Love&TheTestOFTime Solomon

7/31/2019 Love&TheTestOFTime Solomon

1/18


2/18

LOVE

AND THETEST OF TIME

("DIALECTIC")

21

It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing ronuzntic

about a definite proposal. Why ~ one may be accepted. One

usually is, Ibelieve. Then the excitement is over. The very

essence of r017Ulnticlove is uncertainty.OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest

N~whereis o~ all-or-noth~ngattitud~"to Iov.emore ev,:

Ident than ill that peculIar slogan, Love ISforever.

It may have an impressive metaphysical ancestry, in

Plato, St. Paul and the whole of Christianity, but in a plain

matter-of-fact everyday interpretation it is not only false butabsurd. Love comes to an end. Sometimes abruptly, sometimes

quietly. Often it starts again, and not infrequently it actually

lasts a lifetime. But no love has the assurances of etemity; all

love is fraught with ups and downs and uncertainties, and

even the marriage contract has its temporal escape clause-""till

death do us part." We all know love to be risky, traumatic, a

ragged road with cataclysmpossible at every turn. So why do

we say, ""rnlove you always"? Sometimes, in the thrill of the

moment, we even believe it.As in other all-or-nothing dramatizations of love, such' as

C"Love.is everything" (that is, it is at times extremely impor-

tant to us) and' ""You'rethe most wonderful person in the

world" (rm enthusiastic about you), ""Loveis forever" is an


3/18

overly extravagant expression of an important emotional truth.

It is a child's word-the Greeks called it cCirrfinity";it means

cCuncountable,"a refusal to see the end, open-ended desire and

continuity. Whether or not love is going to end, that ending is

emphatically not built into or even allowed in its experiential

structure. (One might contrast such emotions as hope, fear

and the thirst for vengeance, whose end is essential to the emo-

tion.) Couples beginning to live together or entering into mar-

riage are loath to discuss legal agreements about what will be

whose if they break up. Making contingency plans (CCifit

doesn:>twork oue') is considered in poor taste, as well as proof

that one isn:>treally serious. Love projects itself into the

indefinite future, not forever, but as far as one can see-though

sometimes this is not much more than a year or a month or

two, or even a week or so. Love needs that opening. Many

other emotions do not. Love is a process, a dialectic. It takestime. And not to give it the time it takes is indeed to be that

much less in love.

Time is the test of love. Love that does not last is mere cCin_

fatuation,n no matter how intense, how dedicated, how indis-

tinguishable from ccthereal thing. Indeed, there may be no

other difference between the two.! Of course the amount oftime required to prove the cctruth:of love varies from genera-

tion to generation; most of my friends seem to consider eight

or nine months sufficient, some of my students a few days, my

parents and their friends nothing short of a lifetime. But the

point toponder is that we do consider time as a test, since it is

not sofor most other emotions. One would not dismiss anger or

jealousy if it lasted only five weeks, or even five days. Indeed,

one can get truly angry even for a minute. (CCrmglacl I got

that out of my system.) Yet the idea that love could be

1cClnfatuation"is therefore not the name of an emotion at all. but a ret-

rospective judgment about love. It is like the word Ucounterfeit," in that coun- .

terfeit money might indeed be indistinguishable from the real stuff, but never-

theless it is judged to be worthless.


4/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TIME cDIALECTIC~~) 263

satisfied the :firsttime we make love ("crmglad I got that out

of my system"?1) or that love could be complete in a singlemoment-no matter how cCmarvelous"-is unthinkable. Thus

the troubadours confused the beginning of love for its end,and Don Juan is a problem not because he loves for only a

week, but because, whafs worse, he knows this in advance.

Love and Death

One of the bases for our civilization has been the idea of

love. The idea of love was founded on our loving a mortal

person forever. This brought us to terms with the idea of

death. It is a way to face death. That is what makes ittragic and dramatic and precious-

In contrast to the idea that love is ,cforever,""that time is the Y

test of love, the same tradition has promoted the dramatic con-\

nection between love and death. Octavio Paz suggests, as Plato~

did twenty-five hundred years before, that love is a way of fac-

ing death, a means to immortality. But in lit~rature it is one of ~.

our favorite-cliches to end a romance with the death of the ~

lovers, thus. saving the author the almost impossible task of jspelling out how they lived "happily ever after

n

without pas-

sion fading away or getting lost in the clatter of domestic re-

sponsibilities. How would one have continued Romeo and ]u-I-..1.

