Love – it won’t last
The sad thing about love is that it is ultimately impossible. First, you can fall in love with each other. You can feel the excitement every time you meet. You can promise each other, yes, yes, yes, forever only you. You can marry and, at this stage, feel as if you want to embrace the whole world. The honeymoon can be sheer bliss. You can found a family and feel sure of each other. For how long? Sooner or later you will be at a crossroads. Either of the following can happen. One of the two partners is attracted to an outsider and gives in to the attraction; if this becomes known to the other, it will cause a lot of pain and finally kill the emotion of love; if it doesn't become known the first time, it will at the second or third. Or, if neither of the two gives in to the sexual attraction of an outsider, and doesn't even admit it, boredom and indifference will set in.
The one sure thing is, it won't last on and on. Even if the relationship continues for decades, because this is dictated by the conventions of a society, or because other options just don't seem feasible, it will, after a while, no longer be based on love.
Procreation is a biological drive. We are all wired to fall in love during our youth. Falling in love heightens the desire to copulate, and copulating is necessary in order to procreate. There is also a biological necessity for feelings of love and care. Where there is only a desire to copulate, offspring may not be attended to sufficiently.
In my view, nature is terribly efficient. What's not needed is not provided for. While humans have extended lifespans, aging is a natural process, not a human invention. Nature's interest is probably a generational turnover of about 30 years. We are equipped comparatively well to go on with a partner for a few years, probably a maximum of the famous seven. It's about an age when the first-born children could follow a group independently.
I don't think mankind is equipped emotionally to last in love relationships for more than a few years, certainly less than ten. When we fall in love, we just see all the positive aspects of a partner or prospective partner. Kindness and good looks... loving, caring, a serious personality... industrious and organized, or admirable for other qualities.
We will only see what's wrong as time goes by: bad temper, lack of reliability, not caring any longer about one's appearance. And we ask ourselves: were we just blind when we fell in love, or has this person really changed so much? If a relationship proceeds to this point, and beyond, it's just fading away. Life can be so depressing, day in, day out. There is nothing left to talk about. And then life simply runs its course.
Each of the two partners will contemplate what went wrong. If they lack understanding of life itself, they may ultimately think that it all comes down to the wrong choice of partner. They'll remember the other options they had in life, those that they bypassed because they chose the one they're with. But it wouldn't have been better with the other option, just different, and finally, just as depressing. Make no mistake... the deficiency lies in nature. Basically, it's the impossibility of love.
If I see a Western middle-aged couple and the husband pays a lot of attention to his wife, as if they were newlyweds, I usually know what has happened. She has had an affair, and he is hurting. My prognosis: it won't last.
It also just looks like love. In reality, it's pain. He feels deeply hurt and plays the romantic. He feels a stone in his stomach and desire in his loins. He has sex with her, but in reality, he'd rather walk away from her. Just everything's wrong. He's so nice to her, attending to every one of her wishes, as if they were on a honeymoon trip. But if you look more closely, you can see the bitterness in the corners of his mouth.
And she? She may feel that by having a little affair on the side, she has regained a romantic, charming husband. She likes to be in public with him, as if she wants to present him as the model of a husband who, yes, is still so attentive after all these years. Don't believe it. When he's beyond the worst of his pain, he'll be looking for a way out. And it's not he who will be her final concern, but a good share of the conjugal property.
We know it. One way or the other, it won't go well.