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.
But you make me sing like a guitar humming . . .
The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.
When we first meet what we love, we could become poets for our longing. When we are removed from what we love, we become singers of grief and weavers of elegant description.
Those who love each other shall become invincible.
Do not waste time bothering whether you βloveβ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
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