Love is one of the most written about emotions in human history. It's the subject of countless songs, poems, stories and movies. In principle, everyone thinks love is a wonderful thing. We all want to find that special someone to share our lives with. And yet, when you look at people's actual behavior, it becomes clear that a significant fraction of the human race seems to be doing everything they can to avoid love. Why is this? Why do so many people go to such lengths to avoid the very thing they claim to want most?
I think the answer lies in the inherent vulnerability that comes with loving someone. Opening your heart to another person is a terrifying thing. It means giving them the power to hurt you in ways nothing else can. Physical pain is fleeting, but heartbreak can stay with you for years. When you love someone, you are essentially handing them a loaded gun pointed directly at your heart and trusting them not to pull the trigger. Not an appealing prospect for those of a cautious disposition.
There's also the sobering reality that even if you do find love, you are unlikely to keep it forever. The divorce rate hovers around 50%. And those who stay together are not exactly guaranteed eternal bliss. Over the long haul, any relationship is going to face serious challenges - money troubles, annoying in-laws, screaming babies, mid-life crises, ill health. For every decade together, there will likely be a year or two that are just an exhausting uphill slog devoid of romance. When you consider all that, you can see why "till death do us part" would make anyone a bit queasy.
And modern love comes with its own unique set of pitfalls. Online dating and hookup culture have turned relationships into a high-volume numbers game. You're just another face in their Tinder feed, easily replaced by a hundred other options a swipe away. The overwhelming abundance of choice makes people reluctant to settle for anything short of perfection. Why invest months in a relationship when there could always be someone better just around the corner? The result is a dating scene where genuine connection is frustratingly elusive.
Even if you do make a meaningful connection with someone, there's a good chance technology will find a way to torpedo it. Social media and texting make it all too easy for misunderstandings and perceived slights to escalate. Seemingly innocuous things like not liking their latest Instagram post quickly become grounds for an angsty "we need to talk." The 24/7 modes of communication leave little room for the cooling off periods that once let minor disputes blow over. No one ever fell in love staring at their partner's Snapchat story.
Still, this is nothing new. Beneath the modern trappings, these are just the latest variations on the age-old fears of rejection, heartbreak and commitment that have always accompanied love. And plenty of people throughout history have found inventive ways to avoid facing those fears head on.
An obvious example is workaholism. Losing yourself in your job is a socially admired way to avoid dealing with your love life. No one is going to criticize you for putting in 80 hour weeks at the office. In fact, they'll praise your dedication and work ethic. Meanwhile, you're so exhausted when you get home each night that you can barely stay awake long enough to microwave a frozen pizza, let alone go out and meet new people. And if anyone does express concern, you can always deflect with some line about how you'll get to your personal life once you make partner or close that big deal you've been chasing. Excuses are plentiful when avoiding love is the goal.
For the more artistically inclined, pouring all your energy into creative pursuits can be another effective love dodge. Writing that novel or painting that masterpiece becomes an all-consuming passion that leaves little room for other people. You hermit yourself away, lost in your own little world. And if you ever do venture out, you gravitate to other artists who are just as lost in their own projects. It's easier to connect over a shared devotion to art than it is to risk real intimacy.
Some take a more philosophical approach to swearing off love, losing themselves in books and intellectual abstractions. They overthink things to the point that no real-life relationship could ever meet their exacting mental criteria of what love should be. No human could ever measure up to the idealized fantasy taking shape in their heads. It's analysis paralysis as a way of life. Why risk the mess and disappointment of an actual relationship when you can have a perfect imaginary one that exists only in your mind? At least your fantasies will never cheat on you, argue with you, or leave their socks on the floor.
Of course, none of these rationalizations are consciously expressed. These love avoidance strategies operate on more of an instinctive emotional level. Few people wake up one day and say "I'm going to bury myself in work so I don't have to risk getting my heart broken again." They just feel an acute anxiety about relationships and these behaviors evolve as a salve for that discomfort.
Granted, romantic love is not for everyone. Some people are genuinely fulfilled by staying single and that's a perfectly valid life path. But I suspect many who go that route are doing so less out of an affirmative choice and more out of a deep-seated fear of getting hurt. They're not thrilled about being alone so much as they're haunted by some emotional trauma in their past that makes solitude seem like the safer bet. Maybe their parents had a nasty divorce or they endured a particularly scarring breakup themselves. Whatever the cause, some internal scar tissue makes them wary of trying again.
Others have simply been worn down by the grind of the dating world. They've endured one too many awkward first dates or waited by the phone for one too many calls that never came. At some point it just doesn't seem worth the effort anymore. Why keep putting yourself out there only to face the same cycle of hope and disappointment over and over again? It's the romantic equivalent of Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football. Eventually, you just want to leave the football on the ground and walk away.
