By Maria Padhila
I need to drop 10 pounds. Could I just fall in love, please?
You know you’ve thought that once or twice. New love — new relationship energy, as many both in and out of polyamory call it — is one fine drug. It takes the place of food and sleep (and common sense).
A speaker at the Loving More conference called it “the fuzzy pink stupids.” You may choose between NRE and FPS, depending on your mood. NRE sounds like “energy,” and FPS sounds like a curse. Actually, it might depend which side of the love you’re on for the terms you choose. If you’re in it or enjoying it, even the secondary side effects, it’s energy. But if it’s making your partner impossible to live with, then get out the F-word.
Everything about the New Other is so fascinating and exciting. You want to know everything. That coffee cup they use! Their adorable slightly torn underwear! Their conflict with their fifth-grade teacher! You talk about these things for hours, if you can get hours. And then you go to your other partner, bubbling over with the conversations, and he or she looks at you like you’ve lost your mind and says: “My goodness, I never knew until this very moment that you were even remotely interested in NASCAR.”
One way you know love is going beyond this stage is that the trivia of the Other still retains some of this glow. You still care. How you know it’s not is that everything starts to annoy you. A man’s snores are music one day; and then you can’t even stand the way he breathes. Been there, but only once or twice. Most of the time, my infatuations transform into true love and reality, the kind that will last forever if no one tries hard to kill it.