Love is a Conundrum

All love starts out strong. Love is what we want and choose to call it. It is so strong and feverish that we dub it so called love from the very beginning. This intense, immense pleasure of both desire for and being desired seem to hook us intently and seize us by the brain and maybe even our premature hearts. This indescribable feeling that only gets its overdue attention in songs, is of little worth once we know what is ahead, and past this inevitable stage. Yes it is a stage just like a stage in a developing child, or the stages in the growth of a disease. Love in its infancy leans towards imagined perfection. Eric Fromm would call this orgiastic pleasure at the formation-to-climax/zenith of a relationship.

We are fooled by a halo effect, a stunning glitter and aura radiating from our paramours' body. We falsely take this as proof of their love and heart marked for us. We are forever graceful and polite around them because we willfully allow ourselves to perform any acts of kindness for them. We want to "put our best foot forward" and present ourselves as sociable, interesting, and loveable. Smiles and laughter pour like ocean water effortlessly from our bodies. We experience this rush of emotions and gushing surge of happiness with every passing get-together or romantic date. We are tricked by our own front stage that we dress up in, to the point where we believe that we are this loveable and loving. We are fooled into believing that we act as ourselves, when the real ourselves are disclosed in our loneliness and solemnity. We are fooled by our own selves--we are creating a self fulfilling hypothesis in which we dream a perfect, an ideal date with our lover that at the end, we confirm our undoubtedly high expectations simply because of their effort. Their level of effort may be exaggeratedly high and we confuse this level of effort with affectionate love and romance tiding us over. What makes the date romantic is this notion of romanticized dates and how it is supposed to be. We put our best feet forward and through many tries, the partner is forced into believing that your false efforts are simply adorable or sweet.

I am pursued by stereotypical images of love. There is nowhere that I would rather be than in the arms of a woman who is lucky enough to have me! Everywhere I go, I am haunted by a bookbag of romance films that usher in expectations and a burden of stupid norms when it comes to romance. Films romanticize relationships and romance to a point of no return. We have gone so far up that we cannot come down. Neither do we want to come down because we have made it so far up, imagination-wise. Our idealized romance have been built and this expectation is a guillotine drawn up in the air. The higher the guillotine blade is installed, the faster and more brutal the decapitation. We do not escape this legitimation of love, provided by the movies. Scenes from A Walk To Remember or The Notebook conjure up the best foot forward where romantic love is driven by passionate love. Passionate love is awash with pompous acts of chivalry and intense, passionate, amorous love--sex that is. The sex is so fiery and passionate that it must be love. Love must be a byproduct of this ingredient of sex. Only after sex does the real clothing come off, leaving the flesh exposed and violated.

All love starts out strong because we want to land the job, we want to make a lasting impression on a fascinating person that we want reserved in the same way we want to reserve a parking spot or a concert seat to Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga. This act is selfish because we deny this person's ability to choose outside of you. There are other people out there who are capable of being loved (too). By willingly placing yourself as a love interest you have placed this person on hold with the phone off its cradle and the red "hold" button lit, for a substantial amount of time. You begin a chase where you risk high hopes and pulsating hearts which will inevitably crash in a firey roast (breakup or moment of despair in finding the wrong partner).

All love starts out strong and winds down when the acquisition is complete. Men have finally captured the woman and entered her in the castle as a Rapunzel. Their goal is to woo the woman so well that she grows her hair longer, grows new set of interesting personality traits, and seek them to rescue her from themselves. This strange competition for inner attention from each other is the invisible game that attacks the mind. Because it is where the mind rests which take the hardest hit. It is not as bad to be stabbed than it is to be lied to.