That's my current working hypothesis. Try not to reject it totally out of hand, though, because it's not quite as bitter as it sounds. I hope.
Love, especially in modern society, is totally confusing, if not, as I suspect, just plain wrong. Most people, I misdoubt, don't have the foggiest idea what love really is. It seems to me we are a society walking around in a collective isolation, afraid to actually reach out and touch someone. Because then these carefully built masks of person we've constructed around our selves will crumble and fade, leaving us to face the truth of who we really are, and I wonder how many people there are than can accept themselves with equanimity.
I'm reminded of The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende. The book, I mean. The movie was a decent interpretation, if annoying in ways, but it was maddeningly incomplete. I understand the sequel addresses this deficiency, but I haven't seen it yet, so I can't coment. In it, one of the characters in the story, Atreyu, has to pass through The Magic Mirror Gate. In this gate, knaves have passed through, kings have lost their minds, and brave men their virtue. Its only magic, though, is that it shows you as you really are. Without pretense, without pleasant social buffering, without anything between you and you.
I don't mean to set myself up here as a paragon of virtue. If I were to sit down and be totally honest with myself, I'd have to admit that I'm probably one of the most self-deceptive people out there. I claim, inwardly and outwards to want a love that accepts me as I am, but let's face, it, I'm probably too damn cynical for it ever to happen. I'd doubt, I'd test, I'd push just a little too hard, and then *poof*, it'd be gone, and there I'd be, happy to be alone and miserable again, because at least lonlieness I can deal with.
First off, we can probably forget everything ever written about love, especially by poets, who, of all people, should really have known better. Then, we can dispense with the services of the overly bitter and cynical (such as myself). Which leaves us with.... what?
I have a feeling that what actually happens is not so much the blinding furies of passion, the two candles burning so brightly at both ends that they extinguish themselves in a blinding fury and a messy puddle of wax, nor that longling, frustrated sort so popularized in movies like The Remains of the Day and The Age Of Innocence .
It's probably one of those things where you're going along nicely, having a wonderful day, even though the sky's overcast, and the forecast is for more rain for the next 3 weeks, and your car broke down, and you're happy anyway, and you really can't think why, and then you realize, "Well, at least I've got <name>. I guess it's not a total wash, after all."
Or go back to look at my main page.