Love and Fidelity
Love can be pure, cast. Or possessive, jealous, and
demanding fidelity. Love can be so possessive that it
borders on paranoia:
The possession of the loved being is a bigger joy than love
itself
Marcel Proust, The prisoner
But love can also be adventurer and libertine:
Make your lady shivers; light the fire in her tepid heart;
make it so she grows pale when knowing your infidelity
Ovid, The Art of Love
What’s the essence of love, after all? Possessive, jealous,
demanding fidelity? Or libertine as in ancient Rome, or in a
modern new version of Ovid?
The answer isn’t linear. Love carries our ambivalence and
contradictions. It can be libertine, in fact. But it may
also demand fidelity and be jealous and possessive in a
couple as in romantic love.
Only through fidelity can it be lyrical and great. Great
loves do not dispense fidelity: those who give also demand
reciprocity, and that implies possession and exclusivity.
There are no great lyrical loves without visible or latent
feelings of possession and jealously.
Marriage is based on fidelity – for the reasons present in
romantic love, and also for the reasons some psychologists
and scientific theories emphasize: to man, the woman’s
fidelity is a paternity guarantee; and for the woman a way
to hold her husband responsible, a way to associate him with
the investment in sons that both have made or intend to
make.
We might not like this last view, and judge it to be crude,
gross and contrary to love’s essence. But beyond our highest
feelings there are callings of the genes and the emotions
fixed in our minds.
Books, Films,
Cultural Stuff on these and
other related issues? See
Love Essays Store
(in association with Amazon)
Quotations
Love and Fidelity
A. Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, A short Treatise on
the Great Virtues
The lover is irksome and jealous as long as he loves, and
unfaithful and deceitful when he stops loving.
Eros is a jealous god. He who loves wants to posses his beloved
and keep her for himself alone. If she is happy with someone
else, you would rather see her dead! If he is happy with someone
else, you would rather have him unhappy with you.
We desire not this particular woman, who is real, but the
possession of her, which is not.
How many men think they desire a woman when all they really want
is an orgasm?
How can I swear to you to love you forever and to love no one
else? Who can take an oath to his feelings?
Why would I keep yesterday’s promise since I am no longer the
same today? Why indeed?
Books, Films,
Cultural Stuff on these and
other related issues? See
Love Essays Store
(in association with Amazon)
Romantic Love? See also:
Love is madness
Love is a game
Big and small loves
Love and fidelity
Abelard
and Heloise
Love in
Literature
Português
