Think back to the first tingles of when you really fell in love. The feelings are not always pleasurable. In fact, sometimes they are downright unpleasant and come close to sensations one associate with being ill.
There are the butterflies in the stomach, a nameless ache, a longing that seems to sap your energy, a moodiness that keeps one from enjoying all that one usually did. In fact, the descriptions of falling in love are the stuff of every other sitcom. One of my early favourites had the lead describing all these feelings to the beloved sidekick who exclaims, “You are not in love. You have got the flu!”
From a different perspective, falling in love has been described as being equivalent to a cocktail of psychotropic drugs.
Something that elevates your mood to dizzy heights, and brings you down crashing again, and puts you through that wringer so many times.
One could describe it all chemically and biologically through hormones and other substances and that we are genetically programmed to react in such a manner to prospective partners, and it is really that age-old game of nature playing over and over again.
One could also turn to romantic literature, or even spirituality to understand the whys and the wherefores of this falling in love. Whatever the origin of this falling in love might be, the one undeniable fact is that the experience of falling in love is quite something else.
The question we are asking is this: Can the sensations of falling in love be addictive? If we are indeed comparing just that falling in love feeling as equivalent to a cocktail of drugs, could it be possible that one gets so addicted to love that one just needs to keep on falling in love, over and over, again and again, with different people each time at different places? Could one be a love chaser?
The short answer is: Yes!   
Though not quite a clinical diagnosis by any stretch, one could exhibit quite a bit of addictive behaviour about love. For some people, the chase and the falling in love is where all of it begins and ends. They may be so taken up with those early feelings, that when the rubber hits the road and it is time for love to mean something more and become a relationship, they might just scoot, and go on to chase another love.
The difference between a more ‘real’ love and this kind of addictive love chasing is simply this: Is the passion and the attraction shallow, or it is a deep, profound and life-changing connection? If it is the earlier, then chances are that the charms are superficial, the attention surface-deep, the romance and the wooing more momentary, repetitive, patterned and sensational – and above all, the focus is more on one’s own feelings of being in love, rather than the person one is in love with. So, look at your own love feelings: Are you in love with love, or with your loved one?
As written for published by The New Indian Express

The last few years have seen a major upswing in how many horrific sexual assaults and violence have been getting reported. Just when one thinks this is the worst that could happen, every new month even more such stories emerge, each with unbelievably sickening histories of how, where, how many, for how long and so on and so forth. With social media being so active and so many news channels on the air and in print, there is no shortage of public discussion and outrage. The call for action is palpable in every public arena possible.
A person must literally be living under a rock to now know about all this happening.
While there is so much in the public arena, let’s talk about what might be happening in the more private and intimate spaces of a loving relationship when such news breaks.
Often, there is nothing.
Early in the relationship, many unspoken rules get formed. We make a pact as it were, on what is OK to talk about, and what is not. Sometimes, it is directly spoken about and agreed (“I don’t want to hear about what you discussed with your school friends unless critical,” for example or “I don’t understand your work at all. Please don’t bug me with details about some issue you solved.”) Mostly though, these rules come about based on what we observe. How did your partner react to a movie scene showing the hero forcefully plant a kiss, for example. Or, what did your partner do when you talked about a friend who was molested in the metro, or when there is some more innocuous news on TV, say for example on an inter-community marriage.
One makes decisions pretty early to say how much the relationship can bear, and one edits oneself accordingly – and that’s generally OK.
Thing with news reports such as on sexual assault is that for many people who have gone through sexual violence in the past, these news stories when they break or when they are being analysed and spoken about in detail, it can be triggering. The new reports might bring up old trauma and pain, even after having spent much time and effort in getting some degree of healing. It is at such times that one starts to really feel the need for a safe, loving space to just talk and if there is any kind of spoken or unspoken pact that the relationship is not open for such painful but necessary conversations, then it gets really tough. Sometimes, it can even threaten the relationship itself.
As a loving partner, if you think you need to be the one to be able to support your partner through any such pain, that you want to be the shoulder that gets leaned on, remember that you cannot suddenly become that person overnight. It is a privilege earned through all the small interactions. Watch yourself on how open you are for the small conversations if you want to be there for the big ones.

As written for and published by The New Indian Express