What’s Love but a Second-Hand Emotion?

I was glued in place, not breathing or blinking, my eyes fixated on the screen. Roommate E and I were watching So You Think You Can Dance last night, and the final dance had me in a tizzy of emotion – feeling the passion and romance of love like it was me wrapped up in someone rather than the dancers on stage.

The dance ended, and I released my breath and possibly a tear or two.

E stared at me.

“Really?” she asked, deadpan.

“Are you kidding me?!”  I got indignant. “That was love personified. That was love in motion. That was the living, breathing embodiment of that feeling that your heart might burst with all that you’re feeling.” I’m wordy when I’m emotional.

She shrugged. “That’s not what love is for me. It doesn’t last.”

She pushed play again, shaking her head with disapproval as the judges gushed over the number.

We finished the episode, skimmed through the results show and wished each other goodnight. It was a normal evening at home for us, but the conversation stuck with me.

E and her long-distance boyfriend have been together for six years. They kissed at a Christmas party our freshman year of college and have been together, in love, ever since.

They never had a whirlwind romance. She never got caught up in it. She never organized her plans around his. She didn’t spend hours a day on the phone with him, texting him, in contact with him. She has been cool about it from the beginning, has let it ebb and flow and grow and has always grown with it.

They fight. Sometimes a lot. But somehow – even when their fights are about big life issues, they come out on the other side of it, still together and with this unspoken resilience and faith in their togetherness.

They’re undoubtedly in love, but it’s not love like I’ve known it.

I’ve been in love twice. Both were uninhibited, out of control, spontaneous forces of love. They also both ended in an out of control, wild force of pain.

Those feelings of wild abandon and passionate love came rushing back watching that last dance. For me, I was taken back to a place that feels like it could never get old. For E, she could only shrug. “It doesn’t last.” Maybe she’s right.

Maybe E’s style is what long-lasting love is made of: diligence, faith, level-headed decisions and rational feelings. But for me it feels like less than I could feel, less than I could give or receive from another person.

Is it possible to have both? Or will one always have to be a second-hand emotion?

(Says a lot about the dancers that it’s that good with that music…)

And while I’m indulging in linking SYTYCD, let’s not kid ourselves – this was the best dance this week…