Union Is Not Love

American culture posits that to join another in union, like in dating or marriage, is an act of love. This is a common cultural misdirection. What's celebrated is not love, but the visible entanglement: the merging of lives, schedules, assets, and futures.

The roots of two souls become one, and this enmeshment is mistaken for love. Doesn’t it feel natural to believe that two people who merge into one must be in love? In this, we reduce what should be sacred in our dark world to the outcome of structure.

Even structural enmeshment itself is mistaken for love. For example, a young man who aches for his love to be meaningful invites his boyfriend to move in. Not from clarity, but rather from fear that without shared walls and groceries his relationship won't feel real.

In this case, desperation and fear are disguised as love. When roots enmesh not from clarity but desperation, they rot below the surface, unseen. What looks like flourishing is often the slow suffocation of one by the other. For this young man, it is the baser feelings of the "I" poisoning the roots in the name of "love."

It is possession of another.

Possession is called love, but it is not singular. It is a compound of fear, longing, loneliness, nostalgia, desire, insecurity, and other baser emotions. Illusion survives through sincerity, and most sincerely believe that this compound feeling is a singular love.

Even in the most stable neighborhoods, there are families whose roots are quietly rotting beneath polished floors and scheduled dinners. The poisoning was done in sincerity. The rot came in the name of love. This is an invisible, spiritual suffocation.

Both souls only have a single chance to live for a flicker of time, yet they are doomed to slowly be erased by the one thing promised to liberate them from affliction.

After graduating college, a couple I knew married. They both were relatively young, about 24 years old. They appeared deeply in love: where you find one, you will find the other. I remember sitting down on their old, leather couch and flipping through a photobook of them and their adventures together. It was filled with pictures from Genoa, Vancouver, family gatherings, and beach trips. They undoubtedly feel that their love is meaningful.

I was close friends with both of them before they joined in union, and I know from private discussions that they both struggle with anxiety, insecurity, and fear. Both told me that they wanted someone to love them and spend their life with them. They joined in union not from clarity, but to quell these painful feelings. They mistook this compound for love. Thus, they both fed the roots with the poison of the self.

This love is transactional.

The result is the slow, mutual rotting of independent souls through enmeshment. An unintentionally parasitic relationship.

This is not an isolated case. This is the expected sacrament of modern love.

What then is love, if not possession or structure? Love is not a compound of feelings, but it is to fully witness another soul. An action, not a noun. To see only what is, not what you wish. In other words, to love someone is to immolate the self in relation to our beloved. A daily cutting of roots, in reverence.

A note from the author:

The tragedy in trying to love someone with grace is that most won't understand. And that's fine, I believe this to be a natural consequence of our culture. In fact, I wager that most people need this type of love to not suffocate under affliction. They need this entanglement to soothe the self's ache. While they are sincere and likely a good soul, it still results in poison.

I believe that to act with clean love requires the daily cutting of roots, the very things that connect us to soil beneath our feet. The source of our soul's nourishment.

The reality is that when two souls' roots entangle, they become one organism. And to sever those roots will undoubtedly harm another soul.

From this, I must conclude that I am not suitable for union.