love and anxiety

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives: and since it can be minimized by obeying a few simple rules, rules which approximate to Christian marriage, they provide, even to the unbeliever, its de facto justification. It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and as we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.

The object of Loving is a release from love. We achieve this through a series of unfortunate love affairs or, without a death-rattle, through one that is happy.

Complete physical union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide—and yet not quite real, for it stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be maintained at full strength only by the admixture of more unhappiness (jealousy, rows, renunciation) or more and more artificially (alcohol and other technical illusions). Who escapes this heaven may never have lived, who exists for it alone is soon extinguished.

from The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus (Cyril Connolly)