In the juvenile search for the love of my life that could complete me in all my flaws, I found Christina, and throughout high school I thought myself to be madly in love with her. I did at times consider the idea of being madly in love with someone else, but ultimately determined such an idea to be preposterous. Christina was the perfect embodiment divine femininity, and therefore my soulmate.
As it turned out she was neither of those things, and when everything went up in flames I stopped believing in soulmates. Very surprising, I know. I'll spare you the story of my first great love, since you've probably already been through a similar adolescent heartbreak yourself. If you haven't yet, you will. And you'll survive. Probably.
Selena was my second great love. You've already heard how that ended.
Through the reconciliation in the months that followed our separation I learned that Selena regretted the decision to marry me shortly after making it, but had never told anyone. It hurt me to know she hadn’t wanted to be with me, and only stayed out of a sense of obligation and social pressure. It hurt more to know that she hadn’t felt safe enough with me to say it out loud.
She assured me she wouldn’t take back the years that we’d spent together because of the growth she’d had in them, and she appreciated how hard I had tried to make it work. She was grateful for my family and the window that it had given her into her own. She said she still cared for me, and saw me as a brother. We just weren’t right for each other.
After my fear of separation became mirrored in reality, I went on a relationship psychology binge in an attempt to understand what went wrong and why. The diagnoses I found in therapy, books, and podcasts did help me gain clarity. but they did virtually nothing to help me find a trustworthy path forward. I needed to find a way love again on my own.
I was left wondering how to move forward, carrying the angst of one resounding question: if the relationship that I felt inspired by God to pursue, that seemed happy, and still had ultimately failed to meet my emotional needs, what would?
Social media introduced me to the concept of polyamory, which is an umbrella term for any sexual or romantic lifestyle that includes having more than one partner in an environment where everyone involved is aware and consenting. Sometimes married people will see others purely for the fun of it, but often these arrangements involve multiple committed, long-term relationships.
I had earnestly and intentionally practiced monogamy, and felt in some sense it had failed me. Setting aside the idea that monogamy was the only morally correct way to express romantic love, I engaged philosophically with non-traditional relationship structures.
The logical underpinnings of polyamory are straightforward. You have no control over other people or their emotions. You also have romantic needs and wants, and it may or may not be possible to find fulfillment for all of them in a single person. If you can work through your own jealousy and let go of the need to control your partner, which was never possible anyway, you can both have everything you want. That is, of course, assuming you can find a second or third person who’s also interested in what you want.
The idea resonated with me. I had been drawn to multiple people before getting married, and concurrent attractions didn’t stop afterward. I simply controlled my impulses and managed my circumstances to avoid temptation, assuming monogamy was the only truly viable route. Perhaps an alternative was worth exploring. And for a time it was, until it wasn’t.
In my exploration I discovered the concept of karmic love. Karmic love is a game of tit for tat. It's the type of love you graduate to after the failed search for your soulmate teaches you they don’t exist. Whatever relationship you find yourself in, you’ll have to work for it. That’s why it’s called karmic love, it’s based on the understanding that what goes around comes around. You aren’t going to get any better love than what you can give.
The formula for karmic love is simple. It starts with what you want in a partner, and what you’re willing to compromise on. When you have a person who shares enough of your values, who you’re attracted to, and who can reciprocate in a relationship, you go with it. The love that I had for Selena was karmic.
Karmic relationships are loving, yes. On some level though they’re also transactional, which is driven by a fundamentally selfish motivation. You’re using each other as tools to get what you want. You may love your partner for who they are. But you very likely love what they do for you just as much, if not more. If they were to suddenly stop giving you what you want from them, would your romantic attraction survive? It seems unlikely.
Is it wrong to be self-interested? Probably not. I’m certainly interested in having a fantastic life as long as humanly possible. People who say otherwise are lying to you, themselves, or both.
But you can’t be so self-interested that you’re willfully ignorant of others’ needs. There’s a continuum. At one end you have the people who are completely self-absorbed. At the other you have those with inexhaustible charity.
Now it’s not all cut and dry. Some people are giving out of genuine love, others are giving out of a self-sacrificing attempt to gain approval or leverage. That suggests that one could go through the actions associated with loving another person, but have internal motivations that sit anywhere on that continuum. Discerning someone’s true motivations may not be that simple.
In my quest for higher understanding, I came across the concept of twin flame love. An article suggested you only have three great loves, or three ways of loving in your life, though most people never get to the third. The first is your soulmate, which falls apart. The second is your karmic love, which is more likely to stay intact. The third is your twin flame.