What are the criteria and signs that we are really in love? The writer Jean Cocteau once said, “There is no love in this world, only proofs of love.” So, what are these proofs of love? We all know that when the desire for someone is no longer sexual, the love for that person may still be there. So where do we know our love from?
Panic that lasts six months
Author Michelle Katznerf explains, “First of all, don’t confuse falling in love with love. They both initially manifest themselves as a panic of the person’s body and mind. Racine’s Fidel describes falling in love this way: ‘I saw him and my face flushed, and when he looked at me, my face immediately went white again,’ which neurologists and psychiatrists consider to be obsessive-compulsive neurosis.” The relationship lasts about six months to a year.
“The truth of the relationship comes out later,” Michelle Katznerf continued, “The initial fervor changes gradually, and we finally realize that the most What matters from then on is no longer our little egos, or the pleasure we get from each other, but the fact that the other person becomes indispensable in our lives.” Time will tell if this is true love. But are there other signs that confirm love?
Requiring the other person to prove love
“I spoke word for word with Elaine. But I’m supposed to be a guy who likes to joke around with women and be carefree,” George said, “and I treat Elaine with respect. I knew I loved her because I was trying to find ways to keep her.” Rose said of her own feelings, “Sometimes I don’t know myself if I still love Ike, I don’t seem to care about him anymore. But sometimes a small, normal gesture from him, like gathering his hair with his hand, or a word that makes my heart sing, makes my heart move and feel, and understand that my love for him is still there.”
Time, panic, respect, the evidence of love varies from person to person. However, psychoanalyst Alain Gil, a professor at the University of Paris, believes that this evidence proves practically nothing. “It’s just some attempt to understand something about love, whereas love and understanding are two mutually opposing concepts. Love is a miracle, something that bursts into life recklessly and insolently; it is unknowable, transcendent of consciousness, and has nothing to do with reason.”
And yet this intrusion throws the person into a state of overwhelming panic, and he involuntarily tries to re-establish logic and sanity to be sure that he has not become insane. “People in love will relentlessly pursue the other person, trying to figure out the place they occupy in his mind. This act of asking the other person to prove love to him or her is itself proof of the love he or she is carrying.”
Cocteau’s aphorism should be changed to, “There is no love in this world, and there is no proof of love; there is only the demand for proof of love.” We can be sure that we are in love when we feel the inexorable urge to make the other person provide proof of love.
The body’s restlessness
And the body, which impatiently waits for the one who is loved, wants to hear his voice, see his eyes, feel his presence. The philosopher and writer Chantal Thomas spoke: “I know I am in love whenever I feel the world suddenly become distinctly brighter and feel more intense ups and downs than usual. For example, when I take a walk, I feel that everything I see is so clear and distinct, not that I am going to tell about the walk to the person I love in a moment, but simply because of the thought of such a person’s existence. This brings me to a higher than usual state sexually, intellectually and emotionally.”
In the end, it’s not reason that helps us glimpse love, but our bodies. How one’s own body is constantly occupied by the beloved, even in those moments when one is separated from him; and how, when one is with him, one is hungry to receive everything about him, his movements, his attitude, his words and expressions, his scent, his skin.
True longing
For Kailin, the proof of love was conclusive : “When I love someone, I always miss them. Whether I’m at work, watching a movie, or talking to my girlfriend, he’s always in the back of my mind in bursts. I feel the separation intensely, and that tension doesn’t ease until he shows up.”
Love is the search for the beloved because he alone can make us feel complete in life. “What we seek in love is what we have always lacked and do not know what it is,” explains Alan Gill. “The object of our love has the wonderful gift of bringing completeness whenever he is there, making us relaxed, our hearts racing and our pleasures like going up to the ninth heaven. ” It is the destiny of human beings to live in an unfillable emptiness. To love someone is to ask for what the other person does not possess, but the presence of the other person is enough to make up for this lack. Jacques Lacan once exclaimed, “To love is to give what one does not have.”
Keeping part of the ignorance
What is it that we fall in love with? Maybe it’s better not to know. In Greek mythology, Psyker and Eros, the god of love, had nightly sex, and the only condition that Eros made was that the woman could never see him again. Psyker’s sisters muttered, “He doesn’t want to show himself, so he can’t be a demon.”
Finally, one day, while Eros was asleep, Psyker found a lamp and illuminated his face. Eros in the light was so beautiful that the woman could not help but tremble, and the hot lamp oil dripped onto Eros’ skin, waking him up, and he fled. The seductive phantom of love cannot withstand the bitter pursuit.