Love Without Encouragement

" There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freely - a slight preference is natural enough: but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. " Charlotte Lucas to Elizabeth Bennett regarding Jane's coolness of demeanor and not showing any emotional preference towards Bingley, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Unless you have a death-wish or an unhealthy desire to be melodramatic and have a goal of  self-martyrdom, you don't go and fall in love with someone unattainable or one who repulses your every advancement. Or if you do unfortunately fall in love with one such, you would, inevitably, over time, over myriad rejections, mend your heart, fall out of love and move on to another that might just give you that little bit more encouragement.

Of course, there are real-life individuals out there who have self-styled themselves to be Sydney Carton of Charles Dicken's "A Tale of Two Cities" fame. But like Dean Koontz preaches in many of his books, the human heart, the human mind, the human psyche has super self-healing properties. And so, as Jane Austen via Charlotte Lucas says: very few of us have heart enough to love without encouragement.

Contrast with Glenn Frey's 1982 song "The One You Love", a part of the lyrics:

"Isn't he the guy, the guy who left you cryin'?
Isn't he the one who made you blue?

Are you gonna stay with the one who loves you
Or are you goin' back to the one you love?"

As long as he keeps on calling her, a.k.a. encouraging her, she'll obey that self-martyrdom impulse which is also inbuilt in the human psyche and run back to him and be left crying and made blue. Not unlike Joshua Kadison's 1993 song "Jessie"

"Jessie paint your pictures 'bout how it's gonna be.
By now I should know better, your dreams are never free.
But tell me all about our little trailer by the sea;
Jessie you can always sell any dream to me.

...And I listen to her promise, I swear to God this time it's gonna last."

Eventually, to mend, to move on, these guys will have to make Christina Perry's 2011 song "Jar of Hearts" their theme song

"...don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore
...I learned to live half alive...
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are...
But I have grown too strong
To ever fall back in your arms..."

Links: http://heidioliviatan.multiply.com/journal/item/15/Love_Hurt%3ELove%20&%20Hurt