liet, or written a sequel to Tristan and Isolde? But this literary I

device is not to be confused with the sometimes tedious ex-

igencies of life, and the connection between love and death,

for most of us, is again one of those all-or-nothing dramati-

zations which leads us to falsify and demean our own experi-

ence. Few of us are ever asked, much less expected, to die for

10ve..And we are practical enough to look with pity, not admi-

ration, at someyoung lover who dies of despair by his or her

own hand. But this does not make love any less-perhaps only


5/18

more circumspect, more in perspective. But again, this dra-

matic exaggeration of the life-and-death importance which we

ascribe to love has its germ of truth, not only in showing once

again the remarkable significancethis emotion has in our lives,

but also in proving~ow closelylove and identity are linked to

our very existence, so that cessation of love is often equated

with death. But moving from metaphor to real love and life,

we have to do what Romeo and Juliet did not-understand

how love continues, day after day, how the dialectic of

love goes on, the stuff of which comedies, not tragedies, are

made.

When Denis de Rougemont published his classic if tenden-

tiousLove in the Western World someforty years ago, he triedto capture both ""loveis forever" and the love-and-death con-

nection in a single theory, and with a singledistinction. He dis-

tinguished what he called ""conjugallove"-essentially based in

a marriage and supported by the grace of God-and ""romantic

love," which he considered pagan, irrational, anti-social and es-

sentially destructive, even fatal. Not surprisingly, Romeo, Ju-

liet, Tristan and Isolde appear as paradigmatic examples of ro-

mantic love, and he takes their premature demise to be not a

literary but an emotional necessity. Romantic love, which is in-trinsically unstable, has no other possible end, unless, of

course, it simply fades away and ends in disappointment, the

lessthan dramatic but perhaps still tragic experience of us less

than fictitious everyday heroes.

I think De Rougemont overstates his case, but he has recog-

nized something quite essential which his many critics often

~~-preferto ignore: that romantic love is not only unstable-or I

l;: ,:;'! shall soon say "metastable"-but a poor preparation for, even a

q f Ythreat to, the stability of marriage. Romantic love is not the

anteroom to marriage but, in an important sense, its opposite

(which is not to say that they are ,not complementary). AsKierkegaard' argued in Either/Or, marriage is responsibility,romantic love is irresponsibility, the :firsta bedrock of civilized


6/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TI:M:E (,:cDIALECTIC:>: 265

society. the latter a rebellious emotional attachment. I think

that De Rougemont is right in pointing out the essential

difference between a relationship which is based on obligations,

expectations, the mores of society and, in marriage, a contrac-tual Hcornmitrnene:>and a relationship that is based wholly on

the contingency of an emotion. Now granted, in our day the

distinction between love and marriage has broken down con-

siderably; few people still see marriage as a lifetime necessity

which they cannot ever get out of, but marriage (and often liv-

ing together too) includ~s commitments and obligations which

love does not. It is based on the expectation of staying to-gether, while romantic love includes only the desire and hope.

Although there may be some time when the two emotions arealmost indistinguishable, the essential experience of each is

distinctly its own.

It is the contingency of romantic love that concems me here;

"working oue:>a relationship need not have anything to do

with love. Indeed, one thfnks of Rodney Dangerfield:>sclassic

line: ':We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we

take separate vacations-we:>re doing everything we can to

keep our marriage together.:>:>Romantic love is essentially a

tension. Marriages can be happy; romantic love must be exhil-

arating ..This is not to say that one cannot have both, but it

would be naive to suppose that two forces moving in oppositedirections cCnaturallynbelong together, clike a horse and car-riage.:>:>Marriages are made c':forever,nended ideally only by

death. Love, on the other hand, lasts but from day to day, week

to week, an exquisite contingency which, like all uncertainties,

chooses death as its metaphor. But it is a metaphor, likeCnappily ever after,:>:>that conceals more than it reveals, and

hides the essential relationships between romantic love and

time.


7/18

~'Loveme forever, if only for tonight."

-ANON.

Of course we want love to last. But here we may find one of

those curious sleights of hand that Nietzsche once diagnosed

as the ~~greatphilosophical errors," confusing cause for effect,

wishes for causes. We begin by assuring each other that love

will last. Soon we are taking love's lasting as the test of love

and then it is no longer the desire but one of the structural

components of love, love as a state which if real endures. But

love, we keep insisting, is not a state.

We say love is forever but celebrate love for the moment.

