Whirlwind Romances; Love Them Or Leave Them
November 8, 2009 by Astrid Engels
Filed under Dating Sites
You probably know someone, or at least read a book where this happens; two people meet, fall head over heels in love, and do something totally extreme. Like getting married while jumping out of an airplane or moving (running away??) to Greenland. While it sounds terribly romantic, is it really?
I’m of two minds about this one, probably because I’ve been there. In my younger, yet equally head strong, days, I completely lost it over a man who was 15 years older than me. We’d been dating for just three months when in a flurry of emotion I sublet my amazing apartment, packed my bags and moved in with him.
What happened next was the stuff of nightmares not romantic dreams. He attacked me. Though I’m kind of glib about it now, at the time I felt like my world had fallen apart. Not only was I loveless, I was homeless. And on top of all that, I’d started to doubt my own abilities about feelings and instincts. It happened so suddenly and so intensely it was as though I was watching myself in a movie.
Should I have been more discerning about what could possibly lie ahead? Perhaps. But seeing as how I did make it out alive, I’m not sure if I would do things any differently if I could go back. Sometimes putting a buffer on happenstances of the heart like this also puts a buffer on the amount of emotion you get to experience.
I think that’s the reasoning that many leaping before looking lovers provide: you take the good with the bad. And never sacrifice the good just to save yourself from potential bad. Otherwise, you’ll end up an old, sad sack of middle-ground. And life is too short to not be extreme from time to time.
Having said that there are two sides to this coin. I’m all about following your heart to unexpected places. You’ll have some amazing adventures. But, and it’s a big but, there’s a big difference between being someone who habitually falls deeply in and out of love and changes his or her whole life around on a whim, and being someone who drops everything for one once in a lifetime whirlwind romance.
I’ve dubbed people like this “love-bleweeds”. Like tumbleweeds, they make a life out of rolling and tumbling around. They build up a relationship and a life with someone only to uproot it months later. Then they reconfigure themselves when the next one comes along. If they do this long enough, they’ll forget what it’s like to be calm and comfortable. Nor will they be able to exercise any follow through whatsoever.
If people are actually happy like this, then more power to them. But there are casualties that surround someone who lives like this. Their friends, their coworkers, their neighbors, and perhaps even family and lovers are left in the wake when they drop everything at the sight of their next “soulmate”. Those left behind will have their own baggage to deal with.
It’s a rare thing full of unspeakable joy when you fall in love hard, fast and intense. You simply have to go for it. And if you’re really lucky, and you’ve had some experience, perhaps you’ll master doing so and keeping the rest of your life intact without having to sacrifice any of love’s intensity.
This article was developed by the staff of the Datepad.com internet dating company where you can read thousands of professional dating articles.