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?

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