Indeed, lovers are notoriously reckless in the conception of

time, in their impatience, in their viewof the future. The mo-

ment is everything. But then, to confuse matters even more,

we say, ~~Iwish this moment would last forever." But it is the

very nature of a moment not to last; that's what makes it a mo-

ment. So there seems to be confusion at the very core of our

conception. We treat loveas a state when it is rather a process,

and treat love as a moment which might last forever. But love

is neither of the moment nor forever. Love essentially involves

a sense of time-indeed time comes to be defined by the rela-

tionship-but we do not need to refer either to the specious

present or to unimaginable eternity in order to understandthis.

To say that love takes time is to say that it is never just c~for

the moment"; love always has duration; because it is a proc-

ess, it always looks forward to the future and back to its past.

Love looks to the future, in fantasies of marriage, babies, a trip

to Boston next summer, for it is in future plans and possi-

bilities that our shared identity (like our individual identities)

is largely determined. Our mutual expectations are as essen-


8/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TIME (CcDIALECTICn) 267

tial as our mutual admiration of one another, and here too the

dialectical complexity of love becomes apparent: you tell me

that you want to become a great musician, and I adopt your

ambition as my own. You get insecure and have your doubts,but rm now the one who urges you on, and indeed I have

come to take your sense of the future as so much a matter of

my identity that your loss of interest in it can be extremely

damaging to my sense of my own identity, and thus to our love

as well.The future is not an infinite expanse of moments (an archaic

viewof time in any case) but a series of hypotheticals and con-

tingencies CCwhatif ... ") whose signiflcance fades asymptot-

ically. Quite the contrary of love being concemed with theinfinite, much less lost in the moment, it is rather absorbed in

the immediate future. Sometimesit is the next ten seconds that

seemto mean everything to me, or the next .fivehours, the next

two days. It is the anticipation of your touch, expecting you to

call, waiting for the movie to end or the bill to arrive. It is

being hardly able to wait until we get home, or enjoying this

weekend as if it were followed by an abyss, and preceded by

one as well. Indeed, one sure way to threaten love, though in-viting assurances, is to push such abstract questions as CCWhat

will happen when we get tired of each other?" and CCWhatif

you get bored with me?" Or even, more positively, watching

old couples and hoping to be like them. Indeed, not only do

such questions break the delicate webbing that ties the present

to the immediate future-by stretching it too far-but they may

even help bring about precisely the feared possibility that they

seek assurance against. Love is not so much moment by mo-ment as it is step by step. And in love as in Keynesian eco-

nomics, "the long run" is often least important, and least real.

Love alsorefers to the past, sometimes in an obvious and all-consuming sense, for instance, in love that has gone on for

years. The sense of a shared past can act as an anbhor, to holdlove together through an extremely troubled present and not


9/18

verypromising future. At least for a while. But even the begin-

ning of love looks to the past, in a most curious way, desper-

ately trying to weave together a temporal identity that has lit-

tle basis either in past or present. Youmean you went to that

Allen Ginsberg reading too? I wonder if we saw each other

then, perhaps evenbumped into each other in the aisles?"It is a

frivolous enterprise but an essential one. If love is the temporal

process of forming a self-identity, then the past is as essential

as the present and the future, just as prone to fantasy (in this

caseretrospective interpretation) and just as much of an ingre-

dient in the sense of a shared self emerging from two seem-

ingly wholly separate selves. But because love takes time, it

takes whatever time it can get, even creating time from ran-dom moments and memories. If life is art, then even short is

long. (Si vita ars est, ergo done brevis longus est.)2

Dialectic

The essence of our relations with others is conflict.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Love is a process, a dialectic, a movement-toward what?

Toward a shared identity, the creation of a shared self. But

this is complicated by the fact, which we have not yet

sufficientlyemphasized, that this goal is impossible, unachiev-

able, even incomprehensible. Two selves cannot become one,

not when they start out so differently-with different origins,

even from different cultures, with different tastes and expecta-

tions. And yet this does not mean that the goal is impossible to

work for and to want even desperately, toyearn after. For this

indeed is the famous languor of love, the play of contradictions

reinforcing each other.The paradox of love is this, that it presupposes a strong

sense of individual autonomy and independence, and then


10/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TIME (ccDIALECTIc'~) 269

seeks to cancel this by creating a shared identity. But this can-

not be, for no sooner do we approach this goal than we are

abruptly reminded of our differences. Perhaps you dislike amovie I love, or maybe I'm bored or insulted by one of your

