The Romantic Myth

To the best of my recollection:

There is one person, somewhere in this world, that is your soulmate.  You were made for each other.  This person is your "missing half" and will complete you.  In his/her arms, all of your desires will be fulfilled; nothing will be missing any more.

Your eyes will meet across a crowded room and you will instantly know that this is "the one" that was meant for you, and for whom you were meant.  You will fall in love, marry and never have an argument.  Because True Love is perfect and can never have a disagreement.

You will live happily ever after, and both die at the same moment in each other's arms. 

I wish I could remember the rest of it.

Those of us in Western culture have grown up steeped in this myth.  It's in our fairy tales we were told when little, it's in most of our music, it's in our movies, it's in the advertising that constantly bombards us, and it's even in church.  Especially in church.  We're told that there's a God up there that wants all of this for us, and will somehow magically make it all come true if only we are obedient enough.  

It's a pack of lies.

I know it's a pack of lies, and still I believe it.  Most of us still believe it on some level.  We are that steeped in it.  Like the X Files, I WANT to believe...

In her book Struggle For Intimacy (publ. Health Communications Inc., © 1990) Janet Woititz advises adult children of alcoholics, 

You didn’t have an effective role model for loving relationships. You have had to make it all up. ... So you created a fantasy about how ideal relationships work from a fanciful blend of what you imagined, saw at a distance or observed on TV.

And I would add, "and from what you heard in music, saw in movies, read about in novels, and heard in church."

We may not all be children of alcoholics, but it's a safe bet that, in America in The Present Year, more than half of us grew up in families that were dysfunctional in some way.  Some worse than others, but most of us conduct our intimate (i.e. romantic, sexual) relationships according to a model that just doesn't work in the Real World.

We seek what we call "love" without knowing what it is.  For most of us, it's a bundle of fantasies that are about as realistic as fairy godmothers, unicorns, and Magical Fairy Dust.  Worse, men and women have different ideas about what that word means.

Woititz defuses this somewhat in her book by focusing not on "love," but on what most of us really want:  intimacy.

Intimacy includes sex but involves a lot more.  It is actually knowing the other person, and being known by her or him.  It is, as Ayn Rand spoke of, compatible values.  Seeing in that other person your highest values, which evokes feelings of admiration and respect for the other.

That, in a nutshell, is Ayn Rand's definition of love.  It is intimacy, of a depth that most people never achieve.  Most of us are happy just to get the brain chemicals, which feel very, very good and will get us by.  And a good thing too:  if it wasn't enough for most people, H. sapiens would have gone extinct tens of thousands of years ago.

But a few of us want more.  We want to be understood.  By somebody.  Of the opposite sex, of course, because sex is an essential part of that picture.  We want Ayn Rand's Anthem in real life.