On Romance 8-13-11

Anderson, South Carolina

Not so long ago I wondered if it was possible to love someone too much, often awaking with a visceral craving to be in another’s presence. This intoxication over-rode most everything in my world. It mattered little what I did as long as I did it with this one in my life. Experiencing an effervescent state, all life was wondrous, magical, shimmering with possibility.

In short order I found myself re-orienting the entirety of my life, considered leaving town, selling my house, restructuring my finances, giving up the history I’ve built here, thinking another individual had keys to the Emerald City of Oz. Under the influence, I found myself willing to consider financial and relational risks inconceivable but weeks previously. Most sobering was believing God was absolutely in the middle of this upheaval in my world. Having seen people around me experience this same upheaval, making premature journeys to the altar, I wondered what could drive them to such abrupt life decisions, risking all they’d known. So it was recently for me. I found myself wanting to take my beloved, forsake all, go the courthouse, skip the pomp and circumstances, say “I do”, and go off living happily ever after in an ill-defined nirvana. I watched others do this in my family of origin, only to end up in lifelong patterns of repeated failure.

Eros is a curious phenomenon to me. The depth of affectational and motivational change it can produce is simply staggering to me. While under its influence I found myself willing to consider decisions assuring the complete transformation of my life, but into what? Many people have often told me “You have a great life.” I wonder now what exactly I thought I was about to trade it in for.

We are taught from our first breath finding perfect romantic love will fulfill every longing and desire we can experience. Pop culture, great writers, composers, playwrights, and painters give more ‘air time’ to the idea of finding complete fulfillment in another human being than perhaps any subject. Family court often gives a clarifying image of another reality.

As one always struggling with a sense of belonging in family, church, and the larger culture, it was quite stunning to suddenly feel admitted to the family of humanity at a new level for the first time ever. The prospect of marrying into a widow’s large family was captivating for one raised in a fragmented and isolated alcoholic household that never put down roots. Having attended the same university as my dearest, I had a wondrous sense of recapturing long-forgotten history from earlier years. In my initial romantic fugue, the idea my thoughts and beliefs would be valued and embraced was empowering to me in ways new. Was I about to really have an advocate, a champion of my own? Be a respected elder in a large family? Reality bit.

Studies have shown adults under the influence of marijuana and other substances believe they are producing museum-grade art. While intoxicated, given brushes and paint, inebriated artisans produce what they believed to be very high-quality original work. When detoxed they are astounded to see their less-than-stellar realities produced in altered states.

While intoxicated with being ‘in-love’ I came to believe our relationship was going to be an example to the world of how to do it exactly right. The divorce rate in America would plunge because people were finally going to see how to get it right. I had the idea the family I was to marry into was going to be astounded by my arrival, even bowing down in my presence with thanksgiving for the spiritual stature and maturity I was bringing into their midst. I discovered my own baggage was still on the dock and would likely keep me from making unfettered relational journeys down any road.

In recovery one of the primary goals of twelve step work is re-sizing our egos. Those struggling with addictions and alcoholism experience out-of-control ego issues. Substances in their early course confer a confidence and robustness of affect contributing greatly to their widespread abuse. Crack cocaine addicts tell me the sense of empowerment and sexual capacity in the early stages is inconceivable. Trying to recapture a fleeting false empowerment leads them to destructive efforts to regain that first high, lost forever in the massive casualties of addiction.

As recovery literature affirms, we believed we were ten feet tall and bullet proof. As we crashed and burned we came to discover we were anything but, coming to the realization we were powerless and unable to manage our own lives. Attempts to ‘manage’ the lives of others in this large extended family with my erudite writing were quickly rebuffed. Calling to task one who had caused me some potential legal grief, I expected a contrite apology and a correction in her behavior. I was blown off. Alas, my ideas about honesty and ethics don’t hold water in an increasingly secular culture, and I only received further confirmation of this. I’m truly powerless over people, places, and things.

Stunning to me is how often I have seen apparently sane sober people go onto Internet dating sites, shop, and meet another promising the keys to the city, only to have their lives destroyed by deception, financial ruin, relational issues with family, and the very kinds of dishonesty I recently called one to task about. Not a few are the individuals I have seen who gave up fine jobs, splendid histories, and a sense of belonging, to embark on a new journey down the yellow brick road, only to find themselves in dark forests with all manner of evil beasts. For many of these travelers there wasn’t a good witch of the West to show them the way back to Kansas. The City of Oz was never found.