friends. Even in the most trivial differences, we are thrown

back to our individuality, wondering how we could possibly

"work" as a couple. But then, as we .move apart, the self we

have already formed together pulls us back; the separation is

too painful; we have too much at stake, too much together, too

much to lose. We want this, whatever the differences. Love is

this process, not a state of union but a never ending conflict of

pushing away and pulling together: In some couples the dia-

lectic is wholly obvious, in that curious alternation of love and

hate and sweet sex and battles and reconciliation that leaves

other people looking on in perplexity. For others it is a subtle

wave motion of relative independence and dependency, never

so violent that either becomes a matter of desperation. But

whether dialectic is violent or rather a soft fluctuation, it is al-

ternatively adoration, minor annoyances, passionate joy, indig-

nation, childish play, guilt, euphoria, shamelessness, shame,

delirium, resentment, gratitude, indifference, gaiety, need and

solitude, too easily summarized~after a few months or years,simply as "love," when in fact ifs been a hundred other emo-

tions besides, all as a part of love.

Because love is a process, it takes time. Because it has a goal,

we can say that love is "going somewhere~~even if that goal is

ultimately impossible, and even if, in another sense, love has

nowhere to go (Chapter 7). To say that an affair CCisn~tgoing

anywhere~~is to say that the possibility of a shared identity

now appears to be impossible, though one can, of course, be

mistaken. It is important not to assume, however, that progress

toward a goal is necessarily C'growth"-in the current laudatoryterm-an improvement, a betterment or "expansion'~of self.

Sometimes it is clearly the case that progress in a relationship

involves individual degeneration or stagnation. Sometimes, the


11/18

270 LOVE: A THEORY

cost of shared identity might well be the withering of an au-

tonomous and admirable self, or both individual selves. Our ro-

mantic mythology aside, romantic love is not guaranteed to

make us better people, more creative, less violent or any of the

other grand consequences that are supposed to flowfrom it.

Indeed, the tension that keeps love alive may be severely dam-

aging to other facets of one's self, depending not only on the

intensity of the emotidn but on the specificroles that the lovers

adopt along the way. But luckily, it is not usually this way.

At first, particularly when two people have just met, shared

identity consists almost wholly in fantasy, in projection into

the future and a kind of ignorant idealization. Through time

together, shared efforts and enjoyments-most importantly the

various roles that constitute intimacy, including, presumably,

sex-the self that is formed comes to be less based on fantasy,

more on matters of fact and inutual recognition of real virtues,

needs and foibles. The excitement can cool as well, but it need

not, for it is a cynical viewindeed that makes the thrill of love

dependent on fantasy and novelty alone. Because love is a

dialectical tension, it survives over time not only in its erratic

and never completed progression toward shared identity but

also in the sporadic counter-assertion of individual identities,in which we push apart and challenge those bonds but at the

same time test and help strengthen them. Thus love continues

by creating conflictsand differences as well as similarities, and

the motive for doing so is not only the assertion of one's

differences vis-a.-visone's lover but continuing the dialectic as

well. Thus one becomes cCthesloppy one" in part so we have

something to fight or tease about, in part to assert our

differences from, as well as to define, each other. The same

differences and conflictsthat at the time seemed to be proof ofour incompatibility and the beginning of a breakup turn out to

be precisely the movement that keeps us together.

Differences and conflicts have as much a place in creating

the new identity as in threatening it fromwithin, and here es-


12/18

(

CC : > :

LOVEANDTHETESTOFTIME DIALECTIC

pecially we can understand love as a dialectical process over

time:>not necessarily growth toward a goal but a dynamic

equilibrium of tensions alternatively created and resolved, al-

ways with a sense of difference and contingency, but never los-ing that sense of identity that is no longer only one's own. Here

too we can understand the role of such negative:>'emotions as

jealousy-which can be one of the most fatal threats to any

relationship-as another way of preserving that tension, a si-

multaneous and extremely painful recognition of both the in-

dependence of one:>slover and the powerful bonds of identity-

now appearing perhaps as "possessiveness.:But in small doses

it is a force for cohesion as well as bitter conflict, and although

jealousy itself may last only for an instant, it may be the viola-tion that reminds us how much we value a relationship we may

have come to take too much for granted.

Metastability: Master and Slave

METASTABLE(chemistry) chemically unstable in the ab-

sence of certain conditions that would induce stability,

but not liable to spontaneous transfonnation.

