When Did Love Become Ownership?

If you're already shouting, "It didn't!" then we're on the same page.

Somewhere along the line, loving someone and assuming we had some kind of right over their choices, beliefs, body and life seem to have become conflated by too many of us. I can imagine a time when we lived in caves, when perhaps behaving like cavemen helped ensure the survival of our species. It doesn't any longer.

Maybe the root of my belief in this lies in my understanding of love.

For me, love exists in the brain. We romanticice it as being in the heart because we can literally feel its effects beating there. But transplant the heart, and love is still there. In the brain.

One place love is not is in the vagina.

So why do we men feel we need to own it?

Beats me.

A woman's body is an incredible and beautiful thing, but a man doesn't own it. We can be joined at the brain (or heart, if you prefer). We can share our bodies with one another for pleasure, to express our love, and to make children. But a woman's body is so much more than its reproductive purpose. Does everything change when she passes through menopause? Is it game over?

Hell no. In my experience, that's when the REAL fun starts.

I've never been able to think of love in terms of ownership. Perhaps I simply missed the caveman gene, or it gave up on me.

But I can understand agency. Women with agency excite and delight me. I might tell them they scare me when those eyes light with mischief, but truthfully, I'm loving it and it makes me love them.

There was no way Eva could ever be owned. Nor was it Daniel's place to give her agency. She already had it. All he could do was recognise it, respect it and love her without trying to take it away.

And out of that freedom grew her love for him, of that I’m pretty certain.