Now and then

A young man unhappily single with good reason. For as long as he can remember, his romances travel the same track. First, the shock of love with its vertiginous rush and the sweet fire in his spine. Mad mutual devotion follows for weeks. Then the first alarming note: the trickle becomes a torrent and the torrent a cataract. He is lazy; he is thoughtless; his taste in restaurants is banal and his housekeeping habits a horror. When he can’t stand it any longer, he breaks off the relationship. Blessed silence and relief descend. As the weeks drag by into months, his newfound ease slides over into loneliness. The next woman he dates revels herself (after a brief time) to be the doppelgänger of his recently departed ex. Without a woman, his life is empty; with her, its misery. -- Gravity’s Incarnation in The General Theory of Love, p 117, 2000.