English language and literature overview

English - Love & Pain

LOVE and PAIN: INTIMATELY CONNECTED in HUMAN EXPERIENCE

In many respects, love and pain are intimately connected in human experience. In the realm of romantic love, it is, in large part, the desire to avoid pain of perpetual loneliness that motivates the desire for the one-on-one personal intimacy represented by a romantic relationship. Ancient poetry, literature, and music is replete with the theme of the pain associated with loneliness, romantic worship from afar, as well as the acute pain of unrequited love, in particular.

The very close association between love and pain continues even after successful consummation of love pursued. In fact, it is ironic that the everyday realities of marriage often extinguish the romantic spark responsible for bringing couples together initially but not the potential pain of losing a partner. Time and again, individuals within couples who have taken each other for granted, sometimes bickering perpetually and actually disliking each other experience a profound pain at losing each other suddenly, notwithstanding that they no longer derived any specific joy from one another for years previously. Likewise, partners who last shared physical intimacy months or years ago experience the tremendous pain associated with sexual jealousy if one's partner indulges an adulterous urge.

Pain is so much an expected part of romantic love that even the traditional oath of matrimony references "better or worse" and "in sickness and in health." In family life, there is no greater joy than experiencing parental love for one's children; but even in this, the love of children corresponds to an even greater amount of pain in the event of their tragic loss. Unlike romantic pain which usually subsides in time, the potential pain associated with the loss of a child is not proportional to the amount of love experienced in that relationship: parents who lose a child may experience inconsolable pain for the rest of their lives and for much longer than the length of their experiences as parents. Eunuchs, when interviewed on the topic of sexual attraction and romantic love, express complete bafflement at the entire concept of yearning for the intimacy of another, even without the element of exclusivity. Non-eunuchs may express sympathy for anyone incapable of appreciating sexual intimacy and romantic love; but it is the eunuchs who pity the rest of us outright for the emotional roller coaster that our lives sometimes resemble, purely by virtue of the interrelationship of joyfully highs and proportionally miserable lows in our personal lives.

Let alone the issue of physical intimacy that is equally perplexing to eunuchs, the very notion of any purposeful urge to pair up with another specific individual to the exclusion of any element of relationships with other individuals is incomprehensible to them, even in the best case or ideal scenario involving partners who are both generally healthy psychologically and compatible in more ways than not. However, anecdotal observation would suggest that the "typical" couple is somewhat less likely to represent healthy relationships than to represent troubled relationships. In that regard, perhaps no better evidence exists of the connection between love and pain in human life than the degree to which painful psychological experiences early in life dictate romantic choices much later in life.