What is Love?

Grey knit sweatpants // Grey knit dress // Sentaler baby alpaca coat // Leather necklace DIY by me // Spektre sunglasses // Nike Air Max sneakers 

I don’t want to say I’m a self-proclaimed love guru but when it comes to matters of the heart (and when I say matters, I mean having your heart ripped out of your chest, thrown on the ground until it splits into a million pieces and then little men wearing clogs appear out of nowhere, start dancing the jig on whatever’s left of your life all whilst grinning and shouting: we’re going to go like a hundred other girls with their boobs out on Instagram while you sit here and cry your eyes out) – needless to say, this isn’t my first barbecue.

Just this past week, a handful of girls have somehow felt compelled to tell me about either the dating scene, Tinder, their breakup or finding out their first crush got engaged, etc. And since I’m constantly overanalyzing my life and others, I’ve had love on the brain lately, and I’ve come to some contrarian conclusions about it. What is love? Is love singular or polymorphous? Can you love more than one person in your life or are we all confined to a series of bad relationships until we find THE ONE?

Well, on my way to a yoga class at GoodLife Fitness the other day, I was in the process of getting all zen and of course, all these superfluous thoughts started to flood my mind. The first thing I thought, and I have to be candid here, is how many great loves can one person have? I’ve had a few great loves. Ok, I’ve had three great loves, and maybe a handful of exciting crushes, and then a handful of romances that were based more on convenience and loneliness (you can guess how those turned out) than on anything truly meaningful. But which of my great loves was the greatest? Do they rank in chronological order of importance or are they all sort of along the same level of greatness but just occurring at different moments of my life?

You know how some girls go around saying, “OMG, he’s the one” or people refer to each other as “SOULMATES”? Well, I think there’s an inherent fallacy in that way of thinking. First of all, how many times do you say omg he’s the one and then fast forward 5 years later he cheats on you and you break up? Countless. You’ve got to rewrite your entire history and perhaps the hardest part of breaking up, admit that you were wrong.

Like I said before, I’ve had my heart broken many times. My first two great loves both ended in gut-wrenching, life-changing heartbreak. But I don’t hate my ex boyfriends. In fact, I hold both those dudes in such high regard in my life’s story. They were two of my great loves – that’s not something you just bury into the past and forget. It’s part of me.

And now I’ve found someone who is my 3rd great love. But in a different way than the other two because I’m not the same person I was back then. I’ve found someone who I want to do things like make babies with and grow old with. It may very well be the last love of my life. But how can we know for sure what the future holds? We get so bogged down with the idea of losing someone or something that we forget to enjoy the present. Maybe it was the element of yoga practice that forces you to be in the present moment that spawned this epiphany but I think there’s some truth in it.

Same with my girlfriends who think the dating scene is cray-cray or in the midst of a break-up, or saw their ex get engaged. I mean, we are all going to have to see our ex loves get married and engaged, and if it doesn’t make you feel SOMETHING, then I’m not quite sure if you’re human. But that’s life, we feel and we let the feelings pass through us, and it’s all part of living and loving. You don’t have to go crazy assigning meaning to every little thought that crosses your mind, just like you don’t have to go crazy assigning ultimatums to your love life.

So what if the guy you were seeing fell off the face of the earth? So what if Tinder dates kinda suck right now and most of the boys out there just wanna see naked selfies to get enough energy to leave the house (true story). And so what if you meet so many duds you question if you’re going to be a cat-lady forever? We’ve all been there. It’s part of life. Instead of trying to find “the one,” concentrate on finding “the one right now.” It could mean giving full attention to someone you’re on a date with for the duration of the date, or it could be admitting to your secret crush that you think they’re sexy. It could be a one-night stand. It could be your best friend. It could be the one who lies beside you every night but you’ve somehow neglected. Just be in the moment, however long that moment lasts.

And this is what I think about in downward facing dog. That and trying not to pass gas.

Justine Iaboni