You Can Help Who You Love! Really?

There’s a nice song by R&B singer Ledisi titled “Can’t Help Who You Love.”The lyrics include, “You can’t help who you love/You can’t know whose at fault/The heart lives in a world of it’s own no control/You can’t help who you love!” While I’m sure the song is for entertainment purposes only. Based on the idea that you have no control over who you fall in love with is a popular one. But if you ask me, this is absolutely false. You have many people who argue that love is simply a feeling, albeit a strong one. Here’s the problem with that theory. Let’s say you meet a nice, attractive woman. You exchange numbers and talk (not just text) a lot. Eventually, you can’t wait to hang out with her and do so several times a week. Over the next few months you both grow this intense attraction to each other and find yourselves falling in love, or you just think you are. Things are going well until you have that one first huge argument, trust is challenged or boredom starts to set in. Regardless of how you think you  feel for each other, the decision to stay in the relationship is introduced, and it can be a final decision.... unless you get real with what it is you really want from this person and what you want for this person. 
In her matron of honor speech, my best friends wife told my ex-wife and I to “choose love” when things got tough in our marriage or when we want to walk away. Of course, we loved each other, but making it a priority to choose to love each other on a daily basis, even when we’re upset, is another component that is solely based on our daily actions. These are actions that are not fueled by an emotion in the moment, but rather, by keeping in mind the love that we have for one another and the desire to make it work. To love someone is a choice!

The fact  that even choosing to be polite to your partner can be the difference between a long-lasting relationship and one that can quickly disintegrate.
Relationships are made up of hundreds or thousands of daily micro-interactions where you have the opportunity to be positive and supportive to your partner, or to be dismissive and uninterested. 

So what happens when you do meet that special someone who makes your heart flutter and your skin glow? It’s not just feelings, it’s science.

this is due to  a chemical reaction!

In one of her TED talks, biological anthropologist Helen Fisher describes an experiment that she performed on the brains of people who were in love. What she found was that “Romantic love is not emotion, it’s a drive.”

What happens when a person has an affair? Did they not choose to put themselves in a position to fall in love with someone else? They did. They could help it....YEAH RIGHT! Are they held captive to their feelings for the person that they are sneaking around with? I think not. Whether it’s an emotional affair or a physical one, a person has made the choice, every time, to sleep with another individual or to divulge personal information.

When discussing the reasons people cheat, romantic love, along with attraction and attachment, involve “overlapping but separate brain systems.” As was  told on CNN in 2012, “It’s not hard for somebody to sexually desire one person, be infatuated with another, and still want to spend the rest of his or her life with a third. But once again, it’s all about a choice, and we control the choices we make.

If loving someone was solely based on emotions and chemistry, the number of marriages would plummet, even more than they have, and the divorce rate would climb to a point that there would be no need for stats, as people would jump ship at the first sign of the smallest issue. So for those of us in healthy (in my case no longer) relationships, you must continue to choose love, even when you’re feeling less than in love with the way your partners are at times. Love can be great and exciting when it’s with the right person, but feelings are fleeting. You can always help who you fall in love with, just as you can always help who you stay in love with, also.