I Want Your Love.

I Want Your Love!

I want your ugly, I want your disease
I want your everything, As long as it’s free
I want your love

– Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”

Love is patient, love is kind…

How many of you have ever used this line in a bar: “I want your ugly, I want your disease?”

What’s that I hear? Crickets chirping? Are the cicadas back? I didn’t think so.

These words have a way of pulsing through my head every time I hear the hit Lady Gaga song, “Bad Romance.” At first glance, these are silly lyrics to another wonderfully pop-ular pop song, innocent place fillers until the next wave of synthesized rhythm and bass swings back around to make the car next to me tremble like a tween at a vampire flic. However, as I’m unconsciously humming the lyrics while a client takes her seat on my therapy couch, the words become hauntingly real.

As synchronicity would have it, the woman before me begins to tell the tale of dramatic new love, now only two weeks old. The passion, projection, and plans for a lifetime of bliss together are all added to an alluring soundtrack of the romance dance. As I listen to this bright, self-aware young woman speak about ice cream on the lake, drinks al fresco and sex on the roof of his apartment building, I consider the power of new love. We become so intense in our minds and bodies when we find ourselves in a mutual connection with a new partner that we almost forget how our minds and bodies operated just seconds before we met the new person.

Thoughts are incredibly difficult to change and actually tend to reproduce exponentially, spreading throughout our inner ecosystem. In fact, Richard Brodie in his book, “Virus of the Mind,” refers to these types of thoughts as memes, or thought viruses. Brodie suggests that “once created, a virus of the mind gains a life independent of its creator and evolves quickly to infect as many people as possible.” As a therapist, however, it is my responsibility to help support clients in determining which memes are actually healthy ideas to spread within and without their lives. As the recent film, Inception, so elegantly describes it, for an outside thought to really feel like our own it has to be presented in its simplest, most absorbable form. Easier said than done… Unless we’re talking about the “love disease.”

The desperation of the love we tend to feel in the early days, weeks and even months of a passionate relationship can feel exhilarating and even profoundly healthy, yet we commonly refer to this process as “falling” in love for a reason. There is a mix of terror and pleasure I feel when I plummet ten stories on the “Free Fall” ride at the Six Flags theme park. I accept that I will be voluntarily incapacitated for a brief moment of my life and most people would find it odd if I decided to bring my tax return up there with me to get some work done. Yet, is that not what we do when we fall in love: drop into an ecstatic state of temporary bliss that is actually complete incapacity? Is this what the Gaga lady is speaking about when she desperately calls for the ugly, the disease?

Consciously spreading healthy thoughts and ideas we consider to be supportive is in many ways the most effective way to combat mind viruses and remain in control of our life. Yet, how do we discern which thoughts are healthy once we are already “infected” by the infatuation meme? We all have the ability to resist unhealthy thoughts and their partner behaviors when we make healthy living and clarity a primary intention for the way we live our lives. However, in order to boost our psycho-emotional immune system, we must take good care of ourselves before we are introduced to “foreign elements.”

Nourishing our relationships through the appreciation of those people in our lives we adore and truly cherish not only makes them feel good, it is a healthy power boost to our own sense of balance. When we take the time and effort to choose to be vulnerable with our inner circle of friends and family, one of the benefits is that we remember what it feels like to love and be loved in its simplest, purest form; without any of the bells and whistles, perhaps even without the enticement of ice cream or sex.

Cheers!