Hi Andrew,
At some point - if you are to proceed down the wide and wondrous path - the beauty of pathos will have to be put under the microscope, eventually the sorrowfull/beautiful story of ‘Andrew’ will disappear too. It might be a good sign that you are able to become softer but to wholeheartedly go for emotional intimacy is to head right for the tried and failed once more.
The question is are you looking to discover the third alternative or are you content with retaining ‘your’ precious feelings. Or I could say are you looking to live in actual perfection and purity or are you looking to swim around in bitter-sweet feelings.
It’s a question I have been asking myself, after all there is no way to retain any aspect of ‘being’ if ‘I’ am to slip away from that cruise ship :
Only perfection and purity exists in terra actualis.