Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Desperate Love


"In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”

This quote from Eat, Pray, Love is all over the web. It's so utterly honest. Big *SIGH*. No wonder this book has universal appeal! We want so desperately to surrender our hearts, and to what -- someone who doesn't even exist -- the man of our dreams, the one who will never disappoint, who is perfect for us in every way.
 
Later in the book, the author talks about the intensity and devastation of her rebound relationship : " Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted -- an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted. Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to thave that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. " ...
 
I can't quote more, it's too painful. It takes me right back to that place of self-loathing and desperation in my 20s. They were never what I truly wanted and yet all I wanted was their love. Ugh, I see some father-daughter neurosis rising up here.
Let's hear it for marriage! Yes, it's endlessly boring. But it's SAFE, and STABLE.

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