The Delusion of Love
The answer to overcoming shame may be love, but what if the thought of expressing love leaves you running for the hills? Love requires vulnerability and for many of us, it’s a far too uncomfortable emotion to express. Instead, we rebel against it, leaving us with the inability to write a decent love letter or romantic poem, or to fumble words like ILU (it seems, I can’t even type them without cringing). This often leaves our partners frustrated and questioning whether we are capable of love at all.
Take Hemingway, a famous writer who penned many famous love letters to his partners. In this example, Hemingway writes a love letter to Mary Welsh, who would later become his fourth wife:
“Dearest Pickle,
So now I’m going out on the boat with Paxthe and Don Andres and Gregorio and stay out all day and then come in and will be sure there will be letters or a letter. And maybe there will be. If there aren’t I’ll be a sad s.o.a.b. But you know how you handle that of course? You last through until the next morning. I suppose I’d better figure on there being nothing until tomorrow night and then it won’t be so bad tonight.
Please write me Pickle. If it were a job, you had to do you’d do it. It’s tough as hell without you and I’m doing it straight, but I miss you so [I] could die. If anything happened to you, I’d die the way an animal will die in the Zoo if something happens to his mate.
Much love my dearest Mary and know I’m not impatient. I’m just desperate.
Ernest”
It is a sad situation when instead of admiring his openness, and his desperation I brand him a pathetic simp and if I were Mary, would be tempted to reply something like this:
Dear Earnest,
Have fun on the boat.
P.S. Pickle is an awful pet name, please change it.
Regards,
Mary
Yes, love for me is dead(or at least an open display of love for me is). Could it be that shame is more difficult to shake than I thought? The fear of rejection is a powerful beast. More than fear though, is a suspicion that their declarations are not real.
Given what we know about love and desire, my doubts are not completely paranoid.
Desire is to “await what the stars will bring” from the phrase de sidere meaning “from the stars”. The idea of our wanting to be cosmic, heaven sent and us being defenseless against Cupid’s arrows when he chooses to strike, is rather sweet and magically romantic. But that’s just the problem.
As Nietzsche argues “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired that we love.” Like modern-day Romeos, we fall in love with being in love, and like sculptors, we carve someone to fit, and end up being disappointed.
We live with the shame of destroying someone else’s fantasy or when we eventually awake to reality, we judge ourselves for being starry-eyed and for our fantasies being a little “too much” in the first place.
There is hope though. For some, there seems to be something left when the fantasy is over. Perhaps, this is love. Until then, what do we have to fear buying into the fantasy, other than a little delusion?
It seems when it comes to romantic love, a little delusion goes a long way.
