That's why Pr. Lisa Diamond, who teaches psychology at the University of Utah, distinguishes romantic love from sexual desire. The idea is that everyone basically needs to eat, but while some will walk down to the closest McDonald's to order fries, others will favor home-cooked provitamined fish. Our poor little birds were enjoying a peaceful nap out in the sun on the border of our window, but they couldn't help doing it when Basic Instinct urged them to. And something we can surely be thankful for is that Mother Nature has provided us with a transcending, higher sense that enables us to help it, when we're walking down a narrow street in Amsterdam's Redlight District at 7:00AM, craved at by some third-handed, overworked night workers of the feminine (hopefully!) gender who offer to give us a hand.
This bestial desire for sex has indeed been turned into a job, the oldest job in the world I should say. And the very fact that this part of love, the sexual part, can be commodified, shows that something is missing for it to be actual love. And since sex, which is the first thing associated with love (don't we say "make love"?), is not the whole story, then there has to be something in between. And this gap that separates sex from love is the romantic part, that we call romantic love.
This notion can easily be illustrated by thinking in terms of money : the sex part can be bought, while the romantic part can't. I'm sorry indeed to tell my dearest friends of the proposition that one can pay for sex, but no one cannot pay for love. Have you ever wondered why prostitutes have this tradition not to kiss ? Well simply because kissing someone is supposed to mean something, to be a way of expressing feelings, and you don't pay for feelings - nor does anyone sell any. And why is that ? Because doing so would be the biggest illusion ever.
Nowadays the way of committing to someone, not only for sex, is called romantic love, and it is so far from being an illusion that it is competing with friendship as the stongest emotional feeling of all. Spiritual attraction, a new notion developped to express this crazy little thing called love celebrated by Queen, is going beyond physical attraction to build strong relationships. Some people will call it idealistic, but the truth is true love cannot exist without romantic love.
Just because romantic love is a feeling, and is thus invisible, untouchable, non-measurable, un-anything-that-has-to-do-with-rational-thoughts-able, doesn't mean it is an illusion !
Think about it : haven't you laughed, haven't you danced, haven't you eaten, haven't you walked hand in hand with someone who was very special, someone who made your heart blind, dazzled by a sudden flash, stricken by the most beautiful and simple feeling in life, love ? You know you do... and if you haven't, you certainly wish you had ! So don't let resent talk you into believing that this romantic love everyone craves for is an illusion. The reason why some people claim it is, is because this upper-state of love, that of romantic love, is a state everyone tries to reach, but only those who invest enough time and energy building a true love relationship can grasp, so that it is has become to our fertile imaginations, unattainable, illusional.
So, ladies and gentlemen, do you still think that romantic love is an illusion? Illusion really means something that doesn't exist or even worse, something that exists in your mind but that doesn't exist in reality, a totally abstract concept only good for some lame romantic guy who offers roses to the girl he loves, even though he doesn't know if it is reciprocical. But love is concrete, and if something concrete is now called an illusion, we should all get out of the Matrix to get to this "real world" that seems to be the proposers' one. Love is concrete, and romantic love is necessary for all of us to be humans, to be more than those horny birds on our window, and to achieve the biggest part of our humanity that is love. Those are the points we are to develop in the following parts of the debate, although we know that you are already convinced that there is more to love than sex, the difference being romantic love... and that you will avoid being fooled by any proposing team offering you illusions, by voting for us.
The constant gardeners.
I suppose everybody knows the feeling you're talking about, except perhaps Susan Boyle who declared just before singing the song that made her an overnight superstar that she had "never even been kissed". But the question is whether such delirious moments can be trusted, whether we should base our lives and define our humanity on the pusuit of or faith in such escapes from reason (Look at the language you yourselves use to describe them: "blind, dazzled, stricken"!) For the consequences of doing so are far more likely to provoke pain than pleasure. Just ask the 1 in 2 couples whose marriages end in divorce, and the rest whose unions turn loveless and bitter. Shouldn't they have built their lives on stronger foundations and more reasonable beliefs than that in "romantic love"?
ReplyDeleteOh yes, and what was the song that made unkissed Sarah so famous?:
"There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong ..."
Alas, we all seek to plough our furrow and plant our seed, but not all gardeners are constant.
You seem really convinced by what you're saying but if you just take a look on the campus, you will see how alone you are in this concept. I'm not expressing my opinion, but what do you think of the parties organized in HEC or in Pharma University ? Do they encourage students to express their "romantic love" ?
ReplyDeleteI really like this openning speech and particulary the difference between sex and love and the fact that romantic love is one step beyond physical love (enven if physical love is a part of romantic love).
ReplyDeleteMark, personnally, I think that the problem of couples divorcing is not romantic love, but it is more the lack of romantic love in their life which make them divorce. Because romantic love is the only way to have a strong relation with your partner since it is built on something higher than only physical contact.
Matthieu, I don't think people going to parties are only looking for sex and that for them romantic love is and illusion. I hope that some of them also go to parties to meet a girl a stay more than a night with her.