The Lover  (Contd.)

Love is not abstract. Love is not detached. Love is immediate, physical and emotional.

Love is not a means to an end. Love is love, and is an end in itself.

Two otherwise private, distinct individuals become one through love, and they like it. Love rescues us from loneliness; love rescues us from the darkness of the soul. Love gives us a glimpse of paradise. The angels are made of pure love.

Love is a physical addiction to complex chemicals generated by the body. Infatuation begins with natural amphetamine-like chemicals that cause feelings of elation, exhilaration and euphoria. If infatuation goes on long enough, with the same person as its object, a second system of natural morphine-like chemicals kicks in, which induces sensations of calmness, stability and safety. You actually get addicted to these chemicals, and want to stay with the person who stimulates their generation within you. Love makes you feel good.

The love between men and women is an attempt to recapture the love that exists between a mother and her child. This is the only true love. Fathers, too, love their children, but not with the same blind intensity. Children love their parents, but are destined to grow and depart. Love is a genetic bonding that forces parents to care for their children. As far as women are concerned, men may come and go, but children always come first.

Romantic love is an invention of the High Middle Ages, and is no more natural than any other human construct. Romantic love is a device used by men and women to bond in a way that mimics a mother's love for her child. As adults, they want that same feeling, but cannot recapture it in its original state.

Grown men and women can only bring as much love as they understand to the feast of romance. In extreme cases, if their mothers did not love them at all, they will be able only to memorize the answers, to imitate what they see and hear but with no understanding. It's the difference between comprehending math and parroting answers that you do not understand. To the outward eye, there may be no difference, but in truth, the difference is profound. This matter of real love and pretend love is, of course, to some degree true of all relationships.

Men seek women with whom to recapture the emotion of maternal love via the love that this woman will give to their mutual children. Thus, it is not surprising that men repeatedly seek their mothers' reflection in women they intend to make mothers, in turn. It is even possible that women, too, seek their mothers in men, or at least the ideal of maternal love.

In any relationship, at any given point, there is one who loves and one who is loved.

People tend to be serially monogamous. The problem is that they're often not in sync.

Comment by a female reader of the manuscript (Cecelia Hernandez):

"I believe this to be a major issue in male/female relationships. Often a woman waits for some other, 'deeper' closeness to occur and, when it does not, decides to cut her losses and cut out. The man usually decides at this point that she is all he ever wanted, but she's had it. They're out of sync."

Should the woman you love depart, especially abruptly, you will endure violent withdrawal symptoms. These withdrawal symptoms are real, and can only be cured by the passage of time.

The loss of love, loss of the person you love, is the return to darkness and loneliness after having seen that light and joy are possible. You can never be happy again if you have tasted love; if you have steeped yourself in the bounty of love, put on the armor of love, and lost it. You must find it again, regardless of cost. Nothing else counts.

Love is reality at its best, and the loss of love is reality at its worst.

Just as love is the most wonderful thing that can happen to us, the loss of love is the most bitter. The worst thing in the world is to be cast out of human companionship. Solitary confinement, shunning, Coventry, ostracism: these are the most dreadful punishments humans can inflict on one another. It's no different to be cast out of a large group than to be cast out of the life of one single person. The pain and loss are the same.

Love affairs can run a course from infatuation, to love, to contentment and companionship. They can also become stale, fade away, explode, fall apart, and self-destruct. Sometimes they can be saved, but this takes luck and hard work. Usually, they run their natural course, and one love affair fades into another for our whole lives long. They change their nature, they change their focus, they change their objects, they change their intensity, but love is an inseparable part of being a person. Our lives are sunshine and shadow, until we at last depart this Earth.

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