And for the more marriage-minded, it's hard not to be discouraged by the endemic infidelity and divorce that seems to afflict even the most outwardly solid unions these days. We've all seen couples we thought were perfect for each other wind up in vicious legal battles over who gets to keep the wedding china. Their public unraveling becomes a cautionary tale whispered in hushed tones at dinner parties. If those two couldn't make it, what hope do the rest of us have?
Those fears are only amplified by the ghoulish glee with which celebrity gossip magazines and websites cover every gory detail of the latest Hollywood breakup. The subtext seems to be that if even the rich, beautiful and famous can't find lasting love, it must be an impossibility for the rest of us mere mortals. Their pain becomes a projection screen for our worst fears about relationships.
There's also the unspoken assumption that if you haven't found "the one" by a certain age, there must be something wrong with you. We all know that one aunt who makes it her personal mission at every family gathering to interrogate you about your love life and not-so-subtly hint that your baby making years are numbered. It's enough to make anyone want to fake a work emergency and hightail it back to the safety of their studio apartment.
But here's the thing - for all the sturm and drang of romantic love, I suspect it's still worth the risk for most people. Because when it works, it's one of the most profound experiences a human can have. Loving someone and being loved in return has a way of making everything else in life seem a little less daunting. Your partner becomes your co-conspirator against an uncertain world. Having that one person who always has your back and believes in you is an incomparable source of strength and comfort.
Of course, that's not to say that romantic relationships are the only meaningful bonds one can have. Family and friendships are incredibly enriching too. But there's a unique depth to romantic love that's hard to replicate in other connections. A partner is family you choose for yourself. A relationship is a friendship on steroids. There's something electric about building a life with the person you love most in this world.
And while you can find joy and meaning as a single person, there's also something to be said for the personal growth that comes from negotiating the day-to-day intimacies of a shared existence. It's easy to stay set in your ways when you're only accountable to yourself. But when you merge your life with another person, you're forced to confront your flaws and blind spots in a way that rarely happens when you're alone. The friction of learning to live with and love another person has a way of sanding down your rough edges.
It's a shame that those opportunities for growth are so often overshadowed by the specters of failure and heartbreak. We've become so risk-averse as a society that we'd often rather just avoid something altogether than face even the possibility of failing at it. But in protecting ourselves from the lows, we're also denying ourselves the chance to experience the highs.
As scary as it is to be vulnerable with another person, it's that very vulnerability that cracks us open to so much of what makes life worth living. There's an old episode of This American Life where the host Ira Glass muses that you would never see a movie where the main character doesn't change or grow. And yet, that's how most of us live our actual lives - avoiding discomfort and risk, never really changing or growing, just staying in our lanes and trying not to rock the boat. We could stand to be a bit more like the heroes in our favorite stories - brave enough to let ourselves be transformed by life and love.
Of all the ways we avoid the risk of love, perhaps the saddest is the simple tragedy of poor timing. How many potential love stories are thwarted because two people just never manage to line up the phases of their lives at the right time? One is always getting over a broken engagement while the other is backpacking through Asia. One is ready to settle down just as the other decides to go back to school. In the movies, the stars always align for the big romantic finale. In real life, you're more likely to get a bad breakup over Skype.
Timing is a particular challenge in the current economy, where career opportunities are increasingly scattered across the globe. The relationship you thought had a real shot suddenly becomes untenable when your dream job wants to relocate you to London. You either break up or sign up for a transatlantic romance that will almost certainly wither under the strain of time zones and technologies.
It's enough to make even the most hopeless romantic think that maybe all this heartache just isn't worth it. Why keep rolling the dice when the odds seem so stacked against you? Why risk having the rug pulled out from under you again and again? At a certain point, it's hard not to conclude that love is a young person's game. The rest of us should just invest in some good throw pillows and resign ourselves to a life of stylish solitude.
But in the end, I think most people still yearn for love, no matter how diligently they try to convince themselves otherwise. You can see it in the wistful looks of passersby eyeing a canoodling couple in the park. You can hear it in the vicarious enthusiasm we have for the love lives of our friends, as if their happiness might be transfusable. Our self-protective cynicism is always tinged with a kind of jealous awe when confronted with real love.
Because deep down, we know that the rewards of love are proportional to the risks. No one looks back on their life and fondly recalls all the vulnerability they avoided. It's the moments of unbridled, unguarded emotion that lodge themselves in our memories and shape who we become. It's the people we loved and lost and learned from that make us into who we are. The heartbreaks and humiliations are just the price of admission for those transcendent moments of connection and joy. You can't have one without the other.
So for all the energy we put into avoiding love, I suspect it will keep finding us in the end. It's just too central to the human experience to ever avoid completely. It will keep piercing our cynical exteriors with its little arrows, even when we're trying our best to dodge them. All we can do is try to be brave enough to open ourselves up to it when it comes. Because in the final accounting of our lives, it's not our impressive resumes or overflowing bank accounts that will comfort us. It's the knowledge that we loved and let ourselves be loved. Everything else is just killing time.