Crazy little thing called love
February 14, 2007 | 12:00am
I t is time, people, to talk about this crazy phenomenon that comes around once a year. It’s called Valentine’s Day, and it seems to grip the Filipino psyche like a bout of 24-hour Avian flu. During this 24-hour period, and in the mad scramble leading up to it, most virile males are put to the test, not merely by some sudden enlightenment about love, some shining satori about its importance in their lives; often, it’s just because they don’t want to appear cheap and lacking in the crucial Filipino "senti" gene.
I’ve never been much for peer pressure, group-mind thinking or behavior, so I always approach Valentine’s Day with a grain of salt. That’s okay if the salt is being poured from a shaker at a very expensive restaurant sitting across from your beloved; it’s not so okay if you’re a cynic.
I don’t consider myself a through-and-through cynic, but there is something crazy about love. Scientists are now finding that a part of the brain  the insula, a pair of nerve bundles in the cortex  probably controls emotions such as love and longing and is the same area that causes people to be addicted to nicotine, drugs and alcohol. It’s also the same area that makes us respond to our favorite songs: the toe-tapping, finger-snapping part of the brain. A high is a high, I guess. But no one can really say what it is that makes us feel elated when we recognize that song we heard playing on our first date with a loved one; no one can diagnose the blues we plunge into when we hear a particularly sad tune, one that reminds us of someone who is not our loved one anymore.
Which brings me to Valentine’s Day movies. Why is it that some of the most deeply-felt, romantic movies show the couple not happily together at the end, but torn apart at the seams? I’m thinking specifically of Casablanca and its modern counterpart, The English Patient. In Casablanca, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) displays a look of pure cinematic anguish as he waits for Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) at the Paris train station. It’s as deeply resonant as the look of horror and loss worn by Ralph Fiennes as he carries the body of Katherine (Kristin Scott-Thomas) from the Cave of Swimmers in English Patient. Anyway, that’s how I felt it.
It could be that we fall for these movies  and a handful of others I could name  because they manage to raise the stakes so high. They present the relationship as a doomed and fragile enterprise, something that is unlikely to survive in such a cruel and indifferent world  where "the trouble of two little people doesn’t amount to a hill of beans," as Rick would have it. This is the world for lovers: a torturous terrain that few can manage to cross over to happiness. Or maybe happiness is beside the point.
See what I mean by crazy?
Speaking of crazy, was it love that led NASA astronaut Lisa Rowak to get in a car and drive 800 miles (wearing an adult diaper to avoid having to make restroom stops) in order to confront a rival for a fellow astronaut’s romantic attentions? Sure, maybe it started out as love (Fox News dubbed the story "Lust in Space," never one to ignore a lurid angle); but when it involves packing pepper spray, rubber tubing, a knife and trash bags in the trunk… well, it’s probably taken the off-ramp somewhere to crazy.
Crazy, too, describes the finding of a pair of skeletons in a curious embrace at a Rome burial site  that city of Fellini-esque lovers, the Tivoli Fountain and amore. No one has conjectured that the couple were actually strangling one another when the resulting death pose occurred, which at least proves there are still plenty of romantics out there.
And certainly, octogenarian Texas billionaire J. Howard Marshall II must have been crazy in love  or at least lust-crazed  when he decided to hook up with 26-year-old stripper Anna Nicole Smith  a pairing that ended in a lot of tears and a pile of bodies, sad to say.
I have searched my mind to find instances in my life when love made me act crazy. There was the time I followed my future wife, Therese, in my car after she had stormed off on foot from my Boston apartment, determined to catch a Green Line train back to her native Charles Street dwelling. She was seething after an argument, the first time I’d experienced such an occurrence. I was actually driving alongside the train at 12:30 in the morning, beckoning to her from the window, like some sad sap in a Rob Reiner movie. She was having none of it, though, and it took about three or four red lights and train stops before I convinced her to get into my car and come back.
At least I wasn’t carrying any rubber tubing or pepper spray in the trunk.
Love is funny. Maybe couples should take a sanity test before hooking up. Kind of like the one the New York Times recently printed, called "Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying." Here, in 15 unflinching questions, might be the key to whether you’ve found The Perfect One, or just another cross-country, diaper-wearing stalker:
1) Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?
2) Do we have a clear idea of each other’s financial obligations and goals, and do our ideas about spending and saving mesh?
3) Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?
4) Have we fully disclosed our health histories, both physical and mental?
5) Is my partner affectionate to the degree that I expect?
6) Can we comfortably and openly discuss our sexual needs, preferences and fears?
7) Will there be a television in the bedroom?
8) Do we truly listen to each other and fairly consider one another’s ideas and complaints?
9) Have we reached a clear understanding of each other’s spiritual beliefs and needs, and have we discussed when and how our children will be exposed to religious/moral education?
10) Do we like and respect each other’s friends?
11) Do we value and respect each other’s parents, and is either of us concerned about whether the parents will interfere with the relationship?
12) What does my family do that annoys you?
13) Are there some things that you and I are NOT prepared to give up in the marriage?
14) If one of us were to be offered a career opportunity in a location far from the other’s family, are we prepared to move?
15) Does each of us feel fully confident in the other’s commitment to the marriage and believe that the bond can survive whatever challenges we may face?
Don’t you wish you’d had this helpful sanity/compatibility quiz when first dating? Well, maybe not, because it’s the equivalent of a trial prenup: a potential deal-breaker, once all those true feelings come out. Why ruin the start of a perfectly good courtship with a marathon argument?
