Romantic Love is a fantasy construct

“… is there not an artificial entity, an ‘I’, that one takes to be me as I actually am? One’s most intimate ‘being’ is a fiction anyway, so any gender identity overlaid is equally false. If ‘I’ am false, artificial, then any connection – a bridge – between two psychological entities can only be as artificial as the separation itself.

Love is this bridge. Love is artificial.”

-Richard

This rocked my world when I read it last night. The reason love doesn’t work is it’s ‘me’ doing the loving, so I’m already lost. No matter how fervently I love, I’m no closer to feeling good (though I believe my love can accomplish that)… in fact I am farther than ever.

This makes sense with my recent observations…

I’ve been tracking my mood for a few months now and the two major dips in my affect have come immediately after having an experience of love with someone, and then spending some days thinking about them in a loving way a lot. Being preoccupied with love & desire, I was (& have been) cut off from the feeling good that I had been having success with

That’s because the love is in ‘me,’ and the enjoyment is when there’s less of me

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