The Truth About Love
10 Years Together
July 4, 2016
Today my partner in crime and I celebrate 10 years of happiness, laughter, silliness, brilliant nonsense, and everything in between.
About a year into our relationship (I was in college at the time), one of my human sexuality professors disclosed some disturbing information that really resonated with me. He said that the feeling of being “in love" goes away after 2 years – objectively.
As a dreamer, I was not feeling this alleged statistic. As a believer in science and logic, I feared perhaps this was the truth. Maybe we stop producing oxytocin and all those fabulous, dizzying chemicals of romance that create the sensation of being “in love.”
Maybe the primitive areas of our brains stop lighting up when we think of our loved ones. Maybe we will eventually become codependent. Maybe we will stop growing. Maybe we will keep us from becoming who we are meant to be.
Ten years have past.
Now I know for sure, that there is something greater to all this than just chemistry. Something less material. Or perhaps, it is precisely the magnificent byproduct of chemistry, emerging from the countless molecules that constitute our existence. Something we can’t see. But something we can feel.
It is the breathtaking magic of true love, and the cosmic possibilities that open up when two galaxies collide.
This kind of love can best be represented by the symbol of infinity: the eternal figure 8. A ceaseless serpentine path that two people follow. A path which intersects, over, and over, and over. Dipping into each other’s worlds, being transformed by the experience of these worlds, and finally, meeting back in the middle. In a loop, over and over. It is a symbol for the infinite nature of the universe. Of deep time and space. So grand, and still expanding. Bigger and bigger.
Ten years later, and my fears have fizzled into the abyss.
Love doesn’t fade. It deepens. It gets richer...more colorful...more complex...more interesting...more evolved. Instead of dependence, it is independence. From the world. From the things that hold us down. From the things that keep us from becoming who we are meant to be.
It is in this constant inspiration – this never ending balance of questions and answers, this unyielding ability to challenge one another to take our realities to new distances, lifted to new heights – that we find complete and utter freedom. To be who we are. To be everything we could ever want to be. To have the capacity for infinite growth, in who we are as individuals, and who we are as a whole.
Here’s to another decade with my soulmate, my 2 of hearts.
