I think that around 99.3% of the experiential elements that we associate with romantic love comprise a set-up. Part of the purpose seems, at last, to be to mirror back to me the actual character of the projections organized around the ‘other gendered’ polarity within myself. For me, this is, approximately, the mother/woman/opponent/daughter/crone/sister/companion.

So I project these fantastical visions, fed by fairy-tales and popular culture, outward — until I can create a trance-like momentum with the power to utterly involve and intoxicate me until I will forget every sort of caution and toss pragmatism to the winds. This prepares me to dive head-and-heart-first into the storm I am thus brewing, and woe be unto the target of these projections… as well as the projector…

Now, this isn’t the only thing that’s happening. But the strange thing is that there’s a signal when it’s most of what is going on: intimacy doesn’t deepen, and other, more intoxicating forms of relation take center stage, and begin a long process of acting as replacements or mimics of what is actually being lost, which is intimacy with self and beloved.

I believe in romance. But I am aware of the mine-field it must set up by its very nature. That the result is often children is wonderful, astonishing, ironic, and hilarious.

Love isn’t a battlefield. It’s a mirror-field. But what’s playing on the mirrors and what’s real are largely and furiously in conflict. So we have to travel the forest of mirrors and assemble the truest selection of these reflections, and tend this task, proceeding, with wise and heartful care, to prune away the reflections that trade intoxication or fables of fulfillment for actual intimacy… for the former are hungry mimics that will habituate us to seek the ‘implanted breast’ of their false promises. The latter is the milk of heaven, and knows no substitute.