Clarification about feminists and love

I feel as though this is a post that has been a long-time in the making, but it wasn't until recently that I've felt it really needed to be said.

I love love. I do, I think it is an important and noble quest in this life and that it should be treated with the highest respect and admiration. And I do want someone to love and to feel loved just like everyone else.

I say this because a lot of people lately have assumed that, because I am a blunt and straight forward feminist with many goals, that love is not important to me. And while unfortunately I play along with these stereotypes with cavalier outward attitudes towards love, that is not who I am. I want to take this time to clarify what I truly feel about love.

What finally prompted me to post this was yesterday when I was chatting with my landlord about future graduate school plans and what I hope to accomplish with my life. When her husband overheard all of my ambitions, he replied with something along the lines of "Wo! And then you'll get married?"

What perturbed me most was not his comment (though much can be said towards that mentality), but his wife's stern shake of her head and response "Oh noooooo. Not her, that's not Sydney."

I'll admit I was a bit alarmed and taken back with her quick response, even if I know that I am not currently ready for marriage. What really got to me however was her assurance that because I was looking to make my way in the world, that I was not looking for love and marriage. That it was not important for my future goals. That I could not do both.

But she's wrong, and like many feminists I am very interested in love and search for it every day. I just think we are talking about two very definitions of where love is to be found and what love looks like.

Over winter break I read one of bell hooks' brilliant books entitled "Communion" about the mis-perceptions people have about feminists search for love. The idea is that there isn't one--to be a feminist is to be bitter and hateful and to resent any kind of attachment to men. Concurrently there is this accompanying consensus that at some point you must choose be an undesirable crazy single feminist or loved and in a heterosexual relationship. To draw from a popular phrase, the idea is "you cannot have your cake and eat it too." Because of this idea of being alone and unloved, many women choose to not proclaim themselves openly as feminists. They believe by choosing a relationship that they have found and chosen love instead of a life of loneliness.

However, like anyone who has been in a relationship can testify to, loneliness in love is not confined to singlehood, and thus I echo the words of bell hooks in her book who wrote:

"Looking for love and looking for a man are two very different agendas. Most women without male partners are looking for a man. And guess what? Men are easy to find. Finding a man is not the same as finding love (59)."  

I realize that I could have a man if I really wanted, and lord knows they are easy to find here on this marriage-obsessed campus. But that would not be true to my goals, would not fully encompass what I am looking for. And it takes a lot more courage, patience, and honesty to face that backlash and assumptions of being an unfeeling robot-feminist than it is to give in and simply settle with a man in a relationship and not have found love.

So in regards to my landlord's confident assessment of my lack of male companion in the future I say, yes: you may be right.

But that's ok, because ultimately I am looking for love and not a man. And that takes far more time and is harder to quantitatively measure. But I'd rather live a qualitative life of love than be so focused on quantifying what love means and putting its expression into a limiting box of two. Overall in this search I'm looking for a way of being, of loving--an erotica of being that can be found in the arms of friends, family, places, and experiences all along the way. And if that love does finally come to me in the arms of a significant other, I will add it to my list of blessings and consider it a great honor because I have found another way to love. But loving and being married is not the only way to experience love.

In the end, if there's one statement I'd like to say about feminists in love to dispel these harmful myths it is this:

 If I love you it's because I've come to know myself through these empowering lessons. If I love you, it's because being a feminist has brought me into a lifelong relationship with what true love is long before our eyes ever met. Love and feminism are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they are complimentary.

And in this way of constructing love, I can be a feminist and search for and expect magnanimous love in my life. I can be and have both.