Is love a habit?
When I think of love, I think of the lukewarm, long-term, type of love. The kind of love that is a product of a set of habits. You fall in love with the routine, with the tasks you do together, with the way they do things.
Love languages play a big part. You can slowly learn and get used to someone’s love language, for example, physical touch or words of affirmation, and this routine expression of love can make you fall in love.
Habits are an inevitable part of love. Sometimes love can become a habit, but at other times some habits can start to feel like love. My grandparents spent 54 long years together. Their marriage seemed to lack what I consider love, but love did exist.
My grandmother was used to picking petty fights with her husband, she was used to making tea for him at four-thirty in the afternoon. They were used to sharing meals or simply looking at each other across the room. Now that he is not around, her routine seems to have fallen over, she doesn’t know what to do with that time.
Sometimes love can simply be sharing this idea of routine with someone. It seems for her, love was a habit. After 54 years of marriage, while the attractiveness and romance disappears, love lingers in the form of habit, the habit of trusting each other, caring for each other and simply being present for each other.
Falling out of love and falling in love can seem like a decision. It could be a conscious, logical and calculated decision. But I think it’s not a choice, just like a habit. You could get used to someone’s presence and soon, you start to care for that person. Proximity is one of the most powerful variables that can lead to attraction. It has been proved that at the early stages of forming a bond, sharing space and time can play a huge role. Is the propinquity effect really real?
But what about when these habits break? Can love continue even then? I think one of the reasons why long-distance relationships suck is because these habits that you have formed of that person fade away. It is hard because you lose the ability to express your love.
For me, love was as simple as coming back from a long school day and making two packets of ramen with my brother and rewatching HIMYM for the hundredth time. But it’s not always this simple.
Love can be complicated too. It can be waiting for someone’s reply eagerly, or nervously. Love can be found in moments when we are the most human. It is in moments when we feel safe enough to cry on their shoulder. It can be for ourselves. When we give ourselves a pep talk before going to give that final presentation. I’ll say that it’s also there when I observe my friend holding a door for a stranger. I find love when I keep my head on their chest, and simply listen to their heartbeat.
We often find such moments of love, but are these moments the same as loving someone? I don’t think so. Loving someone is not always so effortless. It requires commitment, care and sometimes selflessness.
Love is not necessarily a habit. It is not just when you want to spend all your time with that person. It is in moments when they drop you at that bus stop out of their way or when they seek you when they are sad. Love is when you break your habits, it is perhaps when you want to form new ones just for them.
Love can fade over time, and sometimes two people might just be together because they are too afraid to change their habits. In situations like these, habits might be disguised as love. Is it actually really love if it is just because it is based on the convenience of your habits and routine?
It seems like I have typed love more times in this article than I have ever said it out loud. Certainly, love is in more moments than we realise. It is in those unsaid moments. It is more about the small things than the big. It’s just not this fussy warm feeling, but also that uncomfortable one. It makes us do all sorts of things and eventually becomes a habit, which one day unknowingly becomes unimaginable to let go of.