WHEN LOVE COMES, THERE IS NOTHING TO DO 

DR. Meral AYDIN

Love is the capacity to fall into a state of vulnerability. Love is the demand to fulfill the deficit within the self. A person has no choice but to fall in love. Love is the desire to be loved as you wish, a state of helplessness. 

We desire love for years, we experience it, we run away from it, we suffer from it, we endure it, we read, we write endlessly. Even if we do not live it every moment, we make it exist in our lives at every moment by seeing and feeling its presence in different ways. The definition of love can vary from person to person; it is relative, and everyone can make a definition based on what they feel. However, in the literature, love can be defined as the deepening of emotions between people drawn toward each other and the beginning of the desire to sustain the relationship. At this point, it is a demand for a more intense and deeper interaction, both physical and emotional; a desire to be more relational. When it comes to mind, your brain stops (impaired prefrontal control), your thoughts and feelings lock onto it; a dopaminergic system focused on constantly reaching its reward is activated, and you want to continuously feel the excitement that this reward brings. Because in an unexpected, unknown situation, a new threshold of excitement has been crossed. We do not know whether this excitement comes from past issues or from a healthy place, but we fall into a state of helplessness with an intense need to feel closeness, and in order not to lose this state, we either live it constantly in our minds or chase after it. We become trapped in the desire to be sure that it is there. 

Love, on one hand, is so timeless, groundless, and aimless, and is responsible for intensifying itself continuously; on the other hand, as it intensifies, it inadvertently undermines its own foundation. As it intensifies, love turns into a fire; as it comes into contact with reality, it fades.

 I find it meaningful to use the manic and depressive positions expressed by Melanie Klein to describe the formation stages of love. In the manic field, every new emotional, enthusiastic experience and threshold-surpassing excitement that the infant experiences creates a manic space, and its fading occurs with the loss of the sources that provide this feeling. The infant, whose object permanence has not yet developed, experiences every separation as a kind of death and loss. One encounters depression in the field of the object and reality. In order not to fall into this place, we are destined to keep searching for love. However, if we do not calm the manic state and gradually neutralize it and integrate it into the ego's reality. We cannot maintain our functional autonomy and continuity of the self; we get carried away by a single excitement and cannot turn toward new experiences or new objects. We may go mad within a cycle of illusion.

 The most important element we can add into love at this point is sexuality: it operates from the same sympathetic system in parallel with excitement and aggression and creates a dopaminergic effect. Therefore, love creates a state that exhausts a person by adding excitement and aggression; over time, our need to simplify and calm love arises partly from this. In order for a person to turn inward, calm down, regain balance, and become able to relate again, they must move away from the weight of bodily pressure and evolve into a meaningful place. Every system evolves to find a balance within itself; in fact, if love transforms into a healthy relationship, it does not die but continues and evolves, finding a soothing meaning and calmness in which love (affection) exists at its core. Otherwise, everything in life and in relationships that does not evolve collapses.

 We get caught by the people we fall in love with, and by love itself, through our lack; it is something we are unprepared for and do not consciously know. LOVE CONFRONTS US THROUGH OUR INTERNAL DEFICITS. THE MORE INTENSELY WE EXPERIENCE LOVE, THE GREATER THE SIZE OF OUR DEFICIT. LOVE IS NOT SOMETHING THAT TRANSFORMS THE DEFICIT. LOVE IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES THE DEFICIT CONCRETE. LOVE IS THE ATTEMPT TO REPAIR OUR OWN DEFICIT IN ANOTHER PERSON.

 While reading: would you listen to the song Comes Love by Ella Fitzgerald?