When Love Strikes

Love is a very difficult thing to understand.  The reason for this is because of how our brains are set up.  We have the ability to be both logical and emotional.  Love is not logical.  It is emotional.  Obviously.  So, who we fall in love with, when we fall in love (or out of love), and that we want to fall in love are not easily, logically explainable concepts.  Love does not know logic.  In my experience, it frequently drops in on you unexpectedly (though never unpleasantly).

For very logical people such as myself, falling in love can be a somewhat frustrating thing.  It upends your life as you know it.  Your priorities change over night.  You begin to spend a lot of time with someone you probably didn't even know a few days or weeks ago.  Granted I'm speaking about infatuation or "lust" as well.  Love is a progression from interest and infatuation.  It is deeper than any other feeling you'll likely feel in your life and it is amazing.

While that is all true, it's also frustrating sometimes.  You can't plan whom you fall for.  And you should never ignore it either.  In the past five years or so, a lot of my friends have graduated college and moved into the working world.  It's a time of great change in all of our lives and it's an amazing period of learning who you are.  It's also frequently the time in which you fall in love and begin a life with another person.  

With everything going on in your 20's, falling in love does add an incredible amount of complication to your life.  While focusing on yourself and establishing your life, you meet someone and fall for them.  You go through all the steps of dating and really, truly fall for them.  It's not an easy process as you now have to meld your lives together.  If you do truly love each other, however, it will happen.  It's not logical.  It's emotional.  And, the emotional side of your brain is generally stronger than your logical one.  (Look at every silly thing you've ever done to attract someone you're attracted to for evidence on this.)

Sometimes people make excuses, bury themselves in careers, and avoid the potential relationship.  It's true that for a while after my own last break up, I did the very same.  Everyone does in this case, for a while.  You regain your bearings and stabilize your personal life.  But, after a while, you put yourself out there again.  Sometimes however, people rationalize that love would be an imposition in their life, that it would be easier to avoid love until the "time is right".   The fact of the matter is though that there's always something else you could be doing.  There is no "right" time.  "Right" is a logical response to an illogical situation.  

When in doubt, I'd suggest always going with your heart on matters of the heart.  True, sometimes it won't make logical sense.  Sometimes you'll end up getting your heart broken as well.  But, at the same time, you can't choose whom you fall for any more than you can choose when it's going to happen.  It just happens.  I learned this lesson for myself and now I pass it on.  In short, let your heart decide on emotional decisions and let your logical brain decide on logical matters.