Transitioning Love

There is a process in my heart that I have had difficulty describing to others, but I need to talk about it, and hopefully once I’ve described it, you will understand where I’m coming from.

I care about people. I may not like everyone I meet, but I do genuinely care about people and their individual needs. Everyone needs love sometimes and I try to love others by showing them respect in my interactions with them. That is one way to show love to others. So every person that I meet, I start out with them having a clean slate on the blackboard in my head. Then as I interact with them, I take notes, writing about them on that blackboard in my head. Some people, when I meet them for the first time, come out kicking and screaming and I have to duck as soon as I see them, because for some reason they don’t want to have a peaceable conversation with me. Their names get “written down” along with what they did and a strong note to be cautious around them in the future, if not avoid them altogether. Others are receptive, showing the same respect that I offer them, and we can interact together peaceably. And then there are the ones with whom I immediately feel a connection and I not only interact with them, I interact with more depth and feeling than those who are simply receptive of me. Those are the ones I like to get to know in detail, filling up my blackboard really fast in multicolored chalks. With those people, it doesn’t take much time before the relationship I have with them goes from being polite and respectful to having a deeper feeling of caring for them and their individual needs. That feeling is a different, deeper and more intense feeling than what I feel toward most, and that is where my heart begins to build a personal relationship with them feeling a closer kinship to them. 

Now if that person happens to be female and if I also happen to be sexually turned on by them, I begin to feel a love growing toward them that makes me want to be with them at close range, vulnerably showing them my heart, and learning what is in theirs as well. Romance is a part of what I feel at such times and I call that being in love.

As I get to know someone, this whole process of getting to know them transitions from one level of relationship to the other. If I see a reason to limit the development of that process because of protocols or necessity, I limit how far things go, but doing so is not always an easy thing to do. Some people just draw me in by the connection that I feel toward them. It’s a lovely thing when that connection is realized.

This process occurs naturally for me. I don’t have to work at it because it comes easily, almost like breathing. But for me to act opposite of that behavior, I have to work at it. Those are the different levels of relationship that I have toward others I meet and interact with. No one is exempt. You can get along with most of the people you meet everyday, but you can’t get along with all of them, it just isn’t meant to be…