Tag: relationships

Loosing Someone

You Don’t Just Lose Someone Once….

You lose them over and over,

sometimes many times a day.

When the loss, momentarily forgotten,

creeps up,

and attacks you from behind.

Fresh waves of grief as the realisation hits home,

they are gone.

Again.

You don’t just lose someone once,

you lose them every time you open your eyes to a new dawn,

and as you awaken,

so does your memory,

so does the jolting bolt of lightning that rips into your heart,

they are gone.

Again.

Losing someone is a journey,

not a one-off.

There is no end to the loss,

there is only a learned skill on how to stay afloat,

when it washes over.

Be kind to those who are sailing this stormy sea,

they have a journey ahead of them,

and a daily shock to the system each time they realise,

they are gone,

Again.

You don’t just lose someone once,

you lose them every day,

for a lifetime.~

~Donna Ashworth

Love

The Real Reason Love Exists

Why does love exist? What is its purpose in evolutionary terms? If we listen to the proponents of evolutionary theory and those social sciences that look to the model of evolutionary theory as a guide, love is a function of sexuality. Its purpose is to drive us to find a mate and produce off spring. This seems like a reasonable notion after all we do fall in love with members of the opposite sex, we do experience the feeling of crush and we do develop caring relationships with members of the opposite sex. But there are flaws in the notion that love is a function of sexuality. For one, children before puberty feel love and possess an internal drive to seek, build and maintain caring relationships. Sex drive is minimal in children and yet the desire for love and caring relationships is strong. The same can be said for people who lose sex drive or the ability to engage in sexual stimulation due to age, disease or other circumstances, the desire for relationship and love remains. This tells us that love is not tied to sexuality. It tells us that they are separate systems that have evolved with different survival goals and exist for different reasons. And yet, it cannot be denied that they seemingly intersect as we move beyond puberty making it appear as though they might be connected.

Love and sexuality are separate systems with very different goals. Love and the feelings of loneliness have evolved to make us social. They motivate us to seek and maintain caring relationships throughout our lives. Love rewards us with the feelings of safety and value, while loneliness pushes us through the feelings of discomfort to find someone who cares. Why? Because being social has insured our survival as a species. As individuals we are relatively weak in a world filled with predators but as a group we formidable in our own right. Sexuality in contrast is ultimately about reproduction, but more than that. Sexuality is also about pleasure, hormones, erotic connections, the physical expression of trust and the feelings of being connected to another human being. Sexual stimulation rewards us with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction feelings that serve to motivate us to engage in those behaviors that are likely to produce off spring. But sex, unlike love, does not require a relationship it simply requires two willing participants. It’s love that gives us motivation to build and maintain caring relationships, something that provides us with a sense of safety and enhances the likelihood of survival.

Both love and sexuality are about survival. One drives us to engage in behaviors that will ultimately produce off spring. While the other drives us toward those behaviors that will insure that we survive long-enough to reproduce. And just as importantly transfer the skills and knowledge necessary to insure that the next generation will survive long enough to reproduce. As individuals we can survive without sex. But history makes it clear that we cannot survive without the caring relationships that help to keep us safe and help us find the food, shelter and knowledge that makes life possible. Love exists as the motivation and the reward for building relationships. It motivates us through the feelings of safety, value and loneliness to build those social connections that our evolutionary heritage understands to be essential to our long-term survival as an individual and as a species. Without the drive that love provides to bond with others humanity would not exist. Our long infancy and childhood, our inability to identify food that is safe unless we are taught, our need to work together to frighten away predators, our willingness to share food or build shelter. All of these pieces of survival are made possible by the motivation provided by love.

Love does not exist as a function of sexuality nor it does not exist to guide us toward a potential mate. If it did our motivation to bond with others would exist only after puberty and would cease to exist when the flow of sex hormones was altered by age or disease. The real reason that love exists is to motivate us as individuals to seek and build caring relationships, relationships that will protect us, keep us safe and insure our survival at least long enough to reproduce and raise our children to adulthood. Love exists because it motivates us, as individuals to bond with others and to maintain caring relationships. The very things that have made it possible for the human species to both survive and flourish.

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