UNDERWATER LOVERS
'And although their dreams were drowned out by the dark,
she cried out for love from the depths of her ever-enduring heart.
Would they always go down in love?
Would they forever be – underwater lovers...'
Underwater Lovers: The Dark Side of Love
Love is an elemental force, ancient and primal, woven into the very fabric of human existence. It pulses through our blood, orchestrates our fate, and commands the sacred chemistry of connection. Within us all, a dark symphony of hormones plays out the manifesto of our lives. A language of desire and belonging experienced through oxytocin’s tender embrace, dopamine’s intoxicating thrill, and serotonin’s gentle whispers. Love is not a romantic fantasy nor a mere cinematic sentiment; love is a very real biological imperative, a primitive drive that is experienced as a force of nature, that ensures our very survival, reproduction, and the building of essential communities. It is as vital as breath, a natural force beyond memory, one that exists at the very core of life itself.
We are born wired to love as a primal need; it is the sacred code written deep within us all that ensures our survival as human species. From our first breath, we cry out for the nurturing love and protection of our mother. The infant’s call is met with a profound physical experience, oxytocin floods both infant and mother, a drug of love that binds flesh to flesh, soul to soul. These first intimate and early exchanges are etched into the brain’s architecture, creating benchmarks and pathways that teach us safety, trust, and self-worth. This heart to heart bond is forged in the limbic system and is the heart’s echo experienced in the mind. The bond of this primary and necessary human connection, shapes us more than we can comprehend. It lights the pathway ahead, shaping our understanding and experience of intimacy and human connection.
When this primal need for connection is disrupted, or goes unanswered, and is somehow unfulfilled, the brain’s delicate balance begins to morph and distort. The once vibrant chorus of pleasure chemicals dims, replaced by the dark and sharp sting of cortisol and adrenaline, what should have been a free-flowing source of nurture, love and interconnection sadly becomes a wiring for pain, and torment. The nervous system becomes a battlefield, where every shadowed need transforms into fear and panic. For the child learning to navigate a world where necessary love is scarce, conditional, or cruelly withheld, the intricate internal architecture of bonding and trust fractures, leaving the heart exposed as a needy and an aching void, that ultimately threatens peril. This creates a deep unseen void, one that births a lifetime of dark mimicry, a desperate dance to capture and possess what was 'needed' but never freely given. The unmet need for love becomes an insatiable internal raw hunger that often morphs into a desperate shadow play of manipulation, control and coercion - for some overt and others covert. This emotional and physical conditioning, set up within us in our formative years, plays out again and again into our adult lives, distorting and ravaging our relationships and most intimate connections.
In this void, where the belief that genuine love and affection is ever elusive persists, sexuality can easily become a compulsion. The need for deep connection, once unmet, morphs into an urgent, restless grasp for sexual contact, as an attempt to acquire love through the reciprocal exchange of the physical body. The ultimate pay-off exists away from sexual relief, in the brain’s reward systems. In this experience the flood of adrenaline and dopamine combine to mimic an early experience of desperation and reward – one that echoes an infant’s fear-driven need and subsequent relief. Sadly, as adults, during these encounters, the deeper unconscious longing remains untouched, lingering like a distant aching pain active in the soul. What begins as desire often morphs into patterns of craving, temporary relief and shame, a bittersweet substitute that soon sours in taste, as we long for the nourishing love that was never fully received.
From this deep undercurrent of unmet needs, often covert and overt dark actions begin to emerge, marked by possessiveness, jealousy, subtle coercion and even if unfulfilled, the impulse toward violence in a desperate attempt to take the love that was never freely given. These actions arise from a place of profound fear, the primal unconscious terror of being abandoned once again. Within our brain’s amygdala, keeper of survival’s flame, flares in response to any hint of loss, flooding the body with chemicals that override calm reason and invite clinging, grasping, and sometimes desperate attempts to maintain connection – at any cost. In these moments, the requirement for overt human control becomes less of a ‘choice’ and more an instinct, or perceived ‘necessity’, a protective shield forged in the fire early deep wounds. The unconscious fear that separation means annihilation, pushes the heart to desperate lengths, leading to patterns of manipulation and obsession. These destructive relationship patterns are not acts born of conscious cruelty, but rather that of instinct and survival, an unconscious plea for connection and belonging when genuine love feels completely inaccessible.
The underwater dance of love in the dark, is a deeply human and at times tragic experience, one often misunderstood in its primitive complexity. It is a dark shadow formed on the human psyche, one that was cast by the absence of safety, and a distortion of the very force that was meant to nurture, feed and heal us in our early life. Beneath the fear and compulsion of separation, the power of love remains, waiting, desiring, and ever-present. It wishes to be expressed, to emerge from its shadow and come into the light. In order to do so it we must dive deep within our selves and find the willingness and courage re-explore the depths and impact of our early wounding.
Love’s true power lies neither in sexual expression, possession nor captivity; its truth lives in the heart, as an expression of freedom and a reclamation of the sacred love of the self. A profound love of the self can meet the needs, once deferred to others. This sacred trust of self occurs as a gentle unfolding within the heart. Love exist in unconditional presence, without shame or judgement. Loved is to be experienced not seen, it is not as a prize to be won, nor a shadow to be tamed, it is rather a complex and humble human experience, uncloaked and unbound, one living in raw beauty and truth. This is why to 'truly love' is to stand at the edge of vulnerability. To open wide the gates of the heart and the soul and invite connection and in doing so hold the personal courage and honour our ability to withstand potential abandonment and absence – whether it be at the hands of another, or in death. This is the experience of unconditional love in its purest form — a sanctuary held within the heart. At first for the self, and then for another, with the grace and trust to enter and exit freely. In doing so a refuge is formed, where hearts are not cages but gardens growing rich with possibility. The same hunger that can bind us in shadow can also ignite the liberated path, one of wholeness and togetherness.
Here in the heart's scared garden, the deep depths of our longing plants the seeds of radical self-love, a transformative power, capable of rewiring our brains and nervous systems and rewriting the stories etched in our souls. When we have the ability to hold ourselves with reverence and grace, and tend to our wounds with compassion, we awaken a new narrative. Here, love begins not as a desperate grasp for survival but as a radiant offering — a foundation upon which hope, truth and healthy connection can form and solidify.
This is the act of radical self-love, radical in that it affects the fundamental nature of who we are. This becomes the inner light that dissolves the shadows of fear and control, and the antidote that softens the hardened self of loneliness and despair. This is the beginning of a key journey, back to ourselves, and the key to unlocking new relationships created with authenticity, trust, and mutual reverence. From this sacred space, love gives freely — not tethered by the debilitating chains of need, rather evolving from the experience of self-liberation.
Love, in all its vastness, in the dark and in the light, calls us back as invocation. Loves invites us back to the intelligence of the heart in order for us to remember: that before we can truly hold love for another, we are first called to hold love for the self, and this is a truly radical experience indeed.
