Written: [My Room] 5.40am 24th April

'Some people would never have fallen in love if they had never heard of love,' aphorised La Rochefoucald. Love is never a given, it is constructed and defined by different societies."

Alain de Botton - Essays in Love, Pg. 82

Through popular culture like music and cinema, Arab, Desi and East Asian cultures seem to have a much more intense and passionaet view of relationships than their Western counterparts. East Asian in particular are societies where a couple is expected to engross themselves in each other almost totally with a great focus on care, compassion, self sacrifice and companionship. In this way, it's a very practical bond, even if the couple are not married.

South and West Asian (Arab/Persian) cultures, as expressed through their films and music, tend to have a much more passionate approach where being with a lover or separating from them can mean the difference between life and death. Interestingly I'm not sure how often this translates to their real life relationships, though I'm thinking not very much directly. Undoubtedly it does have some impact on how they view 'love'. There are also religious factors involved here which make things a great deal more complicated.

Western relationships tend to focus more on the need for chemistry, intellectual and emotional connection and physical pleasure. This could be related tot he much more individualistic focus of Western society where if two individuals come together then their respective identities need to match. Thus we are talking a different kind of practical.

Attitudes to marriage are also very different, thus affecting attitudes to love. Ie. in the West it can appear as if there's no such thing as a real commitment. Divorces and break-ups are by now so common that they are easily understood by all as 'irreconcilable differences'.

Written: [Costa Adliya] 1.47am 23rd April

In our more expansive moments, we imagine romantic loev to be akin to Christian love, an uncritical, expansive emotion that declares I will love you for everything that you are, a core that has no conditions, that draws no bounaries, that adores every last shoe, that is the embodiment of acceptance. But the arguments that hound lovers are a reminder that Christian love is not prone to survive a move into the bedroom. Its message seems more suited to the universal than the particular, to the love of all men for all women, to the love of two neighbours who will not hear each other snoring.

pg. 65, Alain de Botton - Essays in Love

But is de Botton focusing on the right thing? Is it the particular detriments we observe in our partner, like snoring, that are the obstacles to "Christian love" or rather our own insecurities? Christian love is easy because its impersonal, it does not involve massive vulnerability or opening yourself up to a particular person to stab you in the heart. It's the power of need, dependance and expectation. If you do not depend on all humans or expect anything particular from them then it's far easier to love them. But the profundity of that love is then also called into question.
If you are not prepared to let go totallyt hen what sort of fulfillment can you expect? Surely, the Hell of your expectations not being met can be equated with the Heaven of them being met and surpassed? Love is a game of extremes.