Well, I think what’s striking is that our idea of what love is, our idea of what is normal in love, is so not normal.
And so we castigate ourselves for not having a normal love life, even though no one seems to have any of these.
We have this ideal of what love is and then these very, very unhelpful narratives of love. And they’re everywhere. They’re in movies and songs. And we mustn’t blame songs and movies too much. But if you say to people, “Look, love is a painful, poignant, touching attempt by two flawed individuals to try and meet each other’s needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are and who the other person is, but we’re going to do our best,” that’s a much more generous starting point.