I was thinking back on all of my relationships in my twenties and early 30s. I noted a familiar pattern that held true through almost each and every single one.
First, we’d date. Sometimes it was a blind date and other times we met off the internet or from a dating site. Usually we had been chatting for a few days already, usually on the phone.
Finally, a date would occur.
This date always played out in the same manner. It was dinner, a few drinks, and a lot of talking. An excitement was building throughout the night to a crescendo.
By the end of the night my hand was in hers, usually across the table. The night ended with a make out session, at the front door of her place, in the car, or otherwise.
But it never ended there.
We’d text each other a few messages, which led to being on the phone until 4 AM.
We were together the next night after work, both of us sleep-deprived.
The infatuation phase was already in full swing.
In fact, I’ve never in my life been on a date that didn’t end this way.
At first, I believed that I was just a really good first date. I used to think that if I get the date, somehow, I could have the woman. Just put me across from her for 45 minutes, and it will be entirely up to me whether or not I want the date to progress into a relationship.
But what would happen in the next year would always humble me.
That feeling of “being in love” would fade. That amperage of the infatuation levels would gradually weaken in strength. We would be on each other’s nerves, begin fighting and sniping at each other, and maybe we both would start drinking too much.
About a year after that, after struggling to maintain the relationship a year too long, it would end with hard feelings on both sides.
I came to have an epiphany about this, and have seen and recognized the very same pattern in relationships of friends and family members.
I’ve come to realize that “falling in love” should not be an object of pursuit. Relationships don’t end because people fall out of love, but because of moral incompatibilities between the two parties.
The truth about infatuation is that it is an evolutionary tool. Falling in love is a biological reaction to being introduced to your mate. It is not an end in itself.
For thousands of years, most people did not have much choice in who they married. Marriages were often arranged. Even today, in a multitude of countries, arranged marriages are the norm.
And if that is the case, this idea that people sought to fall in love throughout history does not seem valid. This is likely not a historically human thing, but more of a cultural invention that we blindly accept.
If you are failing to find anyone to fall in love with, in all likeliness, this indicates a moral failing on your part. You probably do not want to get married, or have a traditional life, with children, a husband or wife, and domestic responsibilities.
Falling in love, and that infatuation period, isn’t there to make you happy, or give you a well-rounded life, but to prompt the reckless and compulsive creation of a family unit. Full stop.
This aside, my premise is that when we fall in love, there is a biologically important reason behind it. If it has ever happened to you, you know the symptoms. It is a sudden infatuation. You are sick with it, crazed, sexually obsessed with her or him. You might even have sex ten times over the course of a weekend. It is all hugs, kisses, groping, and you can’t get enough of them. And basically, you aren’t thinking straight, and you are vulnerable to making unwise decisions for her.
This is the real point of it: the purpose of falling in love is to promote recklessness, which makes it more likely that a pregnancy will occur, and that your genes will be passed on. Basically, it makes you crazy, and activates a pathological sexual desire in you for the person you fell in love with.
The point of it is to make you jealous, to mate-guard, to have risky sex, and plenty of it, so that an “accident” happens.
But I had another realization about falling in love: this was that I had no choice as to who to fall in love with.
This wasn’t a pick-em game. I couldn’t turn it off, and I couldn’t turn it on.
In fact, I suspect, the process of falling in love is to make you fall in love with the person are paired with. If they are fertile, and modestly attractive, and well-representative of the opposite sex, and you date them, you are likely to “develop feelings toward them,” whether you wish to or not.
We evolved to love the one we are with.
We aren’t supposed to seek out love, but a good mate–someone godly, honest, and who pursues righteousness.
Finally, I realized, that it makes a kind of cruel sense that these feelings would subside, usually around the one year mark. Because, all things naturally occurring, according to God’s plan, your girlfriend should already be your wife, and should already be big with child.
You don’t “fall out of love,” per say. You move into a different mode, more suitable for protecting your growing child and waddling wife. You cannot accumulate your flocks and herds if you are still infatuated with a woman, and sick with her to the point of pathos. You need to work, be responsible, mature and take care of domestic and financial duties.
In summary, I suspect that we are doing things wrong today concerning matters of love, marriage and family. Probably all of our modern, Western, libertarian ideas, applied to matters of love and marriage, are harmful to our culture, in general, and have served as a toxic, corrosive force on the fabric of society. Our modern conventions of dating, of waiting until we are 30 to marry, of young women taking birth control, are all contributing heavily to the disintegration of the nuclear family. And we really need to rethink all of this.