Antidote for love

Mystery potion, by Matthew J. Stinson.

I just had a very lovely Valentine's Day with H., but in case any of you are having a V-Day "hangover,” this is a post you might appreciate.

Here’s how someone will make a gazillion dollars someday.

They’ll finally concoct a remedy for unrequited love. (S., my chemist, are you reading this?)

Mark, commenting recently on my "How I found out I'm poly" post, wrote I'm trying to learn how to experience the love without the yearning. I should have it figured out in a couple of decades; I'll keep you posted :-) .

Some potion, pill, or balm that brings merciful relief to the sufferer—just imagine the sales.

Who doesn’t know someone who could use it? For instance, one bachelor I know and see regularly at our UU fellowship has loved me for years in his chaste way. I care about him as a friend, but sadly I’ve never felt any interest in anything beyond that. Ah, the awful asymmetry of it.

That’s the thing—nobody is to blame, when relationship asymmetry happens. Yet it can cause such agony.

Time may eventually heal the condition, but think of the productivity to be gained if some drug would accelerate that process!

On the other hand, d’ya think if unrequited love became a rare malady, too many passionate works of art might never be inspired?

I learned about unrequited love early on. The first boy I felt really serious about, I loved from afar, literally—he lived in another part of the state—and I had no reason to think my interest was reciprocated. My dad & his mom worked in the same D.C. office, so we met sometime when I was in junior high, and I continued to hear about him but didn’t have many occasions to see him. (I remember one or two social events for “the office” which included employees’ families, and there was a brief series of Saturdays when the tall, handsome object of my desire and I were both taking the same science course for brainy kids…)

After what seemed like eons, but may have been just a year or two…wonder of wonders, we got together somehow and I found out that he returned my feelings.

That revelation, that my one-sided puppy love was, in fact, mutual…was quite simply the sweetest ecstasy I’d ever known, then.

So sometimes unrequited love sets the stage for a truly thrilling second act.

But usually it’s just hell. Given that, who wouldn’t want to keep some antidote within reach, just in case?