Where is the love you said you would give to me?

I have a confession to make.

I’m a romantic.

I grew up listening to “happily ever after” stories.

I believed the lyrics of the sixties love songs.

My prince charming rode his white horse through my dreams at night.

And I used to write to him in my journal.

When I did marry, I found out that those love songs were about someone else’s dreams. To come true would take two willing people and a lot of blessings to fulfill their promise.

I stayed in my marriage too long after I realized it would not be a happily ever after story no matter how hard I tried. It hurt terribly that my dream had shattered. It hurt more that it was my dream alone.

I asked myself, “Where is the Love You Said You Would Give to Me”?

In the beginning, it was perfection, and I was addicted. He filled my space. I surrendered to his faults. For the longest I tried to make him my prince charming. I couldn’t make myself leave. It took me forever to develop enough self-compassion and self-love to walk in worthiness and walk out of major dysfunction. I still managed to pack a little guilt in my suitcase.

Then one day I bumped into an internet presentation by Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who studies the science of the brain as it relates to sex, romantic love, and marriage. I was both captured and affirmed by her anthropological perspective about romantic love. She said,

“Around the world, people love. They sing for love, they dance for love, they compose poems and stories about love. They tell myths and legends about love. They pine for love, they live for love, they kill for love, and they die for love. As Walt Whitman once said, “Oh, I would stake all for you.” Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They’ve never found a society that did not have it.

“But love isn’t always a happy experience. Almost nobody gets out of love alive. But romantic love is much more than a cocaine high — at least, you come down from cocaine. Romantic love is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense of self. You can’t stop thinking about another human being. Somebody is camping in your head. And the obsession can get worse when you’ve been rejected.

Have you or someone you know ever been recovering from love gone badly? You are grieving, and you are trying to navigate your life in a gear called normal. Then you see that person or hear a song you shared as a memory. Suddenly you are in a place called I can’t breathe or I just must cry. So what the science is telling us is that romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth.”

I am still a romantic and I found such relief in this new information! There is a proven scientific reason I feel and act like I do when I am in love. And, I am not the only one. Now I feel like I have permission to continue being me, as long as I love me and treat me with compassion in the process. I feel hopeful, I feel like more!

Have you ever wondered why you are so distracted, unpredictable, amazingly stupid when you are dancing with romance? Well, now you have the answer. You have no choice.

I invite you to join the conversation, take your seat at the table. This is your place. Like, comment, and share your thoughts.

    Until next time, remember,

• You are not alone.

• You are not your circumstances.

• You have everything within you to live a purpose-filled life.