Romantic Sense of Kinship

Originally written November 2020.

Romantic feelings claim different things. They may claim that someone ought not to be married to their spouse, and instead should be married ... to you... They may claim similar life-sculpting things, that you should run through an airport, or that you should find someone no matter what. It's possible that sometimes when these feelings tell you something so dramatic, they are saying something trustworthy, but a lot of the time, or most of the time, they are not. And the feeling itself is not the final guide, or shouldn't be.

[October 2021: Not sure I would endorse "not trustworthy most of the time" (can't quantify the situation that well). (The ones that suggest adultery or other sexual sin aren't trustworthy in that sin is in itself evil.) Certainly the feelings are often not as necessary to pursue as they vividly and obviously seem, or are not of as indubitable truth, and in that sense are untrustworthy. (A life reality that is less trustworthy than it seems is less trustworthy for seeming more trustworthy than it is.)]

[October 2021: God uses romantic feelings to accomplish goals -- as with Samson being caused to fall in love with a Philistine woman to bring about violence against them (Judges 14:1-4) -- or perhaps sometimes in less "mixed" ways. It's certainly conceivable that Satan can use romantic feelings as well. Hopefully there is a good way to process the fact of those feelings given both those possibilities.]

Romantic feelings [by themselves] don't have any good reason to know about the future or even about what should be, in the present. However, they generally can be taken as a sense. They could probably indicate a lot of different things. But one thing among them is, they can indicate that you have some kind of kinship with the person you're interested in. What you do with that fact of kinship may vary. You might pursue a romantic relationship, even to the point of marriage. You might pursue or continue a friendship. Or you might think of the person you're interested in as a kind of point of reference in making sense of yourself or other people like you. You might feel in some sense less alone in the world, to know that there's someone else like you.