You can't make someone love you


How can we fall out of love?

I mean it. If we love someone, how can we fall out of 
love?

Falling in love, according to my understanding of the 
Jungian ideas, is projecting some of your best aspects 
on the other person. You see them in a haze of love, of 
perfection. I've seen something to the effect that 
falling in love is the only time that psychosis is not 
treated. That is, when you are in love, you are psychotic.
You are crazy. You are nuts.

I, then, am currently nuts.

One of the things that I admire most about my ex-husband 
is that he is friends with all of his ex-girlfriends. And 
his ex-wife, that is, me. When we were first married, he 
told me about the ex-girlfriends. He was in contact with 
them, by phone or email. I was ok with it and admired it. 
We met dancing, jitterbug, east coast swing dancing. We 
would go to the live dances in Cabin John, Maryland. We 
would dance two dances with each other, say bye, and race 
off to dance with everyone else. Five hundred people would 
show up, for an hour lesson and three hours of live band. 
In the summer the guys would bring 4 t-shirts and change 
them as they were soaked. There was no alcohol in the park. 
No air conditioning. We didn't clap for the bands at all 
because we were too busy trying to find the next partner to 
dance with. You could signal next dance, one or two fingers. 
Not past two, because no one could remember.....

Anyhow, jealousy seemed silly. My ex-husband transformed 
each of those relationships with his ex-girlfriends from 
lover and partner into something else.

I think this is the right thing to do. If it is our best 
aspects projected on the person that we are in love with, 
then perhaps it is our own worst aspects that we project 
when we "fall out of love". We hate the person. They have 
broken our hearts. They have been cruel.

But have they? They were not required to be in love with 
us. Just because we love them does not mean that they have 
to love us back. Or really, they do not have to love us 
"that way". You can't make someone love you.

I want to be like my ex-husband. I want to continue to 
love the person that I love. As a small town doctor, I have
taken care of both halves of a divorcing couple. My brain 
managed to keep them entirely separate and not connect them 
until the day when I saw both. Even then, I had trouble 
believing that they were talking about each other: because 
what they said had almost nothing to do with what the other 
person was saying or doing. I said to my nurse, "Are they 
really talking about each other? Or is it at last name 
coincidence?"

She said, "Took you long enough to get it."

If I am rejected, I want to keep loving the person. Perhaps 
I too will fall out of loving them "that way". But if it is 
aspects of myself that I see in them and love, why would I 
turn to hate? I don't want to project the ugly parts of myself 
on them.

I'll save the ugly parts to project on the greedy corporations. 
Now, I am perfectly content and happy to hate them.......