The other day I found myself thinking about a term we have all grown so familiar with: “falling in love”. It is something we hear everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s in movies, in almost every song on the radio or our iPods, and even in advertisements. It is pretty much the only term there is to describe what it is describing; the act of growing love for another person, usually in a romantic way. But as I thought about it more and more, I started wondering why we use the word “falling” in association with the act of realizing our love for another person. The connotation of falling brings up feelings of losing control over yourself, not being able to stop, and to me, it’s a scary thing. I know love can be scary, but by automatically pairing the feeling of love with a feeling of fear sets up a whole idea that love is always scary. I’m not saying that the term “falling in love” is not accurate for people to use in most cases, but I’m just wondering why we don’t say “I’m becoming in love”, or “I’m growing into love”. I know it doesn’t sound right because we aren’t used to it, but I like the idea of describing love in a less threatening way.
Now I’ve never been in love, but I can imagine that it is, in fact scary. I have had talked to friends who do describe it to be a feeling of falling and losing control. I even have some friends that are so afraid of that feeling of falling that they just avoid serious relationships all together, or when they start feeling those out of control feelings they bail out first chance they get. I get this. I get that no one wants to be vulnerable and risk getting hurt. But maybe if it was called “growing into love” people wouldn’t be so scared of it. Growing is something everyone wants to do and if you really think about it, when you start loving someone you are growing because your emotions are evolving. Now doesn’t it sound so much better to grow into love than fall into it? I think so.
