Every time I listen to this piece, “Barber: Adagio for Strings,” some memory of the movie “Inventing the Abbotts (1997)” repeats in my mind.
A depiction of how love can be hurtful but enlightening, how our misunderstandings can lead to a life of misery, and how the life story we continually repeat in our minds results in a way of living, sometimes hedonistic.
We have brothers here: Jacey and Doug, and the story keeps revolving around their love for the Abbott girls: Alice, Eleanor, and Pam.
Their love seems like a real addiction, in a way that they get away from the city when they find no way to reach their love—first Jacey, and then Doug.
I have found the best way to describe the state of the Holt brothers in the words of Helen Fisher:
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“Romantic love is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense of self. You can’t stop thinking about another human being.”
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“At first I assumed hate was the opposite of love. But it isn’t. The opposite of love is indifference.”
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“A world without love is a deadly place.”4
“You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your ‘love map,’ an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up.”
Love is an addiction, and this is how evolution has empowered a brain system to help us find and keep mates. Doug tries to forget, but love doesn’t want him to forget. He tries to be even indifferent, but his life turns out to be “a deadly place,” as Fisher has written.
This movie and the other one I watched recently, “Young Werther (2024)”, cast a great light on the topic of intimacy. As John M. Gottman points out in his books:
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“Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.”
(The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work)2
“Perfection is not the price of love. Practice is. We practice how to express our love and how to receive our partner’s love. Love is an action even more than a feeling. It requires intention and attention, a practice we call attunement.”
(Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love)3
“Make dedicated, non-negotiable time for each other a priority, and never stop being curious about your partner. Don’t assume you know who they are today, just because you went to bed with them the night before. In short, never stop asking questions. But ask the right kind of questions.”
The foundation of love needs to be friendship and closeness, and this can be achieved by accepting your vulnerabilities. The simplest thing is to spend time with someone who is the one for you with this assumption that you don’t know much about them. Humans like to be asked questions. So ask them questions. Let them walk with you towards wonderland.
And I want to wrap up my understanding with a quotation from Harry Harlow in his book The “Nature of Love (1958)”:
“So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.”
