In the past week, I have re-watched three films that practically eviscerate the stock image of happily married couples with well-adjusted children (Kramer vs Kramer, Revolutionary Road, and The Squid and the Whale), and I have had my 84 year old grandfather tell me that falling in love is a disease. The sights and sounds of this rampant pessimism compelled me to look at myself in the bathroom mirror and ask, “Why bother?”

There is nothing more discouraging than looking into the eyes of a man who has been worn down by years of prejudice, familial betrayal and physical decline and have him tell you, without a hint of hesitancy, that the one thing that should buoy us above the ugliness of life does nothing but cripple us further. “Falling in love is a disease”. It was like a five knuckle bowel buster right to the solar plexus. Ideally, I wanted to hear something like, “I’d do it all over again if I had the chance.” Or, “A lot of shit has come down the pike during my time and landed right on my lap. It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes it was almost too much to bear. But you know what sustained me? You know what got me through? Love. That’s it, my boy. A little dollop of that stuff and I felt invincible. Nothing could stop me.”

I don’t think of falling in love as a disease like cancer. Instead, it’s more like alcoholism. It’s a disease exacerbated by desire and repetition. You can free yourself from it every now and then. You can toss that monkey aside and feel like you will never look back. But it creeps back into your life without warning. It disguises itself as lust or friendship or temporary affection. Then, once it has latched onto its host, it quickly metastasizes and overtakes you before you have a chance to shake it loose. In short, it’s a real bitch. And like my grandfather told me, even when it’s gone, it’s not gone. In fact, sometimes the remnants of a failed love affair stay with you until your dying day.

And yet, like the alcoholic, I can’t stop myself. I know the overall consequence, but the fix is so good, I can’t walk away. I look back and realize how devastated I’ve been by love in the past, but it doesn’t matter. One more again, I say. One more again.

Perhaps the desire only fades when you find yourself sitting all alone in your room, having outlived all the rest, realizing that the ideal never materialized. My grandfather, like myself, is an admitted romantic. All his life he embraced the fallacy, the flowery sentiment of a love enduring and everlasting. Now, eighty-four years later, he concedes that it was all in vain.

I hear him and perhaps I know that I should heed his every word. But like I said, I too am a romantic. And I would like to believe that if I am fortunate enough to see the age of 84, I will be singing a different, lovelier tune.

Love is funny or it’s sad
Or it’s quiet or it’s mad
It’s a good thing or it’s bad
But beautiful

And I’m thinking if you were mine
I’d never let you go
And that would be
But beautiful, I know