It’s often been said that love is an unpredictable force, driving two people together for no apparent reason. While this is a beautiful sentiment, it’s rarely true. In fact, love is very predictable and comes down to a single factor. Familiarity.
Both Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov feature young girls forced to face horrifying conditions in their childhood relationships. Yet when the time comes to choose their own loves, they stick to the same type of people they were tortured by in childhood. So why do we accept familiar love, even when it prevents us from reaching the life we truly want?
One possible explanation is the comfort of the familiar. The truth is that the unknown is universally more terrifying than what is known. You can see it in every horror movie. As the protagonist approaches a closed door, the audience sucks in a breath - fearing what they may find behind it - but as soon as it's opened and the killer is revealed there is a sense of relief, because at least it was just one killer when it could’ve been 2, or 5. Our craving for the known goes beyond ju It’s often been said that love is an unpredictable force, driving two people together for no apparent reason. While this is a beautiful sentiment, it’s rarely true. In fact, love is very predictable and comes down to a single factor. Familiarity.
Both Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov feature young girls forced to face horrifying conditions in their childhood relationships. Yet when the time comes to choose their own loves, they stick to the same type of people they were tortured by in childhood. So why do we accept familiar love, even when it prevents us from reaching the life we truly want?
One possible explanation is the comfort of the familiar. The truth is that the unknown is universally more terrifying than what is known. You can see it in every horror movie. As the protagonist approaches a closed door, the audience sucks in a breath - fearing what they may find behind it - but as soon as it's opened and the killer is revealed there is a sense of relief, because at least it was just one killer when it could’ve been 2, or 5. Our craving for the known goe st horror movies though - we see it in our relationships as well. In Lolita, the protagonist, Humbert Humbert, or “Mr. H”, kidnaps a young girl he nicknames “Lolita”. Though she is a young girl for most of the book and incapable of protecting herself from the abuse she suffered, the part of the book that was most horrifying to me was what happened after she was released from Mr. H’s grasp. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away, but not to safety or a better life. No, instead she threw herself into the arms of a new brand of predator, one much more dangerous and sickening than the one she escaped from. I was stunned by her seemingly idiotic choices; but mostly I felt pity. The only version of love she’d ever experienced was conditional. Essentially, she had to give up parts of herself to sustain it, so when she finally had the chance to choose love for herself, she was sucked into a relationship that once more exploited her for another’s gain. Even when we know it's wrong, we're stuck with the versions of love we experienced as a child, because letting yourself explore the possibilities of what you might have is much more difficult than staying with what you know.
Another reason those in horrible situations crave the known is, as The Perks of Being a Wallflower puts it, “we accept the love we think we deserve".
Kya, from Where the Crawdads Sing, raised herself alone in the marsh after being abandoned. Because of this, she grew up believing people that she was forsaken by society all together. Instead, she clung to the marsh around her to provide her with companionship, claiming: “nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would” (Owens 365). Because Kya was raised in loneliness, she seeks it out, even subconsciously, in her adult life. For example, she stuck with her partner, Chase Andrews, who she always knew could never stay with her and ignored rumors of his infidelity. all because she knew she was meant to be alone. When she finally finds a man she wishes to spend her life with, Tate, she hesitates to marry him, deflecting by saying: “we are married like the geese”, meaning she feels no need to actually officiate their relationship (Owens 349). Once again, she’s scared to truly bind herself to someone because it would only make it that much worse if he were to leave her. In the end, she dies believing the world hated her. Yet, we learn from Tate that “she wouldn’t have believed the long lines of slow moving mourners”, proving that the people beyond the marsh did not all hate her (Owens 364). Even when the world around her tried reaching out, Kya remained in search of isolation. Her own self deprecating feelings prevented her from truly going after the love she craved for the majority of her life. Illustrating how the way we feel about ourselves correlates to the love we look for in others - especially considering our feelings for ourselves are about as familiar as you can get.
Though love can be strange and sudden, it's clear we accept familiar versions of love because it is comforting and a reflection of our own self image due to past experiences, even as we find ourselves stuck in unhealthy and unwanted patterns.
Recommended Reading:
Article explaining the fear of the unknown in greater depth:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211022-why-were-so-terrified-of-the-unknown
For further examples of this phenomenon read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
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