One of the courses I took as a psych major was called The Psychology of Love.
The class turned out to be heavily grounded in literature, and the first thing we read was Proust, the portion of Remembrance of Things Past entitled “Swann’s Way.”
According to Proust, “Love is space and time measured by the heart.”
Charles Swann falls in love from afar with Odette, a woman he hardly knows. Swann is a lover of art, and he imagines that Odette resembles a woman in a painting he admires. Swann spends years pining and obsessing over Odette, trying desperately to win her heart, until he finally possesses her and persuades her to marry him.
The reality of their union is then terribly disappointing for them both. Finally, after years of emotional self-torture, Swann realizes that he doesn’t love the real Odette after all. He bemoans:
To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style.
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Beth
8:56 pm on
February 6th, 2010I think I may have written this before but I believe it may be because we fear the real thing. The fantasy is a way of avoiding the difficult reality of having to work on a real relationship, having to face oneself and share oneself deeply with another. One is the most vulnerable when one is completely open to another. It’s both risky and frightening. A fantasy feels safer and less daunting, but it’s a means of avoidance.
Not to sound like Freud, but it seems to me that Charles Swann was projecting his desires and feelings onto Odette. He made her into the woman he dreamed of instead of seeing her for who she really was. Good old transference…
Jean
1:46 am on
May 25th, 2010I guess if one chooses to be in a long-distance relationship, then that’s not real love to begin with. “Love from afar” is an oxymoron.
NJ
10:59 am on
April 27th, 2011HI CAN YOU Please advise why do we indulge in them? i often myself falling in love with people i never want to have in my life but the feeling is deep and hurts is painful and joyful at the same time?
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