The other half

My first ever real love break up happened to me at the start of this year. I felt emotions I never thought possible, lows that felt as though they reached to the other side of the earth, literal heart aches that felt as though they would never end, a choked up ball in my throat appears every time I think of it, still.

Being a scientist, and also a true believer of everything happens for a reason, naturally I was curious as to why the fuck evolution would not only allow us to feel this sort of pain, but why were we feeling this love in the first place? What place in bettering the human condition did love play? Why is it that so much of our lives, or, at least my life, is built around this urge to find a mate, and what role does love have to play in this game? The urge to find love is not all that consuming. The urge to hold onto love though, that’s a whole other story.

I say “my life” in a bid to not project my own thoughts and feelings onto the rest of the world, but realistically, it is something that has plagued mankind for aeons in various shapes and forms. In my new favourite book, “Kafka on the Shore”, Murakami explores the idea of love through reference to ancient beliefs that we were not simply male and female, rather one of three types – male/male, male/female, female/female, and that each person was made out of the components of two people happily living our lives. Until one day, for reasons unexplained, God took a knife cut us all down the middle and now we’re all lonely half-people trapesing the earth searching for our other half. This concept was explained more eloquently than i have offerred, but for someone who was in the midst of heart break, everything was doom and gloom. 

Murakami continues to say that is difficult for people to their lives alone, and certainly harder for some than others. This concept conflicted significantly with my own beliefs about the importance of independence – why can’t we be one without the other? Why do some cope better? Are these people more capable of living alone split from their half slightly off centre? And those of us with the bigger half more capable of finding fulfillment in ourselves than others? Or, are we all split equally but some of us are more equipped to deal with the outfall than others?  How does our environment shape our ability to take on the world alone, and, do we really want to? Do we do it because we understand the necessity of soldiering on to be an active member in the societal constructs in which we live today? Or do we continue alone because we believe, and some are lucky to know, that there is more out there, that we don’t have to settle when it doesn’t feel right? Regardless, at some point in time whether that be our mid-teens, our late 50’s, anywhere in between and outside of that, at some point we feel the urge to face the world together with another half, maybe not the right half, but another half nonetheless.

So. Why? Is it really as simple as our primary human purpose on earth to procreate? Why if our sole purpose is to reproduce on this planet do we feel love? Not just any love. Romantic love. Not the love you feel for your sister, mother, brother, father, but that deep all consuming, intoxicating, drowning in euphoria love you feel for the other half that as Murakami suggests, was torn away from us right after the dawn of man.

I certainly didn’t have the answer after the twenty minutes of stillness, lying in bed pondering this concept. All I had were more questions and many assumptions. Is it because babies are raised better with the security of two parents? Is it because our species would not survive if we carelessly procreated? What the hell is the science behind monogamy? And if all these hypothesis are true, then will I still feel the need for romantic love once I’ve given this planet all my potential ancestors (I’m being coy about menopause). I mean the ideal scenario would be that it is women’s time to shine and have carefree copulation, but from what I’ve heard, the creator is a jerk and our libido disappears when we no longer need to worry about falling pregnant and giving up years of life for other beings. Which scientifically I get, but, if you’re going to make sex and love so goddamn enjoyable, why take it away from us just as we  have the time to enjoy it?

Why why why why why, so many why’s. That one page from Murakami had me in internet loop for about an hour or so before I discovered the book “The Evolution of Desire: Strategies for Human Mating” by David M. Buss, a book that claimed it would explain to me the evolutionary psychology behind the powerful forces that shape our most intimate desires, and the role of love in the sexual psychology.

Stay tuned as I  either find answers to questions or more questions to question, and fight the urge to instantly reject that a man is telling me what a woman wants. I promise nothing.