I have been thinking about romantic love, about how wonderful it is to love and be loved in return. In fact, there is nothing more exhilarating than to find that person with whom one can be totally oneself and be accepted and loved – in other words, unconditional love. Those who have known this are fortunate indeed: As Shakespeare said, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Of course, the more intensely one has loved, the harder the loss of that love. I, alas, am speaking from experience.
What I find interesting is how little control we have over whom we love. People can fall love with the most unlikely person, such as in Colette’s book “Cheri,” the story of a great love between a much older woman and a very young man. People fall in love with a friend’s spouse; stories make the news of teachers falling in love with their students. Women have loved ne’er-do-well men, and men have fallen for fallen women like in Emile Zola’s “Nana” or in the opera “La Traviata.” Love is often incomprehensible to others. People say, “I don’t understand what he sees in her” or “she in him” (sometimes even to themselves).
So what attracts us? We don’t know ourselves. There is a pull like a magnet, a wish to be with that person. One overlooks flaws, the heart beats faster when hearing that person’s voice on the phone, pupils dilate when seeing that person, cheeks flush with pleasure at the person’s touch. Cortisone and adrenaline, all feel-good hormones flood our bodies.
So I started wondering about wrong loves and forbidden loves. Unrequited love must be among the most painful, an emotional roller coaster — hoping for an acknowledgment, not getting one. The wrong person may be an issue of poor psychological fit: social styles, values, or temperaments that just don’t work well together.
A wrong love could be someone who is an extrovert in love with an introvert. She wants to paint the town red with her friends, while he wants to stay home and read or watch TV. They may never become comfortable with a compromise or they may be able to adjust to each other’s needs.
Forbidden love is a person who would be your soulmate, but society does not permit it. Examples abound: loving an already-married person, someone from a different social class (this is more prevalent where caste systems still hold sway), someone from a different ethnic group, religion or race. Although black and white couples are more accepted now than ever before, as are same-sex couples, anyone who does not meet societal expectations about whom they should be partnered with will cause tension and even hostility.
Our newspapers are replete with stories of politicians wrecking their careers for forbidden love, or sometimes just sex, or so it seems. Office affairs have destroyed careers and harmed organizations too.
In some cultures, if you act on your love for the forbidden man, your father may kill you for dishonoring the family. In past centuries, you would have been sent to a nunnery or into the army; today you may be disinherited or ostracized.
What to do? Sometimes when it is forbidden, the societal pressures are strong enough to stop the relationship — the lovers separate, are left bereft, and must accept someone deemed more suitable. A very few may be able to escape the societal pressures.
An example of forbidden love would be falling in love with a married person who is not willing to get a divorce for whatever reason (often it is kids), and so the choice is to have a secret affair or not to act on it and just deal with that pain.
With the forbidden love, you can decide to see each other secretly — this may work for a while, but more often than not you will be found out: a letter, an intercepted phone call, an undeleted message on your phone, a conversation overheard, you are seen together.
It is impossible to give advice unless one knows the people and circumstances involved. Sometimes, one should take a chance with the fallout and go where the heart longs to go. Sometimes, the consequences of following your heart may be so destructive that acting on it is not advisable. Whatever path one chooses under these circumstances, there will be suffering — hopefully, there can also eventually be joy.