Regularly I encounter people struggling with profound loneliness, who despite repeated violent divorces, still believe the only solution to their affective angst is to keep searching, looking for the one who can deliver them from this scourge. Dysfunction, chaotic relationships, and risk of catastrophic life experiences are viewed as better than being alone. I find no small number of people who opt for psychotropic drugs to numb the pain of being on a solo journey in life. Many find consequences of psychotropic drugs even more nefarious and elect to get off the yellow brick road altogether, terminating their lives with violent impulse. This past week three individuals in my world elected suicide, rather than finding their way clear of the dark trees in life.

I’ve recently been going through the experience of detoxing from my inebriated eros state, coming to realize the art work I have been producing is rather poor. I’ve not been building the relationship which will become the topic of morning talk shows. As the experience of being in love fades, reality comes into sharper focus for me. Family issues, financial concerns, medical challenges, my inability to accept others for who they are, and my own lack of life focus have shown me to be standing in dark shadows wondering how it was I managed to get myself into such a place, with its hidden risks.

I cannot but be bewildered, realizing something seeming so real and solid was little more than evanescent ephemeral wisps in my affective state. I wonder a lot now about just how one goes about building a successful marriage. I suddenly feel totally ignorant on the subject. I nearly succeeded in dragging another into the vacuum of my knowledge, at her great peril.

Our one saving redemption proved to be a nearly simultaneous loss of that wondrous affective state song writers love to write about. We suffered through surprisingly little emotional injury at the demise of something once so overwhelming to both of us. We sort of stand around now in bewilderment asking, “What happened?” What was that?

Half a century ago Erich Fromm wrote his immensely successful The Art of Loving, articulating love in the Western experience. He describes our desperate bid to ‘belong to the herd’, to achieve union, to avoid the acute anxiety which derives from separation. Separation is seen as a great existential evil, one to be avoided at all costs. Fromm posits alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive sexualism, and suicide are symptoms of failure of herd conformity. We grasp onto those people we believe can deliver us from this acute anxiety of separation. Did I do this very thing thinking another could empower me to suddenly feel admitted to the family of humanity at a new level for the first time ever? Probably.

The need to be included, to belong, cannot be overstated. Failure to Thrive is a recognized condition in infants and young children who die despite being kept clean, well fed, warm, and safe. Children who are not touched with affection or nurtured died despite their biological needs being completely fulfilled. As adults, we may not die directly for our lack of belonging but the intense affective pain of separateness drives millions to find relief in the murky world of addictions. Anyone who has been shunned or excluded by a group knows the intensity of being removed from the herd. Family black sheep know this well. Social nerds know this. Alcoholics know it. I know it.

Even half a century ago Fromm described a growing dysfunction of herd conformity; it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay in the herd. Many writers since have articulated on the profound depression, anxiety, rage, and social pathology becoming endemic because so many of us are feeling left out of our families, work places, social groups, neighborhoods, even places of worship.

Finding individuals of the opposite sex with similar feelings, we seek salvation in each other, often ending up with little more than the annihilation that occurs when matter and anti-matter collide. This annihilation energizes a vast legal system profiting from damage control. In cultures with increasing inability to include individuals within the herd, unbounded expectations on romantic partners to fully compensate for group failure is a near-certain script for divorce and further exacerbation of Fromm’s acute separateness.

Thousands of years ago we lived in far smaller social landscapes where inclusion was far easier, the angst of anonymity much less. Strangers were a rarity. Even so, contemporary writers of ancient times recognized we already had long standing struggles with issues of belonging, of feeling we are really loveable. Wise sages suggested the love of God was the only real cure, the only thing that could take away our acute pain of separateness. Saul of Tarsus came to this realization on his Damascus Road experience and suggested:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Perhaps this is enough for me and I no longer have to wander around in the dark forest afraid of the goblins of loneliness, isolation and despair. Finding true belonging in God’s love alone I can begin anew, experiencing an effervescent state, all of life wondrous, magical, shimmering with possibility.