The Hopeful Delusion

I don't believe in soul mates, and I don't believe in love at first sight. Many-splendored though it may be, love is, generally, a very poorly understood thing. It seems to have found a popular description as practically thaumaturgic, perhaps an energy or a power rather than a brain state, having less to do with hormones or action potentials than with fate or magic. I speak of romantic love here, as platonic love is rarely ascribed mystical properties. But the fact is, said the unapologetic pragmatist, that both manifest at the level of the brain and can be measured and explained by neuroscience. Romantic love is not something that can strike like a bolt out of the blue, because it requires intimacy and rapport to develop. Love is based on empathy, reciprocity, comfort, and trust, and those are things that cannot be attained spontaneously (except, perhaps, by the most gullible of us). Common interests also play a big part in the way we begin to love one another, and, while you may be able to deduce that you share a particular interest with another person from the circumstances in which you meet them, the best you should hope for in that instance is a superficial understanding. You can only really come to know a person through conversation and by spending time with him or her, and it's because of this that love also requires patience.

It is common to draw a distinction between "ordinary" love and "true love." The bond of true love is usually expected to be eternal; some even insist that it transcends physical death, which is a dubious conclusion to reach given the information we have (or do not have) about what happens to us when and after we die. Platonic love is less often described as permanent. We have all outgrown friends, and it is usually at least an uncomfortable experience. But romantic love can fail for all the same reasons that platonic love does. There is no reason to assume that any particular feeling of love is truer than any other or that love of any certain intensity should remain miraculously unchanged until your dying day. We should view all of our feelings, no matter how fleeting or powerful, through the lens of logic. Referring to any type of love as true seems to cast other love-like feelings - such as infatuation - as inferior and unworthy of much time under scrutiny, when it is very often these preliminary feelings that can lead to the feeling that many call "true love" in the first place. All feelings are true, even if they are disproportionate to their causes.

Love changes because people change. Our feelings do not exist extrinsic from our minds. As we live and associate with each other, we discover nuances of personality that we may dislike. Our interests evolve, and most peoples' paths will eventually diverge, no matter how close they are from the outset. The friends you had when you were 6 years old and had a whole world to explore and a self to find within it are probably entirely different people now with interests beyond climbing trees and rambling through wooded areas with sticks for swords. The imaginary foes of your youth are all defeated; they have been replaced with real foes, and your interests have likely shifted monumentally, leaving you virtually, if not entirely, incompatible with your comrades of old. We are like ice cubes dumped from an ice cube tray: two may start out in the same shape, but they will probably melt in completely different ways. This is why distance so often kills friendships - separated geographically, you are exposed to different influences and are more likely to develop incompatible interests. Romantic love works in the same way. People change. They grow. Even the truest of love, whatever that means, can dwindle with age. Love takes time, and this is why we cannot love instantly. But, with time, love changes, and this is why it is unrealistic to assume that we might love eternally.

Much emphasis is placed on falling in love and getting married. Romantic love is seen as a goal for which anything might be sacrificed, and those without it are often depicted as less fortunate than those who manage to find it. A lack of proper understanding about feelings of romantic attachment will lead almost certainly to sorrow, no matter what it may be popular to say about the power of love. My wife and I have been together for 11 years, and we've been married for 3. I can say that love and marriage can be wonderful and sublimely rewarding, but approaching any kind of relationship with your head in the clouds and unrealistic expectations of mystical eternity will lead to spectacular failure virtually without variation. Wait until you have done most of your growing to get married. Make decisions based on reason, and do not bet everything until you really understand the odds. Magical thinking in general is detrimental to any society's maturity; if we cannot break the bonds of wishful thinking, we shall be doomed to lunge forever at the shadow of perfection and to fall again and again into sadness and failure that are only made more terrible by our hopeful delusion.