Beyond the Noun
Love as a Free-Form Expression
In a previous article I published on Medium titled “The Verb of Love,” I explored what happens when we shift our perspective of love from something actively practiced. Lately, I’ve found myself reflecting on language again. Specifically, how the very grammar we use can subtly trick us into putting love into a box.
The word love holds dual citizenship in the English language. It functions as both a noun and a verb. When we say we have “fallen in love” or “fallen out of love,” grammar treats love as an abstract noun — a container, a location, or a fixed room that we step into and out of. Love was never meant to be confined to a box. Real love is not a static place you occupy; it is a dynamic, free-form expression.
I recently had a conversation with a close associate about this very idea. We ended up agreeing to disagree. Her view was the common one: that people naturally fall in and out of love, and that love itself is temporary and fleeting. My argument, however, goes deeper into what is actually happening in those moments. In response to my associate during our debate, I shared an example from my own life to show why love cannot be reduced to a temporary holder.
I spoke to her about a man I once loved who has since transitioned. I told her that even though he has passed on, my love for him did not diminish. Furthermore, I hadn’t stop loving him, nor did death sever that bond. I still love him to this day. Love does not cease simply because a person is no longer physically present. It continues on, surely at a different, spiritual level; but it never stops.
When people say they have fallen in love and later fallen out, rarely, when you get to the gist of it, are they in love with the whole person to begin with. More often, they were enamored with a particular attribute, quality, or season. This reminded me of another conversation I had with an associate some time ago.
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She shared with me in a moment of quiet candor, that she felt perhaps she should not have married. When I asked her why, she admitted that she had married for the wrong reasons. She was young, still figuring out who she was and what she wanted from life. At the time, her husband was simply very attractive and fun to be around.
Being drawn to someone because they are attractive, fun, or possessing a quality you desire in a specific season of life is being enamored as well as transactional. It is falling for an attribute, not the complete human being. When time passes, youth shifts, or circumstances change, that temporary attraction wears thin causing people to believe they have “fallen out of love.” In truth, they have outgrown the receptacle they built around a single or several traits. Being enamored with a part is not the same as loving the whole.
This brings us to another misconception we often hold about romantic love: the belief that it is scarce, or that we are only capable of loving one person across a lifetime. We typically confuse the structure of a relationship with the capacity of the human heart. While we may choose to devote our daily life and focus to one partner, romantic love itself is not a finite resource. The heart does not operate on subtraction. Loving someone deeply, even someone who has passed on, and even moved on does not drain our ability to express romantic love again.
When we stop viewing romantic love as a single, exclusive strongbox that can only hold one name at a time, we realize that the capacity to love is infinite. The choice to direct that love toward a specific person is a commitment of our presence, but the source of the love itself is boundless. When love is freed from being a noun, when it is no longer treated as a vessel that can spill, break, or empty out, we realize its true nature. Love, in its highest form, is permanent.
Love as the verb is an active, continuous, and unbound energy. It doesn’t depend on a temporary spark, an appealing surface trait, or physical presence. It is a daily free-form expression of seeing, honoring, and holding space for a person as an entire human being, through life, transition, and beyond.
When we stop trying to fit love into the canisters of our language, we stop fearing that we will “fall out” of it. We simply step into the practice of expressing it — freely, fully, and without end.
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