RANDOM HOUSEDICTIONARY

Dialectic is tension, but a certain, distinctive progressive

tension that supports and creates as well as threatens and de-

stroys. One can imagine two dancers or wrestlers, pressing

against one another with more than sufficient force to knock

the other down, but because their force is balanced and prop-

erly directed the net result is that they hold one another up.

Two teams of children in a tug of war lean back on their ropes

so that they would surely fall down if each were not pulling

just as hard in the other direction. Indeed, it is th~ mostgrievous crime for one team to suddenly let go, thus releasing

the tension and letting the other fall into the mud. And unro-

mantic as the examples (and the ones to follow) might be,


13/18

they are good illustrations of the mutually supporting but at

the same time opposed tensions and conflictsthat make love as

a process possible. Indeed, the idea of love as a simple stable

~'union"is as banal-and as false-as it sounds. Love is a strug-

gle but, as in dance, a struggle that can be both beautiful and

inspiring.

The fact that love is balanced tension explains why it should

so often have the appearance of a state-sometimes for years.

But love is always to be understood as what Jean-Paul Sartre

calls metastable. It may have all of the appearance of stabil-

ity, but the violence of the forces in balance are such that,

should there be a single slip, a momentary imbalance, an ill-

considered comment or careless act, that stability shatters intodisaster. Ahomely example is the familiar experience of carry-

ing hot coHee across the room. Four friends are visiting, and

we are making the hazardous journey from the kitchen to the

living room, five cups of near-boiling java and a small pitcher

of milkbalanced on outstretched arms. If all goeswell, the ten-

sions will disappear in a sigh of relief and the dangers be soon

forgotten. But we know what happens at the slightest spill or

loss of balance: one drop of hot coffeeon tender skin causes a

reflex action, perhaps only a minor twitch, which spills muchmore coHee, which makes us drop one of the cups; we instinc-

tively grab for it and then-total disaster. ..

Love is like this too. We literally play with fire, evoking in

ourselves and each other the most intense passions and extrav-

agant expectations which we encourage with an uneasy sense

of confidence. At first one can say almost anything, for nothing

is at stake. Soon only the most precise answers are allowed,

and only the most exact movements. Lovers are completely tol-

erant, but only within those delicate boundaries. (It doesn't

much matter howmuch sugar is in the hot coHee.) One can be-

come practiced as a lover as a host or hostess, and become

.adept at managing the dangerous tensions, keeping them in

balance, avoiding or correcting those disappointments or dis-


14/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TIME (~cDIALECTICn)

courtesies that all too easily lead to disaster,. But the tensions

and the dangers are always there. Unless of course one decides

to play it safe by letting love cool until it is no longer capableof causing any pain. But then, unfortunately, it will be too

tepid to enjoy as well.

Because love is always metastable, apparently in a state of

rest but always bustling with tension and prone to disaster, it

alsotends to move-by breaking down barriers and allowing a

relationship to expand its scope-but sometimes to degenerate

too, causing new wounds and insecurities that keep a couple

offbalance for weeks. But it is the movement itself that is most

important, not its direction; indeed it is only at the very begin-

ning of a relationship-or at the very end-that the image of a

direction to love even makes sense. It is the tension and the

balance and the movement that constitutes love, the conflicts

and accidents as well as the happiness. The idea of a real

unity-as Aristophanes suggested-is only an abstract ideal.

Love is this shift of needs and tensions, mutual fantasies, plans

and ideals within the structures already formed by the ideal ofshared identity. Dialectic is as often a switch as a progression,

indeed it is sheer movement without an end-like quarrels

without a point-that characterizes romantic love, not at all theascensions into heaven that are preached so tiresomely and theCnappily ever after:>:>that ends our fairy tales.

The fairy tale or fable that seems to me to best illustrate the

nature of dialectic is a parable that the German philosopher

G. W. F. Hegel proffe~ed in his Phenomenology of Spirit

(1807). It is Hegel with whom the term~~dialecticnis most of-

ten associated, and Karl Marx,for one, tookit directly fromhim.

