You can control almost everything, and if you can’t technically control it you’ll do everything in your power to try. You work constantly to make sure every single situation, interaction and social gathering is exactly the way you planned it out in your head. When anything is out of your control even in the slightest, if it strays mildly from the way you planned it, you panic. So, when you fall in love when your mind and your heart falls quickly without any promise of a stable landing your first instinct is to panic.
For your entire life, you’ve been able to control every situation you find yourself in. You’ve planned it out in your head and ran through the scenario a thousand times so nothing could possibly surprise you. Falling in love, however, is unpredictable. Your feelings consume you, and no matter how tightly you attempt to grip the situation, to neutralize your emotions, all efforts fail. You can’t control it. This wasn’t written down in your agenda, you didn’t plan to meet the love of your life at this moment and to be honest, it’s kind of messing with all of the plans you had made.
You’ve probably thought it over and over again; when you’re 24 you’ll start dating someone seriously, by 26 or so you’ll be engaged, by 27 you’ll be married, and kids are the one thing you leave a little wiggle room on. Or, you chose to write off a relationship all together to avoid the lack of control. Now, you’re 20 years old in your second year of college and someone you met in your computer science class or at a party that you almost didn’t attend completely ripped you out of your element. Suddenly, you're completely consumed by this person and for a moment you start to loosen your grip.
Things are looking up for you in a way that you weren’t expecting. You’re happier than you’ve ever been and the promises that this new love offers makes you feel like a new person. Then you have your first fight and the opportunity to ruin everything is right in front of you. Now, anyone “normal” wouldn’t even consider the option to give up the best thing in their life, but the idea seems pretty enticing to you. Why? Because finally, for the first time you have some control.
The hardest part about being in love isn’t just that you can’t control it, it’s that the only thing you can control is whether or not you walk away or even more commonly, whether or not you push them away. So you do just that, you push them away because it’s the only solid grip you have on this phenomenon because you have a chance to find the rhythm you once had. And no one seems to understand it, why you push them away, and for a while, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.
For a while, you find an excuse as to why you did it. If they really cared they would’ve fought for you, you had every reason to react the way you did in that particular situation, it just wasn’t meant to be. But not long after, a lump begins to manifest in the base of your throat. You miss them, but you’ve already micromanaged the situation right into the ground. Sure, you can apologize, but what happens if they say no? You can’t plan for all of the potential scenarios when it comes to forgiveness, to human connection, so that option is out the window. What do you do? You wait for the lump to pass and you move on. But what if you can’t? What if they’re it for you?
You can’t control everything, especially in love. When you finally come to terms with that fact, things become clearer but they don’t come easier. You can apologize and hope for the best, but their forgiveness in that moment is half the battle. There will be other fights, other moments to sabotage for the sake of strangling the situation, but you have to fight that urge.
You have to accept that you can’t control every situation, you can’t control love and you shouldn’t try. There will always be aspects of your life that you can control, things you can plan until your brain turns to mush but love is not one of them, and though it may seem impossible to accept the lack of control, it gets easier with time. Eventually, you won’t want to start fights, you won’t overanalyze every situation, and you won’t try to plan everything out. You’ll still want to control things, that’s just who you are, but your desire to control this uncontrollable thing will begin to fade.
