Romantic Vision, Everyday Disappointment

Romantic Vision, Everyday Disappointment
Dr. Judith Simmer-Brown

And this is the most difficult trait to acknowledge: romantic love glorifies unhappiness. The pain of romantic passion is something we find delicious. This is clear in our entertainments--films, novels, television, ballet, opera and plays. We entertain ourselves with the scrumptious pain of a romantic story, and that pain makes us feel so alive, so real, and so convinced of the meaningfulness of romantic love.

The intelligent way of working with romantic love is to experience it fully, beginning with the romantic passion, and then experience the disappointment and go on from there. We should understand fully what we are doing, being aware of our tendencies toward delusion when we are "in love".

There is tremendous energy in our passion. Romantic love is the beginning of understanding the nature of relationship. With it we develop the courage to jump in, and once we are in the ocean, we learn to swim. Without romantic love, we might never have jumped in.