The parable is called ccmasterand slave," and although Hegel

intended it as a general statement about a certain kind of inter-personal relationship, it can be adopted precisely-and has

been, for example, by Jean-Paul Sartre-as a model for the dia-

lectic.of love. The story is simple: two people who are essen-

tially equals (this is important) meet each .other, size each


15/18

: I

I

III

I!

other up and engage in a battle. What they are fighting for,

Hegel says, is not riches or territory or peace or greed or

selfishnessor any of the other aspects of


16/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TIME (CCDIALECTId") 275

The struggle itself is just the first step in Hegel's little story;

the best part comes in its aftermath. In Heger s parable one

person wins, one loses; the winner spares the loser in return for

his subservience. The analog in love may not at first seemclear, but Jean-Paul Sartre works it out in some detail in his

Being and Nothingness. Back in the days when sex was a

man's demand and a woman's defeat, the identification of win-

ners and losers, masters and servants was rather straight-

forward. Today it is not. But in a thousand subtle ways we

recognize what it is for someone to cCmakea poine~or lose

one. Consider a couple beginning a quarrel. The point of the

quarrel doesn~tmatter; there may not even be one. They are

struggling for recognition, to be recognized as needed, per-haps, or as having carried the lion's load of the relationship.

But here the notion of winning and losing makes perfectly

good sense, whether or not sexispart of the battle, its cause or,

often, its resolution. And it is here that Hegel makes his most

exciting observation-namely, that winners and losers are al-

ways in a precariously unstable way; the winner, now faced

with an awesome responsibility and the dependency of the

other, finds him or herself even more dependent in return. The

winning spouse in a marital quarrel breaks the other down totears, wholly dependent on the next respopse, hoping desper-

ately for an apology, or CCIdidn't meanit." He or she is racked

with guilt and anxiety,.no matter how angry a moment ago.

The relationship is in one's hands, and everything now be-

comes focused on the defeated other. The loser, on the other

hand, finds just the reverse: that this position of seeming de-

pendency is indeed a position of tremendous power. It is the

loser who feels free to think about something else, to recon-

sider the relationship and think, perhaps, that his or her self-

esteem might well be better served elsewhere. The victor be-

comes the dependent one, the loser the more independent. But

this state can't last either, for as that independence is asserted,as the cCmaster"gives in to his or her anxiety, the roles are once


17/18

again reversed, and the dialectic moves again-though not in

any direction, perhaps even forever in a circle. It is this con-

stant movement, expressed in as well as punctuated by sex in

particular, that keeps the excitement of love alive.

The picture of love as a life-and-death struggle is overdram-

atized, for certain, and Hegel is quite clear (as Sartre is not)

that this is not all there is to human relationships. But it is a

model of the dynamics and dialectics of love that is more in-

structive than the idealized image of love as unperturbed and

calm emotion, mixed with hostility only as a sign of '''human

weaknessn

and tom apart by our tragic inability to love."

Love itself is conflict, but a conflict which can be as con-

structive as destructive. Two people can never become one(though Hegel at times seemed to think so) and yet, as Aris-

tophanes sorightly pointed out, we desperately want to do so.

And in that impossibledesire is the essence of love, a constant

struggle between our senseof individuality and our sense of a

union." But this sounds more negative than it is. Perhaps the

Hegelian-Sarman parable is too brutal to capture the often

tender and extremely enjoyable means we employ to carry on

this conflict, but the battle for identity, sometimes indeed in-

volving the sense of winning and losing and dependence andindependence, is what love is ultimately all about.

Movement takes time. Howmuch time? Certainly not neces-

sarilya lifetime, much less forever. Somepeople can find in an

evening of intimacy what others can~t do in a year. In fact

what we mean by a good lover,n our recent sexual technical

fetishism aside, is predominantly the ability to inspire that

sense of intimacy and familiarity quickly. For some people, in-

timacy seems to take nothing else but time; it is not so muchan effort or an activity as mere presence, time spent together.

For them, love indeed may require years and, even then, end

with the tragic impression that we never really got to know

one another.nBut whether love ta.kesa week or a decade, this


18/18

LOVE AND THE TEST OF TIME ("DIALECTIC") 277

much is clear: love is a process of transformation, a sometimes

violent alteration of self that is always tom between our ideo-

logically all-pervasive need for independence and autonomy

and our equally all-pervasive obsession with romantic love andshared identity. And this takes time, whether the tension is de-

veloped through a gentle tender wave motion of alternative at-

titudes and identities or in the violent twists and turns of our

grade B romantic novelists. Love takes enough time to allow

for that famousyearning that Aristophanes quite rightly put at

the very core of love, that impossible desire to be (re-) united

in equilibrium with one"ssense of oneself. It cannot be found

in a moment; it may not last forever. But in between the mo-

ment and eternity, there is for love all the time in the world.

Documents

Love&TheTestOFTime Solomon