FALLING IN LOVE IS LIKE WATCHING PORN:

You have to buy into it. There’s that leap of faith to make, that this person is really as sweet and caring and charming as they seem. That they alone can change your life.

There’s the notion of falling in love, with its mythologies and customs and “tell-tale signs:” the lack of appetite, the scattered brain –and then there’s the reality of it: the irrational choices, the impulsive decisions, the ever-present fear that, at any moment, this person’s true, awful nature will reveal itself, as well as the nagging questioning of “Is this it? This is the best I can do?”

Can one fall in love without quite believing the fiction? Probably the same way one can masturbate to porn without ever truly believing that this hung black guy is a cop, and the white bottom is a nasty nurse. The pictures are strong, they appeal to something far inside us, instinctual, that demands a response.

But true infatuation –falling through the void, past the twinkling stars, and into the warm, familiar lap of love requires suspension of disbelief.

And faith that this thing –this “love” nonsense- is even possible in the first place.