Depression is the flaw in love. There's no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss. And that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy.
Interpretation
Depression often accompanies love due to the fear of loss, but it can also deepen emotional connections.
In this quote, Andrew Solomon articulates the complex relationship between love and the potential for loss, suggesting that the fear of losing someone we love can lead to feelings of depression. However, this very awareness of loss can also enhance intimacy, as it encourages deeper emotional connections between people, making love a profound yet vulnerable experience.
In practice
In a discussion about emotional vulnerability in relationships, this quote can highlight the depth of love and the pain that can accompany it.
I don't accept subtractive models of love, only additive ones. And I believe that in the same way we need species diversity to ensure that the planet can go on, so we need this diversity of affection and diversity of family in order to strengthen the ecosphere of kindness.
While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus.
I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.
Then I repeated these words to my spirits: 'Leave me be; give me peace; and let me do the work of my life. I will never forget you.' Something about that incantation was particularly appealing to me. 'I will never forget you'-- as though one had to address the pride of the spirits, as though one wanted them to feel good about being exorcised.
Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones.
Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.
To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived.
Love like there's no tomorrow; live like there's no yesterday. We're forgiven; now go love people like we believe it
Wild Nights β Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Our luxury! Futile β the winds β To a heart in port β Done with the compass β Done with the chart! Rowing in Eden β Ah, the sea! Might I moor β Tonight β In thee!
Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us.
True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life
I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.