I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the subject of love. Everybody seems to want it. We all want to bask in the warmth of the unconditional positive regard of others. And yet, despite the fact that most people give love an important place in their lives, few of us seem to get any lasting pleasure out of it. It occurred to me that there are simple enough reasons for this, and simple enough solutions.
We can trace our concept of romantic love back to the rise of the chivalric code in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. At that point in history -- hey. HEY!
(FATHER OF FOUR SLAUGHTERS FAMILY, THEN TURNS STEAK KNIFE ON SELF)
Sorry about that, but your attention seemed to be wandering. Hmm...perhaps a better way to start looking at this subject would be to consider the story of Tristan and Isolde. Theirs is the first tragic love story, and it still has a powerful influence on our ideas of romantic love. Tristan was a squire of --
(AIDS BABIES PLAY WITH KITTENS DESPITE THE BEST PROJECTIONS OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION)
Okay, perhaps -- yes, yes, I know, aww, isn't that wonderful? Perhaps the historical perspective wasn't the best way to start. Let me try again...
Ahem. We know that sexuality is one of the most important drives in the human psyche. There are strong reasons to believe that this has an evolutionary basis: the more frequently a species reproduces, the more of its members are likely to survive predators or hostile living conditions. This gives the species a greater chance of evolving into --
(CAR BOMB KILLS 27 IN JERUSALEM -- RABBIS SAY "WE WARNED YOU...")
Is love nothing more than an emotional accommodation to the sex drive. My reading of the evidence suggests --
(MID-AIR PLANE CRASH KILLS 327 -- JUST AS NOSTRADAMUS PREDICTED)
Hey! Give me a chance, here! I think you'll find --
(OJ...DOES ANYTHING!)
Look! This doesn't necessarily mean that there is a strong correspondence between love and the sex drive. As far as I'm concerned, love is more than just a rationalization of the need to have sex. Okay?
Okay. What about the possibility that love is just a serious of chemical transactions in the brain?
(SPACE ALIEN CARRIES MICHAEL JACKSON'S LOVE CHILD -- DOESN'T NOTICE!)
Yeah, I figured as much. Okay, I thought these background arguments would lend some weight to my main point -- I mean, I think it's important to show that love cannot be adequately explained by any simplistic scientific paradigm.
(IMAGE OF HUMAN FACE FOUND ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN)
So, anyway, here's the basic premise.
We all have an idea in our heads of who our perfect mate would be. (WOMAN COMES OUT OF COMA AFTER 27 YEARS -- WANTS TO KNOW WHO WON THE WORLD SERIES) Our model of our perfect mate includes what they look like, of course, but also things about their personality is like, their psychological profile, even how the relationship starts and develops. (ORANGES CAN KILL YOU SAYS NEW SCIENTIFIC STUDY) Some of us are lucky enough to find somebody who is more or less exactly what we're looking for, but, when you think about it, the odds are that most of us will be attracted to people who don't fulfill our ideal in some fundamentally important way. (WOMAN ATTACKED WITH SCREWDRIVER FOR $3.27 BECOMES NUN, FORGIVES ATTACKER) But in the early stages of a relationship, we tend to project our ideal qualities onto our partner, especially those qualities which he or she seems to lack, in order to maintain the illusion of perfect, romantic love. (OPRAH SAYS OBSESSION WITH WEIGHT UNHEALTHY FOR YOUNG GIRLS) Of course, the longer we have the relationship, the harder it becomes to ignore the reality that the person we claim to live doesn't live up to the ideal of the person we want to love; it is the realization of this fact that tends to sour relationships.
As it happens, there are a number of simple things we can do to avoid this problem and make our relationships happier and last longer --
(SOONER OR LATER WE ALL DIE, STUDY SUGGESTS)
But perhaps I should save that for another time...
