Is It Possible To Love More Than Just One Person?

Love is one of those things that many will argue defies definition. Some spend a good majority of their lives looking for the perfect explanation for the phenomenon, while others prefer to close their eyes and wade all the way in. Some argue that love is nothing more than the body’s chemical reaction to the chemical composition of another.

Others believe that loving another relies more on how the other person treats us and the character traits they hold that appeal to us. Others still, believe that love exists between those deemed on some spiritual plane to be soul mates.

Whatever your explanation, love is something that no person can deny exists — even if only in our psyche. I myself have found that love itself is a living, mutable thing. It plants its roots, it grows, it changes and sometimes it withers away and dies. While love usually blinds us to all else, we nevertheless hear the occasional tale of a person who loves more than one. But is such a love actually possible?

Yes…and no. One of the reasons why it is so difficult to pinpoint exactly what love is and how it comes to be is because love comes in many different forms, variations and intensities. Love is not so much something that lives outside of us — it is not something that we find or stumble across. Love is an extension of us; it is something that each of us creates.

Each and every one of us has that certain something that allows for the ability to love another. You can call it whatever you’d like… I believe it to be the particular combination of our beliefs, views and wants that defines who we are.

This definition of our being that we have developed and redefined over the years is who we are — literally. We are our thoughts and actions. We are a compilation of that which we yearn for and dream of. It’s an interesting thought: each individual person can be summed up with a list — albeit a long one — of all the things we have done and thought and all that which we will think and do.

This list defines us as people and, more than that, sets up boundaries as to with whom we are able to fall in love. I find myself many a time wondering why it is that human beings are able to so easily fall in love with one person, yet not another.

There are so many beautiful people in this world. We come into contact with many of them and although we may want to tie them up, rub them down with oil and play slip-n-slide-in — we know right away that we will never love them.

We then have close friends of the opposite sex who we love dearly, but nevertheless are unable to feel “in love” with. The reason, I believe, this is the case is for the exact reason I mentioned before: our definition, who we are as people, does not line up with who they are as people, their definition. There is something about our fundament that makes us incompatible.

The main issue arises when who we believe ourselves to be does not align with who we are — when we simply have the wrong definition. If we have not yet had the pleasure of meeting ourselves, of getting to know all those little things that make us who we are, then the love that we create reflects the confusion that we have about ourselves.

However, even when we have lived long enough to become our own best friend, our love lives do not get any less complicated. In fact, they may become even more complicated due to the fact they are more likely to become more copious and intense. I cannot say that I am a believer in each one of us having one soul mate out there waiting to be found.

I’m not saying that it isn’t possible; the one thing that I have learned so far in my life, the one thing that I am sure of more than anything else, is that I know and can be sure of very little — if anything at all. Nevertheless, I prefer to think that there are several people out there with whom we may possibly fall deeply in love. Whether or not we will have the fortune of ever meeting them is another story.

For this reason, in theory, I believe it possible to be in love with more than one individual at one time. As long as the person we are, our full definition with all its intricacies, is compatible with the other, then there is no reason other than circumstance that will not allow us to love each other. The love between two individuals is as unique as a fingerprint — no other love that ever was or ever will be, will be the same.

An old friend of mine once told me that every time she fell in love it was a new, novel experience — similar to the last, yet entirely different. Nothing can be truer. The experience of love comes with comparable physical attributes just about each and every time.

But every time we love someone new, the love itself is different because whom we love is different. The things that we have in common are different. Our experiences together are different. Our possibility of a future is different.

So can you be in love with more than one person? I believe that depends on each individual and your definition of true love. It may very well be possible that some people have the capacity to love more than one person. In fact, I find that most of us could potentially fall in love with more than one individual at any given moment.

The true issue only presents itself when we stop looking at love as the magical experience that it is most often perceived as and take a more practical stance. Loving is a great thing, but unfortunately like everything else it requires time and effort.

Love in its first beginning stages is more glitter and less practical. What matters in the end is not so much whom you love, but rather whom you have loved. When you can say that you have loved a person with all of your being from the moment that you met them until the moment that you were put to rest, that is when loving becomes something of meaning.

Love is beautiful not because it makes us feel all warm and tingly on the inside, but because it gives us the possibility of a fulfilling future filled with love and happiness. It doesn’t matter so much whether or not you love a person, but whether or not it is possible for you to continue to love them for the rest of your life.

It seems almost an archaic notion — yet, what point is there to love other than to love in the hopes of making it last an eternity. In order to love someone so intensely for such a long period of time, we are forced to knowingly renounce our love for any other person competing for the chance to share their lives with us.

With these more modern times many of you may find that this sort of loving relationship is not for you — for this reason I believe that you may be able to be in love with several people. Maybe it will even work. But for someone like me and for what I believe to be the majority of people in this world, love needs to remain between us and that one other person with whom we want to share our existence.

Love may not be otherworldly, but if we spend enough time working on our relationships and allowing both them and the love we have for the other person to grow and change, it will feel larger than life itself. What more could anyone ask for?

Paul Hudson | Elite. 

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