Can Love Lost Make Love Found More Powerful?
Can those who are always in love experience love the same as those who have loved, lost, and got it back?
That first kiss.
The first kiss from a crush you’ve had an eye on for a while. The crush you’ve thought about for longer than you remember. The kiss that fades the world away, dims the lights around you, pulls air from your lungs, and sends goosebumps down your spine.
It’s not the first kiss you’ve ever experienced. You’ve kissed others. You loved some of them (at least you thought at the time you did).
Some kisses offer nothing but basic arousal, but this one awakens everything within you. It pokes awake something in the brain long dormant. A feeling you didn’t know you’d ever get back: falling head over heels for someone.
You’ve forgotten what you’ve missed.
Does it make it that much better?
The Power Of Loss
It’s better to have loved and lost and yada yada yada.
It’s a line we’ve all heard before. A line often quoted and repeated and throw into the air like accepted fact.
Most of us wouldn’t argue with it. The pain of lost love can consume and overwhelm, but when that pain levels out the memories of love nearly always float to the surface.
But is it better to have loved and lost than to have always loved and never lost?
Does someone who has gone through loss have a better understanding, a better comprehension of total, complete love, than someone who has never lost it? Does love become more powerful when you know what it’s like to not have it? To have it stripped away from you?
I know of a few couples who have dated since high school. They seem happily married. Love without the experience of loss. Outside of the fluttering out of grade school flings, the fire of love built, grew, and now remains. They likely wouldn’t have it any other way.
Should they?
And yet I know others who are on their second marriage. They are happier than I’ve ever known them to be. Each calls the other the love of their lives. Is it because they worked out the kinks in initial marriages and now it’s smooth sailing? Doubtful. Every newly made bed comes with wrinkles. A new love comes with new trials. New tests. New problems the first marriage could never have prepared them for. And yet, would they have it any other way?
Outside of saying they wished they had spent more time with each other sooner, those I know don’t regret their former loves.
So is one better than the other? Does love and loss elevate the feeling of love over those who never experienced loss?
The Power Of Absence
There’s something about enjoying something, then going without it for some time, only to rediscover it later down the road.
This happens with so many things. There are a handful of music albums I’ll listen to on repeat, then put them away and forget about them for months, if not longer. When I put them back on I discover new sounds, new layers, no instrumentation in the background. It’s not a new listening experience, just an enhanced one.
The same happens with other media. Favorite comedy TV shows will bring out new laughs after not watching for a while. I grew up on Star Wars and yet when I heard there was a stormtrooper banging his head on an opening door I pulled out the VHS and watched every frame closely (I discovered this well before we had the Internet in the house, so beyond the rumor I had to do all the detective work).
But it’s not only with trivial things. I’ll often go months without seeing my mom. I’ve gone as long as 18 of those months between visits. The hug at the end of those months is unlike any other hug we exchange when both around each other on a regular basis.
It means more because we both know what it’s like to not have it available.
Wouldn’t that be the truth with relationship love as well?
Perhaps the musical lyric, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone” should accompany the, “it’s better to have loved and lost...” line.
Because you can’t fully understand the feelings, the experiences, the touches, and sounds and smells of love, until that love is no longer around.
An Awakening
None of this is to say those people who marry their high school sweethearts and remain with them are missing out on anything. It’s not saying they should separate, take an extended break, date around, be single, and end up back together in the end (because Hollywood love stores generally aren’t a thing...except for that opening of ‘Up.’ That’s about as real as it gets).
What I am saying is that if you’re currently alone. If you’re currently single, struggling with the idea of being on your own. Of the months and years that have gone by since your last real love. The last meaningful relationship. The last real kiss. If you’re in any (or all) of those categories, it’s okay.
In act, it’s better than okay.
It means you fully understand what it is like to be in love. What it’s like to, at least for a moment, have every mental, physical, and emotional need taken care of. And yet you also know what it’s like to be without all of that, which means when love does come around again (and I promise, it will), it’ll be that much more powerful.
Because now that you know what you had when it’s gone, you’ll fully and deeply breathe it all in when it returns.
All with that new first kiss.