Have you ever fallen in love?
How long does the fall last?
What happens when you hit the ground?
Do you crash?
Do you land?
Do you walk away with someone or run away from someone?
Now that I’ve set up this image for you, I’ll elaborate. There is a very big difference between the beginning of a relationship and the rest of it. This is no secret, and the reasoning makes perfect sense.
When you fall in love, your body produces a chemical called dopamine which, to put it very simply, makes us feel good. This occurs during what I’ll refer to as the “falling” stage. You and the person you’re falling in love with have jumped out of a plane, holding hands, and are having the most exciting time of your lives together. This can’t last forever though, because eventually you hit the ground. The same goes for this “dopamine high”.
As with most highs, whether they come from drugs, a rush of excitement, or love, we become addicted to it. We want to see this person as much as possible, and just can’t get enough. We don’t just want the person, we need them.
Now we come to the “landing” stage. The parachutes come out and the rush begins to gradually slow down until our feet touch the ground. For some people, it doesn’t work this way because the parachutes don’t open (or they were being so careless and spontaneous when they jumped that they didn’t even remember to pack a parachute), so they crash land. The fun is over and now things will just start to get plain old ugly for this couple.
Getting back to the couple who landed safely though. The fall is over and now a few things may occur. The first person could be in love with the second, while the second person (although they may have enjoyed the fall) doesn’t feel so attached. Another possibility is that neither feels attached, and of course the optimal situation is that both people are in love with each other.
This couple will move on and start to feel the effects of long-term love. This is the love that lasts longer than a free fall to the ground. It’s a slow-growing emotion that only gets stronger and stronger as time goes by. This is why the longer you’re with someone, the more attached you become. This type of love doesn’t only occur in relationships, it occurs in friendships and families as well. The more time we spend with someone, the more we trust them, and the more comforted we feel by them.
But since time is needed in order for this to happen, there must be some way for it to grow in the early stages. We’re not going to just let this love grow with someone for no reason; it’s too much of a time investment with no sign of reward. Love appears to have a dilemma here.
So here’s where things get interesting; love has a plan. In order for love to lay its foundations down, it needs something to distract us (like pointing and saying “hey, look over there!”). So what it does is sell us a pair of tickets to go sky-diving, to which we reply “hey, that sounds like fun!” and get on the plane. While we’re falling, love has a chance to begin to grow and we’re too “high” to even notice what it’s getting us into. Our time in the sky is love’s time in the womb - too weak to live on its own right now, but growing. By the time we land, love is there to greet us.
At this point, we’ve spent enough time together to grow attached to one another. For some people, this attachment is enough to keep the relationship going. For others, the idea of never feeling the excitement of falling in love again is too grim a thought, and the relationship has to end in order to have a chance of getting that feeling back. What it comes down to is that some people become addicted to the person they fall in love with, while others become addicted to only the feeling of falling in love.
This addiction, like any other, feels great while we’re getting our fix, and can leave us having withdrawals if we can’t get it. It makes us long for that “first high” and we’ll do whatever we can to try and feel that again with the same person, but it just can’t be. If you ever catch yourself saying “our relationship isn’t as exciting as it was in the beginning” or “you used to want to see me every day when we first met”, you need to really think about what you’re saying. No relationship should feel the same a year in, or 50 years in, as it did the first few months. If you’re saying these things, then you’re putting the “fall” above real love itself.
I hope this analogy has cleared some things up about the differences between falling in love and being in it. Obviously, falling in love is more exciting, otherwise every song on the radio would be about something else (besides breaking up, since songs tend to be about the best and worst feelings, and not so much the middle part), but being in love is more rewarding.
So if falling in love is just a high, and being in love is just the result of spending time with someone and growing attached to them, doesn’t that take all of the fun out of it? Doesn’t that make you feel like you’ve been tricked? Of course! But I’m sure that won’t stop you from jumping out of a plane sometime soon.
(source)
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