Falling in Love Part 7
March 14, 2026
Falling in Love Part 7
Most of us fall into romantic love, dazzled by beauty, charm, personality, and promise. But the longer love lasts, the more it asks a deeper question: Do we love what is eternal beneath what first captivated us?
I fell in love with Lark when I was twenty-three, and she was twenty-one. It was one of those unmistakable moments of love at first sight. She was so beautiful that everything in me knew—without reasoning, that she was the beloved I had been searching for. The love was overwhelming, palpable, unlike anything I had ever experienced.
In those early days, we were “ideal” for one another. We lived inside our projections and idealizations, dazzled by each other’s presence. And yet, fifty years into our marriage, we are no longer dazzled in quite the same way. You might say that we are still dazzled, but without the dazzle. There are many reasons for that.
In young adulthood, and often into midlife, the ego predominates. The outer personality feels like the whole of who we are. We take ourselves and one another to be our traits, behaviors, charm, intelligence, and wounds. Yet beneath those external qualities live the soul qualities at the core of our being.
Through my work with the Enneagram of Soul, I have come to see that personality itself receives its radiance, spark, and its enduring luminosity from the soul, and even from the soul’s grief. Even when personality dominates, we can sense one another’s souls if we choose to. Often it is sensed intuitively, fleetingly, before it is consciously known.
Personality largely becomes a servant to the ego and its agenda. It learns to cooperate with the ego to move through the world with a particular image, mindset, and set of behaviors. In love, this personality can be so compelling that it sweeps us off our feet. Ironically, when we are most enthralled by personality, we are often most out of touch with our own depth, and with the depth of the other. Our soul and our soul child lie beneath a protective crust. In essence, our truest nature has even more beautiful, even divine qualities than does our personality.
Even at first, Lark and I must have glimpsed one another’s souls beneath the personality, even if only briefly. Otherwise, love might not have endured. Over time, life required us to withdraw our projections. Crises emerged. Losses came. The best and worst of us came forward. Stark and sometimes uncomfortable truths could no longer be avoided.
Like most couples whose relationship survives the long arc of life, we stopped idealizing one another. We learned and are still learning to accept the outer personality’s shadow. And paradoxically, it was precisely then that something deeper revealed itself. With the illusions stripped away, we began to experience one another’s unobscured soul energies… those essential qualities that are forever tethered to the Divine.
Life taught us that personality is wonderful. It is unique, entertaining, endearing, and predictably frustrating. But it is also thin and superficial compared to what truly sustains love. The most real self is composed of the essential qualities of the soul. Some are:
Compassion, not merely sensitivity.
Will, not stubbornness, but grounded strength.
Serenity, not emotional suppression, but surrender into the stillness of the universe.
Joy, not giddy laughter, but abiding presence.
Sacred Action, not constant doing, but being aligned with what wants to move through us.
There are countless essential qualities of the soul. These are what unite us, not only in romantic love, but in every relationship. Because they are Divine qualities, when embodied and lived, they do more than heal us; they give the world light and hope. This is what Christ was pointing to when he said, “Ye are the light of the world.”
Spiritual practice/self-inquiry: What soul qualities do you recognize in yourself? What essential qualities are present, perhaps quietly, in those you love most?
Prayer:
Dear God, Help me see the soul qualities in everyone, even those who appear outwardly unlovable. And when I am the one who is difficult to love, grant that someone may see past my outer layers and recognize my soul. Amen
