Butterflies in my stomach

What are the stages of love and the warning signs you feel when you are have a crush? Do we always want what is good for us?

That feeling of anxiety is well known to those of us who have experienced puberty. I think most of us have had a crush who made us feel that way.

Many of us live life trying to avoid pain by doing our best not to care. We believe that if we don't care then it can't hurt us. But when it comes to our crush, we don't have a choice in the matter. We care very much about what she thinks about us.

Suddenly every action we take is heavy with all the consequences mattering to us. Most of us are not confident enough to believe we are worthy of being loved without putting up a facade.

Honestly, I enjoy that feeling. When you instinctively withdraw from caring about things, its nice to be forced to care. When you don't have a choice but to care about someone other than yourself. It feels like my existence seems to have unquestionable meaning and purpose.

Anyway the point of this post is to talk about how this feeling can be a warning sign that you are still in the very initial stages of your relationship. You might feel like wanting to rush into things but you should not do that.

It was a comment on Halsey's graveyard music video that fleshed out one line in that beautiful song.

"It's funny how, the warning signs can feel like they're butterflies"

I think it really captures that idea of how we should feel comfortable being around our partner. We should not be feeling that need to be careful. Of course building that trust takes time. You need to open up to each other and aim to reach that state.

It's just that some people might love that feeling of excitement and aim for that instead of feeling comfortable. It is known that there are different chemicals associated with the stages of love and in the long term Vasopressin and Oxytocin help build commitment and bonding necessary for a secure relationship.

Interestingly, it seems that biologically this butterflies in your stomach feeling is a result of the release of adrenaline into your blood stream as the fight-or-flight response kicks in. So this just lends more credence to idea that there is a real link to fear, that you would feel something similar if happened to be staring down a predator.

There are other clues that I think it are worth looking out for, to flesh out what it means to be "comfortable". Like do you feel like you can be yourself in her presence. You shouldn't feel the urge to put up a facade. Also this sort of love is characterised by how slow it is, you are not supposed to know when it happened. It happens over a period of time, gradually.

All of this is just me painting a picture of an ideal, something which I think we should hold up and pursue. The kind of love we should aspire for. It is not likely we will achieve it, but setting the right ideal is very important because that sets the direction we take.