MOST INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS these days involve each person trying to get from the other what they never had in early life. But, as that can never be achieved, they are both living in cloud-cuckoo land. Thus, most intimate relationships are based on unrealisable fantasy. What happens is that the other person becomes like a drug who you can never get enough of. That’s what most pop songs are about. They aren’t ‘love songs’ but simply expressions of a druggie cloud-cuckoo land where an initial infatuation with outward physical attributes becomes an obsession and supersedes the noble desire for mutual cherishment and the healthy alliance of a profound friendship. Just like being a drug addict means that your dose must increase to get a bigger high, so it is with the other person in such a relationship, who is really just your current drug of choice. So, each one gets addicted to the other person. Mutual dependency. Co-dependency. That is not love. It’s just a whole pile of neurotic drama, triggers, blaming, mad mood-swings, victim-playing and irrational aggression, which is often mitigated by lots of what seems like ‘great sex’ (which is all part of the dystopian relationship druggie schtick). A person who has consciously ditched his or her “baggage” in the dumpster where it belongs cannot possibly forge a real relationship with someone who hasn’t. Once one gets free of the drug of addict-based relationships, one would rather be alone for the rest of one’s life than get entangled again with a false-love fanatic; for it would be like serving a life-sentence with a junkie or an alcoholic. And remember this: You cannot fix the looney-tunes of the other person in a relationship (the ‘white knight syndrome’). So do the work on yourself and leave others to do theirs (although most will not). Intimacy and marriage are not about being someone else’s pointless therapist but about being each other’s fun-loving, life-embracing, carpe-diem-ising, God-honouring catalysts. 💖