All the romantic comedies that had ever been made have lied to us. They want us to believe that living on separate continents, being from different social classes or just unavailable and still make it work is the most romantic thing that can ever happen to us. It’s not.
According to this cultural model, the intensity of love and desire is measured only by the difficulty of the external obstacle that the lovers have to face. The greater the challenge, the greater the love must be.
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In reality, this scenario is a very safe one. You feel protected in your knowing that this person lives miles away.
That you are a lady and he is a vagabond. If there’s no happy ending to the story it’s because of THE REASON. It’s not because you haven’t tried enough. Or because you have flaws.
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It’s safe to love somebody whose shirts and socks you don’t have to smell every night. When we find ourselves in this situations, we need to ask ourselves some difficult questions. Isn’t the reason you say you are in love with that girl you only saw once in the park exactly the fact that you have seen her only once? You don’t really know her. It’s a fantasy that cannot let you down.
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When we engage in such fantasies, we are in control. If we happen to be disappointed there is always a good reason. Life being the terrible thing that it is. Not us. Not the other. Life. It’s safe to feel as intensely as we can because the obstacle is always there in case everything goes south.
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But if we trust someone who is here and then they leave, there’s nobody to blame but ourselves. We weren’t good enough. We surrendered ourselves to somebody else and nothing came out of it. Now that’s the really scary scenario. Not the husband of your fling coming early from work and finding you spying in the corner. The truly courageous thing to do is to love someone who might want to love you back. Who is there in the morning and has smelly breath. To confide in somebody who leaves not because she is deployed in Afghanistan and left the whole possibility of a happy ending intact.
The truly dangerous thing is to love someone who can love us back. At least for a while. Share this!
