Did you ever fall in love with someone you shouldn’t have? Someone who was unavailable, but you still felt intensely attracted to them?
Maybe it was your next door neighbor who was happily married. Maybe it was a co-worker and you KNEW that a work place romance would be a disaster. Hell, maybe it was your 8th grade teacher who was just SO perfect in every way.
GETTING CRUSHED
We used to call that, “getting a crush,” on someone. We meet someone and we just know that we’re supposed to be together, even though everything else is saying, “No, you’re not.”
Psychologists – as psychologists tend to do – have invented a new term for it which is, “limerence.” Here’s a definition:
“Limerence is an involuntary, intense, romantic obsession characterized by intrusive thoughts and a longing for emotional reciprocation, often leading to emotional suffering due to unmet romantic needs.”
In other words, having a crush on someone you probably shouldn’t have a crush on.
IT’S ALL PERFECTLY NATURAL
Now, this has been going on ever since the world began and, of course, it’s caused a passel of trouble. Marriages end, people lose their jobs, reputations and careers are destroyed. All in the name of love.
Which is puzzling, isn’t it? Love is supposed to be this grand, wonderful adventure that lets us soar to new heights on the wings of the person we’re in love with. So why is all of this so painful and frustrating?
THE CALM, INNER VOICE
I had a teaching dream once about spirit guides and spiritual guidance. I call them, “teaching dreams,” because they’re very lucid, very clear and they usually have to do with some issue that’s really bothering me.
The subject of this dream was, “How do I distinguish true spiritual guidance from my own desires and ego?”
And the answer was that spiritual guidance is never harsh, never critical, never ominous. It’s always gentle, loving, and kind and leaves us feeling nurtured rather than criticized or beaten up.
The same principle applies to falling in love. If it feels sweet and kind, it’s probably real love. If it involves obsessive thinking, insecurity, self-doubt, or criticism . . . hey, it may be a hell of a crush, but it ain’t love.
WHY DOES IT HAPPEN?
Why do we fall in love with people who aren’t, “right,” for us?
Psychologists, philosophers and playwrights have been trying to figure that one out for hundreds of years and really haven’t made much progress.
My personal theory is that these are relationships that are, “out of time.” And I don’t mean that in the sense of, “Whoops, we’re out of time.”
Rather, what I’m talking about is old relationships from previous incarnations that have been displaced in time. The feelings are still there, but they’re no longer appropriate in their old form.
Perhaps we were married to someone or had a super, sizzling hot sexual affair with them two lifetimes ago. Because of that intense attraction, we meet them again in this lifetime.
Only – guess what? – they’re married to someone else. Or they’re our teacher or mentor. Or perhaps we’re straight, but they’re the same sex that we are.
The feelings are just as intense. The desire to be with them is just as strong. But it just ain’t happening this go-round.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
Well . . . nothing, in most cases. Just observe it and sit with it. Realize that you love this person but that the love has to take a different form than romantic love.
We can feel it. We can cherish it. But we don’t have to act on it. If there’s a huge internal conflict about getting romantically or sexually involved with someone, that’s not a very good way to start out, is it?
FILL YOUR HEART WITH LOVE
Ram Dass said that we frequently mistake other people as the source of love, rather than realizing that they’re just vehicles that get us to the love.
When we’re seriously crushing on someone we shouldn’t be crushing on, we feel that as a loss, as a deficit, as if we’ve got this Grand Canyon sized hole in our hearts that only they can fill.
Fortunately, we’ve got this wonderful part of our energy systems called, “the heart chakra.” It can generate an infinite amount of love because love actually IS infinite.
We can sit down at any time or place and just meditate on love, meditate on that chakra filling up with that sweet, kind essence that is love and the feeling of not being complete immediately goes away.
IT ISN’T THEM, IT’S US
We’ve been programmed into believing that love always flows out of someone else and into us. That if someone, “out there,” doesn’t love us, we won’t get the love we need.
That’s really the source of the pain in limerence. We’re convinced that without that other person’s love, we’re just going to be miserable and unfulfilled. We can’t get to the love we want and so it hurts.
Not true.
We create our own love, in our own hearts. We receive love when we open our heart centers and intentionally, consciously fill them up.
THE ACE OF CUPS
When we look at the Ace of Cups we can see this message very clearly. The cup is our heart and the love isn’t flowing out of another person into the cup. It’s flowing straight out of the Universe. Love is everywhere. It’s a Universal energy and we just need to open ourselves to receiving it. If we occasionally receive it from another person, that’s great.
But if we don’t, that’s not a tragedy and it doesn’t need to be painful. The source of love is always in our own hearts.
Just the Tarot 