The Terror of Love

It could sound like an odd word to associate with love. Surely love, especially in its early stages, is mostly about sweetness, supportiveness, delight and gratitude. What are we doing, introducing a word with Gothic associations into a place of tenderness and reassurance, and hinting at that familiar fear of intimacy that haunts even the gentlest romances?

But to anyone with experience, there’s nothing too misplaced about such language. The fastest way to mental illness, degradation and confusion is through the innocent gates of love. The best way to ruin one’s life is to marry the wrong person (there isn’t a ‘right’ one). This is where we should come to lose our confidence, to dissolve our trust in others, to question our sense of reality, to fall very ill.

How Love Undoes Us

Of course love has its sweetness, but that is precisely why it brings such trouble. It asks us to shed our usual defences; it gets otherwise fierce and practical people to put away their scepticism. Then it starts to pull its surprises.

To love is to lose control. What if they take a job elsewhere? What if they start to remember their ex (a hateful but mesmerising sort)? They have a phone. It wouldn’t take much for them to suddenly realise they needed greater freedom or, heaven forbid, more ‘fun.’

There isn’t – and shouldn’t be – anything overly reassuring to say here. We should stay at home if safety continues to be our central priority. The best one might do is sympathise (a lot) with the fears. If we’re doing this right, it should be terrifying; we should be sleeping a bit less. A tile could kill them. They might trip on a platform edge. Someone is going to die first; grief is baked in from the start. And worse than death (almost) are those changes of mind softly expressed (‘I love you so much, it’s just that recently…’). We can’t chain them – but let’s admit how much even a sane mind might not think that was such a bad idea, all told.

This is what a frank letter to the sweetheart might sound like in the early days: Thank you so much for entering my life. I’m gaining so much pleasure from you being here; it feels very alarming. You’re amazing; a part of me is looking for reasons to run away… (Don’t send it).

Living With the Fear of Intimacy

The best way to get through the worry is to embrace a dark perspective: I could lose them, and it could be OK. Note the limp term: not that it could be fine, brilliant or a chance to learn, but just about OK – by which we really mean that we would be abject for at least half the duration of the relationship. So if it was five years, we’d be crying for two and half; and if it lasted ten, and so on… That’s a lot of time we’re mortgaging.

It might be kindest to simply say: people rarely die from heartbreak. And quote Seneca: What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

We won’t be starting to pay love its proper dues so long as we deny the risk – but we’ll also be unnecessarily gloomy if we obsess that it might kill us. It really, really won’t. Or at least doesn’t very often. And the old fear of intimacy, though understandable, doesn’t have to dictate the whole trajectory of love.