Last week, I posted about Platonic love vs. romantic love.

In that post, I talked about how I seem to distinguish friend, love, and partner:

  • a friend is someone I wish to be happy and fulfilled,
  • a love is a friend who I actively wish to make happy and to bask in the glow of their happiness no matter whether I was involved in its formation or not, and
  • a partner is a love who I feel connected to in a forever way and want to actively make sure is cared for now and forever, today and in old age, in sickness and in health.

This weekend, I discovered a few other data points that definitely show the above is just one spectrum that I can overlay on something that is not at all a straight line.

The Observer Effect

One of the foundational concepts in Quantum Mechanics is that the act of measuring things changes the thing you are measuring. Similarly, anthropologists and ethnographers constantly struggle to measure things without making things fit into social constructs from the investigator’s society rather than the object society.

Humans love to frame things as spectrums. There are neurotypical people on this end and non-neurotypical people on that end and you are somewhere along this line. There are introverts and extroverts and you are somewhere along that line. There are friends and lovers and you are somewhere on that line.

How much do we bend reality to overlay these lines on it?

New Data

Since my post about my mental distinctions about which relationships I feel are described by “friend”, “love”, and “partner”, it has been natural for me to think of those labels as some sort of spectrum or concentric circles or layers.

But, I also posted about being smitten by a fiddle player that I saw perform on Friday night.

Where does that smitten fit on the friend, love, partner spectrum? The way that I felt about that fiddle player on Friday night was nearly indistinguishable for me from the feeling that I have of being in love. Yet, it was different. But, why?

As I mentioned in the Platonic/romantic post, the being in love, for me, is the desire to express my love and affection for someone. And, I really wanted to do that Friday night. I wrote her a note to tell her I was smitten (which, I chickened out of giving to her). I beamingly told her how much joy she added to my evening as I passed her on my way out. I commented on her band’s Facebook post about the event Friday night beaming about being smitten with her.

So, how is that not in love? I don’t know!!! It’s just not.

I also saw someone last night at a discussion group that I find myself wanting to love yet not in love with. And, I’m realizing that there are a bunch of people in my life in that category. Some of them, I very much consider friends. Some of them, I barely consider friends. I just feel this pull to be in love with them…. yet I’m not.

Upon reflection, I have lots of other data points in the fiddle-player group, too…. smitten, but not in love.

Analysis

My tentative, working hypothesis on the smittenness vs. in love is that the smittenness wraps up the moment into the love. Being smitten says more about how a particular moment in time worked for me rather than how I feel about the person apart from that moment and apart from who/where/how I was in that moment.

A couple of my early-teen romances definitely fall into this category. At that point, I didn’t have enough data. I thought that must be love. But, now, I feel some loves that transcend being tethered to a particular moment and some loves that don’t.

I still don’t have a tentative working hypothesis for why/how I could want to be in love with someone and not be. I’m sure I’ll dump all those thoughts on you as they develop. Lucky you. 😁