguing about how best to manage your finances together. Add a kid or three, and before you know it, your dirty-dancing can morph into the happy polka. The quirky, endearing traits that drew you to each other can become oddly less lovable, and even downright annoying at times.
Unlike the early days of being in love that affirm our loving, lovable idealized versions of self, being in relationship asks us to also love our less loving, less lovable versions of ourselves and each other, which are less welcome and familiar.
The loving that was previously somewhat effortless suddenly requires some effort.
There comes a day when you stare at the person you love and wonder something along the lines of: who the hell are you? What happened? I don’t like you right now.
And this is clearly their fault.
Moreover, I don’t like who I am with you right now.
Also, clearly their fault.
Sometimes, you find yourselves intensely fighting about nonsense, sometimes even repeating the same fights about nonsense. One of my top ten stupid relationship fights involved arguing about how to park the car in the driveway correctly. Seriously.
If you’re paying attention, you may notice, usually much to your chagrin, that you occasionally sound just like your mother or father. You may realize that your partner is demonstrably and disconcertingly like one or both of your parents. As you get to know the in-laws, you may also discover that your partner’s particular version of crazy-making makes more sense, although if you are foolish enough to mention it in the heat of an argument, your incredible insight will likely be unwelcome, if not vehemently denied.
If you’re lucky, someone will tell you that this is all relatively normal, even predictable, when you’re in an intimate relationship with someone you love. It’s just that falling in love and living happily-ever-after isn’t the whole story. There’s a messy second chapter in which the plot thickens and the real character development begins.
The rest of the story is about loving happily-even-after we’ve betrayed our ideals of ourselves and each other by failing to love each other perfectly (i.e. not meeting each other’s unconscious, often completely irrational relationship expectations). That’s where love gets real, and romantic love transforms into something more authentic.
In addition to whatever wonderful qualities attracted us to our partners, most of us fall for people for unconscious reasons. We tend to fall in love with people who represent unintegrated aspects of ourselves and unconscious relationship dynamics from childhood. We fall for the love story that promises happily ever after, but only as long as we continue to play our unconscious parts—these idealized versions of ourselves. As soon as we fall out of character, we begin to experience a bit of falling out of love because it was conditional on us fulfilling each other’s unconscious conditions for love based on familial and societal conditioning.
If you’re lucky, you will understand that the intensity of the inevitable conflicts that arise in intimate relationships has much less to do with the subjects of our arguments, and more to do with the unmet needs lurking beneath the surface—the unmet needs of all the unpalatable, unconscious, or unexpressed aspects of ourselves that we have yet to fully know and love. These are usually related to unresolved childhood and/or unprocessed challenging/traumatic experiences that keep us stuck in outdated patterns of being in relationship.
Sadly, many of us are not so lucky. We are ill-prepared to skillfully address our unmet needs in our relationships, and our relationships fall far short of our natural capacity for love despite our best intentions and best efforts. We take our cues from our parents who were often equally unprepared despite best intentions and efforts. We glean bits and pieces from past romantic relationships, but most of us still fumble in the dark with each new encounter.
We fall prey to cultural conditioning about intimate relationships that tends to perpetuate widely popular, albeit completely fictional, notions of romantic partnership that we can’t possibly replicate in real life. Yet, romantic comedies, fairytales, and porn aren’t realistic or functional models of intimate partnership, however entertaining, so we need to become more adept at meeting our own and each other’s unmet needs with more skillfulness.
Unmet needs are a bit like emotional stray dogs that we’ve abandoned to the unseen, unheard, unloved corners of our experience.
When we get near these, they run and hide, growl and attack because they’ve never been properly loved. They’re just trying to get our attention and protect themselves in the only ways that they know how because even love can feel threatening when it’s unfamiliar.
Overreacting (because you obviously don’t care how I feel or you would have responded to my text earlier)? Stray dog in the vicinity.
Storming out (because letting me know that you would love to spend more time together is so inconsiderate)? Stray dog.
Sulking (because if you loved me you would know what’s wrong)? Stray dog.
Cold shoulder (even though I want a hug)? Stray dog.
Blaming (because it’s obviously your fault)? Stray dog.
Globalizing (because it’s always been this way and never going to change)? Stray dog.
Holding a grudge (because something I supposedly said at a party circa 1997 that I can’t even recall is obviously vitally important and totally relevant right now)? Stray dog.
If you’re lucky, you will see the hurt lurking beneath the inept ways we humans act out our needs instead of calmly identifying and expressing these like two mature adults who love each other, and you will respond lovingly to the stray dogs within yourselves and each other. You’ll figure out how to make the stray dogs feel safe and loved enough to become safe and loving—or at the very least, not harmful to your relationship. You will learn to coax those sad pups out of the shadows into your welcome embrace before somebody gets (more) hurt.
Because no matter how evolved we may think we are, we all have stray dogs that follow us home, and whether we like it or not, they are our responsibility if we want to live happily in relationship.