Love is a peculiar thing, It’s something like a lizard. It wraps its tail around your heart And crawls into your gizzard. - Some remembered prose from a long forgotten book
I'm still guessing. In conversation with a close male friend we compared notes about the women and love we have known over the years and I saw something we had in common. Each of us had gravitated towards damaged partners in the desire to be their saviors. Reluctantly, and I still emotionally resist this knowledge, I have come to some understanding that the deepest love between a man and a woman is to be had with someone who can do without us, if need be. In the end we must repair our own souls and not wait for our own personal hero. Also, there is a possible dark side to all this. Are we seeking the power over someone that might come with their urgent need of us? Waiting for someone who can fix us is setting things up for a relationship of dependence and perhaps another type of slavery, which can mirror the past and perpetuate the original harms. Need, in its place, is not a bad thing, but freedom demands that we reach beyond it to being able to stand alone. That might sound cynical but it's the place I've come to. I hate it when I discover something which undercuts one of my life strategies but refuses to go away. I'm much better at calculus than with romance.