I Prefer: Incurable Romantic | teslastemptress's Blog

Are you Smitten or Are you Mad? I Prefer: Incurable Romantic

Are you Dreaming of Romance? Do you remember the feeling of falling in love for the first time? Most people have a cute love sick story and they usually share similar traits. We talk of the fluttering in our stomachs or the nervous pounding of hearts when we personally encounter someone we feel deeply for. We tend to get that adoring doe eyed look about us. There is the subsequent inability to concentrate or form a cohesive thought. Typically those who are smitten will lose their appetites in the beginning of a deep fall. Every love song seems made for them, and all of the beauty that was easily passed by before unnoticed now stands out vibrantly. Sleep disturbance is a common symptom, especially if there is a great longing to be with or to connect with the person that is desired. The afflicted tend to spend long periods of time lost in amorous thoughts consumed with their desires. To so many of us our lives are filled with the poetry of love, the music of love, the artistic creativity of love. Love as divine inspiration. All of this is so romantic, so appealing, so utterly pleasant to the minds eye and psyche. The very best that life can offer is Love and that goes with it. Love, it all sounds so wonderful, so perfect, and so ideal. 

          I have personally spent a great number of years researching all different types of topics and interests. It occurred to me recently that I had never really researched Love and all that it entails. I have researched sex, in depth. I have researched relationships of all kinds. But I had never really researched love. I started by googling symptoms for being “Love Sick”. The first two sites that I came across were for books. Both books have the same name; “Love Sick”. Both books have to do with love and mental health issues.

The first is written by Sue William Silverman. According to the Google book search website, Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction

By Sue William Silverman

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

ISBN 0393019578, 9780393019575

303 pages. This is from their review; ”In this powerful, often lyrical memoir, a woman learns to value herself -- as a whole person rather than as a sexual object. Recounting her past experiences as part of her journey toward recovery, Sue William Silverman explores her skewed belief that sex is love, a belief that began with her father's sexual abuse from early childhood into adolescence.”  The entire review can be viewed at:   http://books.google.com/books?id=kYWrftybPJsC&dq="Love+sick"&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0  

The second book that shares the same title; Love Sick is written by Dr. Frank Tallis. Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness

By Frank Tallis

Published by Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005

ISBN 1560256478, 9781560256472

320 pages

According to the Google book search website; “Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate—exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love. In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis, a leading authority on obsessive disorders, considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love.” To see the review in its entirety, go to:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Cs2whGXTWeYC&dq="Love+sick"+book&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

The third area that came up in my research was websites devoted to love sickness. One in particular caught my attention; www.lovesickfools.com . This site offers “relationship help and love advice” and there is even a question and answer advice column written by Nate Lovestruck,  The site was filled with information useful to those interested in the many aspects of a love relationship.

I read the website, and the reviews on each book. I further read and perused parts and was fascinated by both so much that I am now looking forward to reading both books.

What bothers me about all of this is that in researching love in this manner I have found that the new way of looking at love, and what we refer to as “falling in love”, is that it is now widely seen and accepted as a true sickness.

          Falling in Love is now considered a mental Illness. Love sickness it seems, is similar in many ways to other mental illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder. The disorder tends to manifest itself, and snake its path along a period of time that entails an average of just about nine and a half weeks. Wow. What an extreme difference point of view makes when considering the subject of love. What a sterile, cold and clinical way to change public opinion on a subject that too many is the epitome of life itself. I am not suggesting that I don’t agree with the authors opinions. To the contrary, they are probably right on. What bothers me is to the extent that this perception has the ability to change how we as a people, and society look at love. I am an artist at heart. My ultimate goal is that one day I may be able to create a masterpiece by painting the most beautiful of mental images, and weaving them carefully together to tell an epic story with words. How could I ever dream of writing about the feelings of love if I had never experienced love first hand.

          What if all that I ever knew of love, was that it was nature’s way of ensuring our ultimate survival, and that all the feelings that come with it are purely psychological and serve no higher purpose than the proliferation of our species? If we then inoculate ourselves with medications to remove the pain of hurt and desire, what then of romance? If my mind set was steered in this direction, would then the beauty of poetic prose be lost? There would be no love songs. There would be no love created artistic endeavors. There would not be any life filled with divine inspiration. There would be no romance. The images that struck my mind at that very moment of epiphany, were that of my own haunting, horrific eye witnessed images. Images that were personally and permanently etched into my mind of a small city on the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina’s wrath tried to wipe it away. An Intense, over bearing heat filled vacuum with dusty Debris. Tattered, strewn, and dry. Mile after mile, Three hundred and sixty five degrees around of Arid, Desolate,  Dust filled, rotting wasteland. I could never imagine living my life thinking that way, especially after experiencing such devastation in life first hand. Three years plus have gone by since the storm knocked my world asunder. I have been a fortunate witness to the awesome, true and natural beauty of the people and area around the gulf coast that has been uncovered and reborn in Katrina’s aftermath. Because of this life changing experience, I find that I will happily endure the pain of longingly missing someone, rather than the alternative of indifference. I know that I will continue to seek out the real true beauty of life and all of it’s mysteries with every bit of the lust and the passion that my heart possesses. It is in spite of adversity, and because of my Love for Life and its people, that I have accepted my true self.  I proudly proclaim myself to be the poster child for the truly Incurable Romantic. 

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