Love: A Bizarre Affliction of the Emotions?

From The Expression Staff

In recognition of the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, we asked our subscribers and friends to share a "love story" with us with the understanding that "love" could be defined in any way they chose--that their response did not have to be serious essays about the greatest love of their lives (though they could be) but could be more lighthearted. Over the next few days we will share the submissions.

by Craig Bennett*

When I was fumbling my way through adolescence, I used to fall in love with great regularity. Deeply in love. Sometimes almost desperately in love. And invariably with girls who were essentially unavailable to me. Older girls who would have no interest whatever in a boyfriend who was younger (they were interested only in older guys, especially older guys with cars). Indescribably beautiful girls who were wildly popular with every male under twenty east of the Alleghenies. Girls whose family were members of some super-conservative fundamentalist church that forbade dancing, movies, card playing, bowling (people sometimes engaged in gambling during these activities!), and most of the things that young couples did when they went out on a date. But for some reason I avoided girls my age who were available.

Thinking back on this time during the many years that have passed since, I’ve come to realize that focusing my passion exclusively on those young ladies who were simply unavailable to me was probably a way of protecting myself from actually having to deal face-to-face, one-on-one with a girl if I ever succeeded in getting a date with someone whom I considered attractive. Shy, introverted, socially inept being that I was, I knew I would just freeze up into a mute, barely animate bore completely devoid of the slightest hint of sophistication, wit, or charm.

And yet, I also came to realize that there was something rather chivalric about my unrequited love affairs. Something very like the pure and chaste love that a medieval knight held for his lady (often someone else’s wife, which made it a little easier to keep it pure and chaste): an unwavering devotion to her beauty, her goodness, her innocence—and her distance. Sometimes things didn’t remain quite so pure and chaste, though. The Middle Ages are full of stories and legends of forbidden passion between lovers who were married (at least one of them), of different social castes who were forbidden to stray outside of their cultural boundaries, of different religions, and other socially imposed distances that were intended to keep them apart and within the confines of their own cultural sphere.

But those were also the days of arranged marriages, as opposed to the unconstrained, free-choice unions we have today. Even shotgun weddings have almost disappeared since the advent of easily obtained and maximally effective birth control methods. Marriages, especially within the nobility and wealthier classes, were arranged primarily to consolidate power, fortunes, or both, or at least to keep the noble blood lines from being polluted by an outlawed union with commoner or peasant. One can easily imagine a couple of aristocratic, land-holding fathers, cooking up a marriage between their nobly born children that would increase their holdings, presciently quoting Tina Turner with the question, “What’s love got to do with it?”

But then along came the nineteenth century and what became known as the Romantic Era. Not “love ‘n’ kisses” Romantic, but Romantic in the sense that the imagination became paramount after being almost suppressed during the more scientific and technically oriented eighteenth century. As cities all over Europe became larger, dirtier, and more crowded, artists began to revolt. A new appreciation for the natural world swept into painting and poetry. As the Industrial Revolution made its way rapidly across Europe, and the technology of mass production began chaining more and more people to back-breaking, mind-numbing, life-consuming factory jobs, the emotions began to overtake the intellect as the noblest attribute of the human mind. Individual freedom, heralded by the Revolutions in America, France, and during the turbulent year of 1848, several other European countries, became a value that motivated major changes in the traditional cultures of the West. And this, of course, came to include the freedom to marry whomever you please, as long as the knot was tied by mutual consent.

So now we have—finally—a situation where the answer to Ms. Turner’s question is both easy and simple. “What’s love got to do with it?” Everything.

*Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available at amazon.com, barnesnadnoble.com, and most book stores.

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