"Who so loves, believes the impossible"

The simple equations of love. Like this: relationships live on time. They devour it in the way that bees feed on pollen or aerobic cells on oxygen: with an unbending singularity of purpose and no possibility of compromise or substitution. Relatedness is a physiologic process that, like digestion or bone growth, admits no plausible acceleration. And so the skill of becoming and remaining attuned to another's emotional rhythm requires a solid investment of years.

Americans have grown used to the efficiencies of modern life: microwave ovens, laser price scanners, number-crunching computers, high-speed Internet access. Why should relationships be any different? Shouldn't we be able to compress them into less time than they took in the old days, ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago? The unequivocal limbic no takes our culture by surprise. The modern American is genuinely puzzled when affiliations evaporate from inattention. Every new second of togetherness reestablishes the terms of a relationship. But cultural mythology imbues social ties with the clumsy durability of things-- once attained, always attainable; once established, easy to get back to weeks, months, years later. The truth is only slightly less dire than the words of the playwright Jean Giraudoux: "If two people who love each other let a single instant wedge itself between them, it grows-- is becomes a month, a year, a century; it becomes too late."

Some couples cannot love because the two simply don't spend enough time in each other's presence to allow it. Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact--phone calls, faxes, e-mail--without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties often aver that nothing can be done. Every activity they spend time on (besides each other) has been classified as indispensable: cleaning the house, catching the news, balancing the checkbook.

Such an existence is too expensive to beat. When launching a life raft, the prudent survivalist will not toss food overboard while retaining the deck furniture. If somebody must jettison a part of life, time with a mate should be last on the list: he needs that connection to live.

Couples do not receive this advice from friends, colleagues, family--their world. Instead they are encourages to achieve, not attach. American spur one another to accomplish and acquire before anything else--our national dream holds that industry leads to a promised land, and nobody wants to miss out on a share of paradise. When consummating a career does not bring happiness--as it cannot--few pause to reconsider their assumptions; most redouble their efforts. The faster they spin the occupational centrifuge, the most its high-velocity whine drowns out the wiser whisper of their own hearts.

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Loving is limbically distinct from in love. Loving is mutuality; loving is synchronous attunement and modulation. As such, adult love depends critically upon knowing the other. In love demands only the brief acquaintance necessary to establish an emotional genre but does not demand that the book of the beloved's soul be perused from preface to epilogue. Loving derives from intimacy, the prolonged and detailed surveillance of a foreign soul.

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