Butterflies

The other day after my Buddhist meeting the conversation turned to relationships and love. Yes, we are that kind of Buddhists, the ones with earthly desires. The four of us who had this conversation are all single ladies (and one gentleman). We’re also all at points in our lives where we are ready to settle down, without desperately needing it (buddhism = happiness from within). We talked about what we like in a person, what the ideal partner would be like until my dear friend Stefanie said to me “Do you think butterflies are necessary?” Talking about difficult questions…

So are they (necessary that is)? Imagine you’re ready for a long term, settle down kind of thing, you know what kind of person you want to be with and actually meet someone who fulfills all the criteria. And the person looks good on top of it but for some odd reason there are no butterflies doing backflips in your stomach, and your heart rate doesn’t accelerate the way it does during a Bikram Yoga session. Do you go for the perfect partner, the stability, the drama free happy ever after? Or are you scared that by not having the butterflies you don’t get the real deal, the true love? As always in this kind of aspiring philosophical blog posts I don’t have an answer. I don’t want to just say “it depends” although it really does. I had butterflies before, lots of them. I wanted them and I loved having them and the relationship was great. It was great until it got abusive and I had to eventually run away because I was literally afraid that it would kill me. That’s the thing about butterflies: sometimes they are not only in your stomach but all around you, in front of your eyes so that you can’t see. You can’t see what all your friends see because all you care about are the beautiful butterflies and how fast they fly. They don’t always do that, of course. Every once in a while they stay where they are supposed to be and allow you to see and make good decisions and let you have a healthy relationship.

Let’s just say that they are very tricky little things and maybe that’s why they shouldn’t be the most important thing to look for. Maybe it’s more important that you can look into someone’s eyes and say “I love everything about you” and mean it.