What’s love got to do with it?

Not that long ago someone made a video showing total strangers who were paired off and asked to kiss on camera. The claim was that what began as awkward actually got to be rather sexy. I’m not sure why this was a stunning revelation, but there it was.

I saw a headline this morning that someone (same people or someone else) has now made a video showing strangers undressing each other for the camera. Again, it’s supposed to be awkward, and then kind of sexy.

I think what we’re supposed to learn here is that watching people be intimate is sexy. To quote the parrot Iago, “Now there’s a big surprise! I think I’ll have a heart attack and die of not surprise! Yes, you heard it here first, folks! Pornography gets people excited.

But really, what else can we learn here? That strangers can quickly get over their awkwardness and enjoy physical contact if they’re both willing to commit to it? That people enjoy things more if they give themselves permission to enjoy it? These are not ground-breaking concepts.

I have to wonder: how long before we get the video of total strangers asked to have sex for the camera? Oh, I’m sure they’ll find some way to make it suitable for general consumption by not quite showing everything, but can there be no doubt, now that they trend has been set in motion, that that’s where it’s headed? And I’m sure it will be marketed as before, by masking it all in some social experiment and with surprise that “hey it was awkward, but it actually got kinda sexy!”

But seriously, does society really need further reinforcement that intimacy with strangers is cool and okay? Are there really any last hold-out bastions of “prudishness” who still think that total intimacy with anyone at any time and for any reason is wrong? (I mean besides my own religion, of course.) Does Free Love still need cheerleaders? If anything we need to question the new status quo and see if throwing away all inhibition has really achieved what they claimed it would. Has it made us happier? Has it made us better?

I think marriage as an institution is hanging on out of sheer inertia. It’s a tradition that doesn’t mean anything any more, but it’s kinda cool, so we still do it. But beyond being somewhat more of a commitment than a friendship bracelet, what’s the point? What does marriage really have left to offer most people that they can’t get otherwise? An excuse to dress up, have a big party, and get a lot of free stuff, I suppose. But what do the bride and groom give each other that is uniquely for one another? Certainly not their bodies–those have been given to, well, pretty much everyone. Their innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires? Probably not. Their BFFs probably have already been there. Access to one another’s bank accounts?

Really, about the only advantage left to marriage over just living together is economic. There are some advantages to forming a legal entity for domestic cooperation. But love? Intimacy? Emotional support? Marriage doesn’t mean a thing there any more. We’re taught that love is essentially physical attraction with a little bit of personal compatibility, but that it’s completely beyond your control. People fall in love, people fall out of love, and no one knows why or can predict how long it will last. It just ends, and that’s okay. Better luck next time, right?

Excréments du taureau. We’ve let people like the makers of the aforementioned videos convince us that sexual intimacy is all that matters, and that love can be manufactured. Just put two people together, and so long as they give themselves and each other permission to be close, they can find something “kinda sexy” together. We’ve defined love down to infatuation, to hormonal drive, while simultaneously mythologizing it beyond recognition. We worship the concept of love in our rom-coms and dramas by making it something ethereal and fleeting, hard to define, and even harder to capture. It just happens, and when it happens you lose all control of your brain.

But no, that is not love, that’s hormones. Love is not something that happens to you, it’s something you do, something you choose. It’s a continual, daily–even hourly–commitment to a single person; that their happiness is as or more important than your own. It’s the results of day after day, year after year of a life dedicated to building something together. It’s not something you do until you get tired of doing it. It’s keeping in constant contact and cooperation so that when you begin to change–and everyone will–you’re changing in the same direction rather than going your separate ways. It’s a conscious commitment that, yes, I’m going to stick with you over anything else. If a new job or a new hobby might mean I change in a direction you can’t or won’t go then I don’t do that. It means we make time for each other.

And that’s why love is so hard to find. Society teaches us that nothing is sacred except yourself: Follow your bliss. Find your passion. Develop your career. Find yourself. Have sex with strangers, broadcast your innermost secrets and thoughts online, make a sex tape to achieve celebrity status. Leave nothing of yourself private and sacred to give to that one person you want to be with forever. Anything that might have bound you more closely–well, that’s already been given away. Everything except your actual commitment, and you don’t know how to do that any more. Society teaches to commit only to yourself.

Love is commitment to something besides yourself. Love is sharing a bond that is between the two of you alone. Love is an accumulation of history of doing, building, reaching together. Love is subjugating yourself to something bigger. Love is much more than furtive clutchings in the dark in pursuit of pleasure. Love is knowing someone has your back, that they continue to choose you in spite of your faults. Love is knowing you could have done something different, but you chose to do something together, and you’re proud of what you’ve accomplished as a team. Love is deciding that “us” is more important than “me”.

Love cannot and never will be found in front of a videographer’s camera proving that strangers can turn awkward into sexy. Anyone can titilate and excite. Hormones can be predictably manipulated. Love is not something that will be found in the pursuit of self-gratification and physical pleasure. Love is what overcomes the desire for self-gratification, and lifts physical pleasure above mere selfishness.

What’s love got to do with it? Only everything.