Feel Like Making Love

As part of my continuing over-analysis of matters of the heart, I'm pondering the question of whether it is wise to talk yourself into loving someone.

I don't think you can talk yourself out of loving someone, but I think you can talk yourself into it. Or at least I can. For example, I had a male friend in law school who had feelings for me. He was an amazing person -- handsome, kind, smart -- but I didn't have romantic feelings for him. He let me know how he felt about me, and I rebuffed his advances, so he responded by not talking to me for three months. When we finally resumed communication, I told him that I did feel the same way about him. At the time, I really felt that way, and when he broke things off after a very short period of dating, I was so devastated that I cried every day for a month. But when I look back on it now, I see that I cried because I missed my friend. This guy was very important to me -- one of the most important friends I've ever had in my life, in terms of being someone who incites change and growth. When he introduced romance into the situation, some kind of friendship survival instinct kicked in for me that told me that the relationship could either evolve into a boyfriend-girlfriend situation or die. I didn't want it to die, so I talked myself into having feelings for him that, deep down, were sort of manufactured. He was entirely worthy of love, but I didn't love him that way. I don't think he really loved me that way either, in the end, but what if he had?

In some cases, it is obviously a good idea to talk yourself into loving someone if you can. Primarily, this would be good if your marriage is arranged or otherwise strongly encouraged by your family or if your options are limited because of considerations of culture, religion, geography, or whatever. But if you have the whole world open to you, should you try to do it?

This guy in law school was not the first guy that I wished I could be in love with. I haven't always succeeded in manufacturing those feelings, but I have done it a few times. It sounds sort of distasteful and disingenuous, but it might solve the conundrum I was wrestling with in the other post about guys like my friend at work versus guys like Cindy Kim. What's really so wrong about convincing yourself to be in love with someone who has a lot of great qualities? Is it wrong because you'll never really want to have sex with them? I mean, how much do people who've been together for awhile have sex anyway? Isn't it better to make yourself love a good man than to take yourself out of the game because you're in love with a bad man?