The questions are laser-sharp, but I have a feeling few couples would actually get hitched if they answered each and every one honestly. It could be that people just don’t know how they’ll behave when they’ll actually be together for long stretches of time. But never underestimate the power of denial. Still, these questions are what rational adults need to think about when entering into a love match. They’re sane, down-to-earth and sensible.
But whoever said love was sane, down-to-earth or sensible?
I’ve never been much for peer pressure, group-mind thinking or behavior, so I always approach Valentine’s Day with a grain of salt. That’s okay if the salt is being poured from a shaker at a very expensive restaurant sitting across from your beloved; it’s not so okay if you’re a cynic.
I don’t consider myself a through-and-through cynic, but there is something crazy about love. Scientists are now finding that a part of the brain  the insula, a pair of nerve bundles in the cortex  probably controls emotions such as love and longing and is the same area that causes people to be addicted to nicotine, drugs and alcohol. It’s also the same area that makes us respond to our favorite songs: the toe-tapping, finger-snapping part of the brain. A high is a high, I guess. But no one can really say what it is that makes us feel elated when we recognize that song we heard playing on our first date with a loved one; no one can diagnose the blues we plunge into when we hear a particularly sad tune, one that reminds us of someone who is not our loved one anymore.
Which brings me to Valentine’s Day movies. Why is it that some of the most deeply-felt, romantic movies show the couple not happily together at the end, but torn apart at the seams? I’m thinking specifically of Casablanca and its modern counterpart, The English Patient. In Casablanca, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) displays a look of pure cinematic anguish as he waits for Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) at the Paris train station. It’s as deeply resonant as the look of horror and loss worn by Ralph Fiennes as he carries the body of Katherine (Kristin Scott-Thomas) from the Cave of Swimmers in English Patient. Anyway, that’s how I felt it.
It could be that we fall for these movies  and a handful of others I could name  because they manage to raise the stakes so high. They present the relationship as a doomed and fragile enterprise, something that is unlikely to survive in such a cruel and indifferent world  where "the trouble of two little people doesn’t amount to a hill of beans," as Rick would have it. This is the world for lovers: a torturous terrain that few can manage to cross over to happiness. Or maybe happiness is beside the point.
See what I mean by crazy?
Speaking of crazy, was it love that led NASA astronaut Lisa Rowak to get in a car and drive 800 miles (wearing an adult diaper to avoid having to make restroom stops) in order to confront a rival for a fellow astronaut’s romantic attentions? Sure, maybe it started out as love (Fox News dubbed the story "Lust in Space," never one to ignore a lurid angle); but when it involves packing pepper spray, rubber tubing, a knife and trash bags in the trunk… well, it’s probably taken the off-ramp somewhere to crazy.
Crazy, too, describes the finding of a pair of skeletons in a curious embrace at a Rome burial site  that city of Fellini-esque lovers, the Tivoli Fountain and amore. No one has conjectured that the couple were actually strangling one another when the resulting death pose occurred, which at least proves there are still plenty of romantics out there.
And certainly, octogenarian Texas billionaire J. Howard Marshall II must have been crazy in love  or at least lust-crazed  when he decided to hook up with 26-year-old stripper Anna Nicole Smith  a pairing that ended in a lot of tears and a pile of bodies, sad to say.
I have searched my mind to find instances in my life when love made me act crazy. There was the time I followed my future wife, Therese, in my car after she had stormed off on foot from my Boston apartment, determined to catch a Green Line train back to her native Charles Street dwelling. She was seething after an argument, the first time I’d experienced such an occurrence. I was actually driving alongside the train at 12:30 in the morning, beckoning to her from the window, like some sad sap in a Rob Reiner movie. She was having none of it, though, and it took about three or four red lights and train stops before I convinced her to get into my car and come back.
At least I wasn’t carrying any rubber tubing or pepper spray in the trunk.
Love is funny. Maybe couples should take a sanity test before hooking up. Kind of like the one the New York Times recently printed, called "Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying." Here, in 15 unflinching questions, might be the key to whether you’ve found The Perfect One, or just another cross-country, diaper-wearing stalker:
1) Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?
2) Do we have a clear idea of each other’s financial obligations and goals, and do our ideas about spending and saving mesh?
3) Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?
4) Have we fully disclosed our health histories, both physical and mental?
5) Is my partner affectionate to the degree that I expect?
6) Can we comfortably and openly discuss our sexual needs, preferences and fears?
7) Will there be a television in the bedroom?
8) Do we truly listen to each other and fairly consider one another’s ideas and complaints?
9) Have we reached a clear understanding of each other’s spiritual beliefs and needs, and have we discussed when and how our children will be exposed to religious/moral education?
10) Do we like and respect each other’s friends?
11) Do we value and respect each other’s parents, and is either of us concerned about whether the parents will interfere with the relationship?
12) What does my family do that annoys you?
13) Are there some things that you and I are NOT prepared to give up in the marriage?
14) If one of us were to be offered a career opportunity in a location far from the other’s family, are we prepared to move?
15) Does each of us feel fully confident in the other’s commitment to the marriage and believe that the bond can survive whatever challenges we may face?
Don’t you wish you’d had this helpful sanity/compatibility quiz when first dating? Well, maybe not, because it’s the equivalent of a trial prenup: a potential deal-breaker, once all those true feelings come out. Why ruin the start of a perfectly good courtship with a marathon argument?
The questions are laser-sharp, but I have a feeling few couples would actually get hitched if they answered each and every one honestly. It could be that people just don’t know how they’ll behave when they’ll actually be together for long stretches of time. But never underestimate the power of denial. Still, these questions are what rational adults need to think about when entering into a love match. They’re sane, down-to-earth and sensible.
But whoever said love was sane, down-to-earth or sensible?
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