John Bowe and Us: Just Fucking Wrong.

John Bowe, co-writer of a lovely movie called Basquiat, put together an account of first-person experiences of love — and gets it totally wrong.

Fine, your life is ruined by some woman because you both can’t seem to make it work, and what do you do?  Blame love.  Call it faulty and confusing and utterly impenetrable.

Ostensibly, that seems fair.  But it also seems too easy.  “I’m right,” you say, and “I’m right,” she says and because you are both right, love must be wrong — easy, simple deductive reasoning.

Wrong.

Assume, for a moment, that love is simply an experience, like happiness or sadness or masturbation.  It will come and it will go, necessarily, because biology demands it.  What you have left, then, is the value of your relationship and what you are willing to sacrifice for that relationship determines said value.

So, if you let go of the relationship to resume your comfortable life, in essence you are saying that the relationship was disposable, as were your feelings of love (as are you, former lover).  Because to continue that relationship would require great sacrifice (though, presumably, not your life, though you’ve admitted it was “the love of your life”), and you weren’t willing to do that because, presumably:

“You know that idea that true love conquers all?” he said. “It can conquer a hell of a lot, but it can’t conquer everything.

That actually says something about you, not love, because love is an experience (in a way), and it’s up to you to make the most of it.  (Read: Dude, it was up to you to conquer everything.  Why?  Because you’re a man.  That’s your job.)