Love. What original, profound thing can anybody say about love? Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Homer, Flaubert, Colette have all had a go at it. . . . “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love,” “Love is, of all the passions, the strongest, for it attacks the head, the heart and senses simultaneously,” “Love is a human emotion that wisdom will never conquer,” “Love is blind, and cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit,” blah, blah, blah.

The rules, if there are any, are inconsistent: One set says, Give all, hold nothing back, devote yourself utterly to the beloved and you’ll “win”; another school (my school) says, Do all that and you could be a candidate for the Bellevue psychiatric ward—at least if you do it too soon or don’t check the effect it’s having on the beloved. Nevertheless, for some of us, loving casually is about as possible as trying to assemble a main-frame IBM computer from a box of component parts. Yet, if getting love counsel from a sufferer (me) is like getting investment advice from the Franklin National Bank or consulting Dracula about your anemia, how can you even think of discussing love with a non-sufferer? A woman who has never had a moment’s insecurity with a man . . . what does she know?

May I tell you then what I absolutely think I know about love, one mouseburger to another?

1. Once begun, a love affair is like a train headed through a tunnel. . . . It is absolutely going to go through because it’s been programmed to do that back at the station. There is no use whatever trying to control it.
2. Mostly, men are rottener to women in love than women are to men.
3. It is not unusual for a man to disappear totally after having had with you what you thought was the best night of his life—that’s what he told you—and certainly of yours. He never calls again or not until months later anyway.
4. The only reason a man doesn’t call is that he doesn’t want to. He has not been taken to the emergency ward of Mount Sinai, thrown in the slammer or spirited away by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. Only not wanting to has prevented him from lifting the receiver.
5. Men and women can love equally. Just because men are frequently irresponsible and behave detestably does not mean they cannot love deeply. However—big however—the man who loves as deeply as that may not be the one you’re in love with . . . he’s just got it in him for some woman sometime.
6. When men are having a bad time in love, they can suffer worse than we do, and these may be outstanding men, not losers.
7.  There is no pain like the pain of having a bad time with a lover. . . . It’s got to be in the top three pains (hard to think of what the other two could be!).
8. Love changes. A man who is giving you fits can actually get to love you more than you him; you can detest somebody you adored, though right now you could sooner conceive of scalloped kneecaps or green blood than not caring for this one the way you do.
9. When you fall in love again (and you will), you can hurt just as much over the new person. (P.S. This knowledge never helped anybody feel any better while suffering her present pain.)
10. One person always loves a little more than the other.
11. Being romantically in love is sick—you’re subtly deranged —though you can be normal in every other way while it’s happening.
12. Deranged or not, love is the biggest joy and excitement-producer we have.
13. There is no better way to get to know someone than to have an affair . . . it can save years of lunches.

Now for a few details of love. May I?

Tags: a love affair, about love, love is the heart and senses simultaneously, what is love, when we love

Posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 1:35 am filed under Love.