Maybe ROMANCE is cruel...

I came across an image on Tumblr of a garage door that had been spraypainted with the phrase "Love is cruel".

It struck me as an oxymoron, considering that love is how we AVOID being cruel to each other; St. Paul's discussion of the matter puts love in a position that would never give anyone the chance to say that love and cruelty are one. Admittedly there are harsh things people can DO to each other out of love, and this is known as "tough love", but it is done with the expectation of a beneficial outcome. Cruelty is toughness without love.

Then again, it's a rough thing to get dumped, and the person who scrawled paint on the door was probably thinking of love in the petty sense of "romance". Most likely it was the person's own infatuation that betrayed them. Romance, crushes, infatuation, whatever you want to call the immature sort of attraction that we've come to call "love" after listening to it in a hundred different songs produced by Phil Spector.

Eros is cruel, but here's a lot more to love than Cupid's stupid arrows. People try to keep each other alive without even knowing them. Couples in arranged marriages learn to love each other. Children forgive their parents far more than they should. Love is an expansive enough concept that the ancient Greeks had to come up with four different words for the specific types; English speakers tend to prioritize Eros and forget Storge, Agape, and Philia. And then when they get burned by Eros they say such things as "Love is cruel" and accidentally slander the remaining facets.

 I wonder if this is a legacy of the Troubadors and how they sang about Courtly Love.

Held in the family
in the circle of the family
My mother and uncle
talk about the other aunt

I let it slip
half on purpose
my aunt is hurt
my cousin is angry

the wagons circle
I take the blame
while my mother and
uncle stay silent

they don't talk about
my aunt in front of me
again and I am glad
I don't like it

my mother is dead
I read her journal
describing how she tells my sister
what one cousin says about her

to the others and
my sister is hurt
and angry and calls the
one cousin on the carpet

There are thirty years
between these events
I ask my father before he dies
if he will return to the lake

I helped to build your uncle's cabin
he says yet the log never
mentions me. He is not family
only blood is mentioned

they say we love you
but, says my cousin,
if you make me choose
I won't choose you

ah, don't rock the boat
don't speak up, don't object
the gossip circle tightens
like a noose around our necks

my uncle has not spoken
to his cousin since 911
they are 92 and 82
an example for us all

I send them love
from a very very great distance
I have left the circle
and they say this is love

how many families have love
that comes at a price
that comes with scapegoats
that comes with a poisoned well

my heart loves them
from a very very great distance
they set up a straw girl
and light the torch again