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A post-Valentine’s Day wake-up call to the selfish superficiality of the modern relationship.
In the wake of a holiday with one of the highest suicide rates, I offer an alternative to self-harm: realism.
Dozens of individuals have succumbed to the irrational impulse to integrate. The urge to merge has driven countless singles to couple with the most peculiar creatures. God made man and woman to complement (not simply compliment) each other. But perhaps under the guise of petty, pathetic, and pretentious relationships, the neuroses of these pairs have actually canceled those of the other’s sublimely; or perhaps they are, as we have so often suspected, utterly insane.
What are the chances that you will satisfy your spouse simultaneously, sensually, sentimentally, and sexually? You are at your sexual prime biologically, though hardly experientially, and are therefore practically impotent. You are eighteen and only one of this spring’s eighteen statistically doomed college relationships. But take heart, heartache will do you a world of good. Like heartburn, it is unpleasant, but will teach you not to swallow things whole.
She is nothing special. Yes, you two have everything in common. You came to the same school, you were both educated the same way, you were both raised under the same religion, you both aspire to the same careers, and you both think this is unique. The fact that you believe that you have something special places you directly in the middle of the deluded throng under the big sign with the single word: “Average.”
Love overlooks a multitude of sins, sighs, and stupidity. The one thing love overlooks best is its own idiocy. In the attempt to love wholly, the couple loves blindly. They have found their chivalrous counterpart and now their souls shall be wed. Blind to the fact that his armor is rusted, her dress is torn, his character is less than faithful, and her disposition only makes enemies, they both pretend they have found the form of love.
Neither of them has careers in mind. Neither of them wants careers in mind: they, like good romantics, only have each other in mind. This is how they hover on the sidewalk as they pass you with their sickening infatuation, aggravating inconsideration, and self-indulgent flirtation.
If you are Christian, maybe you have found Jesus in this time. He is so worthy of worship now that you have someone to worship you, isn’t he? Or maybe you’re Buddhist, in which case you are more grounded in reality. You know what your spouse worships is unworthy. You already worship an ugly, old, fat man.
You cannot protect her. You cannot help her. You cannot even love her. If you cared rightly, it would be to improve her. It would be to admit her faults and let her improve. But the couple is so deceived that the very possibility of improvement is banished from their minds. To criticize is to blaspheme the name of “True” Love.
Thus begins the self-perpetuated stagnancy: this love cannot progress, for it has already arrived. The discovery of the Ideal means there is no further to go, no further to reach, no further to struggle. Your relationship is not perfect, nor is your love perfect, nor is the object of your love perfect. Pretending that it is will kill whatever might have been there. Pretending denies the predicament of all things human: all things are ill. Denying cancer does not make it go away. Denying cancer will not kill you immediately. In fact, you may both just die of old age.
You are now inseparable. All the time in the world will not make you more than routine, and routine easily becomes as old to your significant other as it already has to us. There is no world revolving around you. This bestial obsession is obscene.
Romantic love is perhaps the best argument for evolution. It does not improve anyone except superficially and even then only subjectively. The better you know and comply with your spouse, the better the response—the better the sex. Love that seeks to improve the other goes against these symbiotic relationships. Romantic love is narcissistic. It produces children, not virtue. As long as both are happy, it will continue.
When either decides that the other is not the ideal, they will leave with all of that “love.” They will give it all to the next person they mistake for their romantic ideal. They will not fall out of love with you. They were never in love with you. Her love is as eternal as her obsession with herself.
Pretending to be selfless, romance is the most brazen display of selfishness. It subverts substantial love by calling itself “true” love. The very fact that it must call itself true is a strong indication that it is not. At best, it is the need to be needed. At worst, it is desire disguised as charity.
“True” love is complacent. Real love is proactive.
Real love puts its foot down. “True” love knows no limits. You are not in love with her. You are in love with an abstract idea. Love her. Improve her.
And I’m a romantic.
Stewart Lundy is a philosopher-king.
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OK, this was the first article I read on Kritik. You’ve got me hooked…I totally remember those couples—they made my stomach churn. (This year’s Valentine’s Day was actually better than others I’ve endured because I was far, far away from college.) You described the problem extremely well. Kudos, and I’ll be back to read more! :)
— Random Alumna · 22.02.08 ·
Is this magazine for phc students only? Cause while you see this sort of thing alot there, I’m not sure its true across the board. I see alot of pain here, and relationships do cause pain, but I don’t think they are all bad.
I was also wondering who your source was for the sections on marriage. :) Know something I don’t?
— daniel noa · 22.02.08 ·
Are you kidding? None of this is about marriage.
This article isn’t condemning love. It’s condemning false love!
You missed the entire point, Daniel. The entire point. Does he know something you don’t? Clearly.
— pangalactic gargleblaster · 22.02.08 ·
A beautifully poetic tirade.
Indeed, blind love remains stagnant for the sake of self-preservation, while “real” love mutually improves. Yet, if to love is to reinvent, I’ll be interested to read your 30 year follow-up article… “Finding REAL Love at 50: Why There’s Still Time to Improve Her”
Any experience of “real” love stems from a lover’s unnatural denial of ego, which is self-improvement. Love her, and she will improve herself.
— kyle m. · 22.02.08 ·
this magazine is for phc students as much as phc is a college. by no means is it focused on any one school.
— Aaron · 22.02.08 ·
You say nothing new, my friend, but you say it well. ;)
— Sarah Pride · 22.02.08 ·
New is not necessary. That’s the point.
— Stewart Lundy · 22.02.08 ·
omygoodnessgracious I <3 you Stewart! Quite a thoughtful piece of art.
— Bart · 22.02.08 ·
I sense bitterness, Stewart. “Real” love and “real” romance should stem out of a selfless desire to serve the other person. Loving a person in order to improve them is selfish. Do you seek improvement for his or her own benefit or so that you may benefit? True/real love never fails, improvement or not. I vote for unfailing love without expectations… be sincere.
— gourmetwriter · 23.02.08 ·
Love which is only empirical dissects and kills. Love which is only existential suffocates and kills. The view that love shouldn’t move people towards Virtue is a truncated view of love. To say love is either completely unhistorical or historical is an abstraction. Instead, it is a dynamic relationship between the two.
The only bitterness here is against false love, specifically because I value true love. Disgust is a refined sentiment.
— Stewart Lundy · 23.02.08 ·
“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” -Chesterton
— The_Pope · 28.02.08 ·
I believe our author here is lost in the abysses of narcissism. You have reached Sunyata and need a mega dose of agape love to bring you back to life! The tongue has the power of life and death and you, sir, have spewed death. Don’t fall into the jaded trap because, after all, she IS special – very special. And you are, too.
— Lori · 28.02.08 ·