It has become a custom that when we think about love to instantly associate it with the drama of wanting someone, being wanted or unwanted. Love is one of the most important dimensions of human experience and still it is the one we know least about.
In the process of understanding this phenomenon we have settled with the metaphysical data about it created through fictional mediums like literature, movies, theater and music. Our love life has become a mini-series with specific themes, main characters, divine interventions, carefully selected soundtracks and a team of illusions that write the script. And above all we treat love like a tribute to our superior human forms of life.
We love, therefore, we are human. From love comes all. Love is eternal, and so on and so forth.
What we have done, by giving love a full poetic potential, is we have taken it out of reality. In ancient times (Aristotle wise) love was a matter of rationality. It was a full assessment of the person you loved so that a life time partnership would have been unlikely to encounter break-ups. It wasn't that they didn't have feeling, but that they put reason before emotion in matters as important as the one you want to give so much of your time to. If emotions were present, that didn't necessarily mean they had to be reciprocated. The reality was being confronted in order for the right choice to be made before much feeling was invested.
The only fiction of that time were the plays, of which Aristotle also wrote the bible guide to. Most of those plays represent the ancient myths buried in the ordinary lives of normal folk. They had love in them but they weren't romantic. The world they were telling about was harsh - heroes became heroes only after they risked their lives in a mostly death situation, gods were punishing them out of spite or just for fun, monsters could have ruined one's life anytime one wouldn't expect. Those plays were about basic actions that had basic results. If love was found, it was usually bound to remain until death.
Given to this small river of inspiration, that mostly kept the normal citizen out of the fictional world, people were more serious about their intentions toward each other.
Nowadays love is faulty and diverse. There are people with five wives and people with none. Love can be cheesy and fiery or hard and cool.
Tragedy has become a center element in the adventure that is having a relationship. Tragedy has even become a thing of beauty, through which people can prove themselves to their destinies. It all originated in the romantic movement of the late XVIII century. The stories of troubadours that were content with courting ladies with a higher social status with whom they could never be had the start of the beautiful tragedy.
It was all about the genius that could not be grasped by the mortal humans - the characteristic of the genius is that he cannot be understood by the people of his era, this was a must. The geniuses were lovers whose love could not be reciprocated. Even though this was the case, they were not astray from going extreme on making love declaration acts.
Taking the moon and giving it to the one you love (like Merlin does in the movie) is from the romantics, reviving your love from the dead just to be with her (like Goethe's Faust) is from the romantics. Let me clarify, actual douche-bag Zeus was a non-romantic, rational human-like god, Zeus from the Hercules animated series is a romantic god-like human who truly loves Hera (which in the myth is a bitch).
This front spot that emotion takes in contemporary love relationships is based on the art for the sake of art ideology in which human suffering is artistic and in it's beauty pleases God who will give us eternal life.
For this thought to be in collective subconscious we don't need to relate to any religion when we say God or to an actual eternal life, but the beauty we think God likes is the same as the beauty we admire in very very sad movies.
For a healthier love life and life in general I advise practicing putting emotion second in most situations. I know it sounds cold, but this is also a romantic perception, it is not cold, is basic survival in a world which has not yet overcome the survival stage.
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