It's an anniversary - 16 years of marriage and 51 years of relationship (I'm slow OK). I found chapter two of that book I started so many years ago. Is this still true for you or did I miss the mark in my philosophical meanderings?
Romantic love, the experience of strong attachment in a relationship, is the subject matter of virtually all popular music and a whole genre of fiction writing. It is the sentimentalized desire to be with another person. The desire may not be originally or purely sentimental, but the interpretation by the lover certainly is. Sexual interest or security, or the need to dominate which most likely lies behind both of those motives, may be the original source of the relationship, but for the last thousand years or so it has not been allowed to stay in that form.
Most researchers place the origin of the romantic love notion in the harem culture of the Moslem world just prior to the crusades. Women became objects for distant adoration (the speaking of which was a compliment to the owner) and unattainable unless it was your harem, although really not to be attained at all since that would end the whole elaborate ritual.
The notion of ownership was actually heightened by this new cultural process however, for there was an owner of the adored woman – her husband or father – and a potential owner in the person of the lover. Although this lover professed a desire to be her slave, that was all part of the game which was never going to be consumated anyway. The few times that it was, were by most accounts, an embarrassment to all, like the puppy catching the tractor trailer, and the relationship, along with various limbs was usually severed sharply. But this notion of ownership, whether actual or theatrical, did become more firmly fixed in the relationships of the sexes.
The cult of the Virgin Mary, arising at the same period in history with the year 1000 being touted as the time for the 2nd Coming of Christ and an attendant Judgement Day seems to have tinged the adoration of all women with a quality of mysticism borrowed from an adoration of the Virgin Mary, and European culture absorbed a complementary blend of Islamic custom and Christian mythology.
The history of the spread of this notion of romantic love, and the modern chemical explanations for its operation make interesting reading, but they are not the subject here. What is significant is the language in which the notion and its operation have been embodied. We live in language as fish live in water.
Adoring males today still offer themselves as virtual slaves to women on whom they become fixated, but we usually consider such offers as evidence of mental illness requiring restraining orders and the neurotic nature of which is demonstrated when the woman tries to end the relationship. Then we see that the man was a "slave" in the sense that a fundamentalist Christian or Moslem could be a "slave" to one of those religions, not by surrendering to the precepts of those institutions but rather by demanding all others' adherence to the more oppressive dogmas of them.
In the relationship, this can and has manifested as abduction, murder and suicide in accordance with the beliefs "I can't live without you," or, less dramatically, as drinking and public mischief. What is more often meant is the one-sided bargain of, "I'm giving you me and therefore you owe me something – your life, for starters."
The Renaissance courts of love and the troubador phenomenon spread the complex of attributes of the courtly lovers. His burning with passion is still here in the colloquially reckless "hots" and her divine physical attributes are still the goal of film stars and anorexic youth. People, tragically and ironically, are still dying to be loved.
Of course Country & Western music and the whole Romantic Love business were made for each other. It may have been spoofed in those songs with such titles as "She Got the Gold Mine and I Got the Shaft" or "I Got Tears in My Ears from Lyin' on My Side When I Cry Over You" but the relationship has endured and been a profitable enterprise for as long as singers could play dress-up-as-cowboys and strum three chords on a guitar without falling off the horse or into the campfire. I tried it myself for ulterior motives.
I was a single dad with three kids to roust out of bed on school mornings and I could do the "sturm und drang" thing or something easier. Well, you know me well enough to guess the route I took. "Country Roads" was one of John Denver's most popular songs and I'm sorry for what I did to it. I would perch on the end of Susan's bed and wail away "Take me home, down country roads". I think she may have considered a charge of parental abuse, but after running screaming from the room she did get to school on time.
On this lighter vein, I used one of Margaret Atwood's poems as an inspiration in the
following "Glossette" - a small volume of which is now at the printer's. Recognize any of the expressions?
You fit into me/ like a hook into an eye
a fish hook/ an open eye
Margaret Atwood “you fit into me”
Entendres for Intendeds
Love idioms were made
for idiots in love,
for if you think
there is some deep
and heartfelt meaning
in these expressions
of your love,
you might unpack
the imagery
after romance has gone,
as our own Margaret might.
"Hand in glove" for Bismark
"Head over heels" for Robespierre
"Tie the knot" in Alcatraz
"A soft spot in my heart" to Dr Barnard
"Have the hots" for Torquemeda.
Well, now you've got the process
you may never again use these,
unsullied by the implications
in your entertaining mind, to say:
I've got a crush on you
who take my breath away
and tug at my heartstrings.
Be my main squeeze,
my flaming love
as in our burning desire
we take the plunge,
blinded by love.