This might be goodbye.

Here’s a notion: some people are incapable of love. Fully functional, wholly cognizant persons who are somehow incapable of love. They think they’re in love, react and behave as if they’re in love, but they’re not in love.

Love is a clumsy word, full of connotations and hidden meanings. Even when differentiated into Greek eros (passionate love), philia (platonic and familial love), and agape (affection, largely used in the Bible to encompass a self-sacrificing unconditional love), ‘love’ lacks a certain definitive meaning.

Barring other elucidations, I believe that ‘love’ is an amalgamation of the aforementioned Greek definitions. Therefore, some persons are simply incapable of loving completely.

More accurately, I believe we sometimes move back and forth from one aspect of love to another whilst in a relationship (which is perfectly normal). But if that love lacks (or has lost) the agape aspect, then it’s a selfish love; and a selfish love is an incomplete love, inherently flawed, and therefore doomed.

Modern love has a decidedly selfish note. Society seems to construe love as a symbiotic transaction between two persons feeding each other’s ‘I’.

The point of this discourse? I’ve found that maybe my relationship with Diane was based around her ‘I’. So yes, maybe she does love me, in her own fashion. But it’s no longer good enough. Sometimes I’ve felt as if I’ve had to buy her love. Too long I’ve felt as if I’m clinging on to something which would just as easily be brushed aside if she felt like it.

Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’ feels strangely appropriate.

So yes, I believe some people are incapable of love. Sometimes they survive and thrive in their self-focused relationships. Some people are simply incapable of love, and whatever love they can muster is no longer sufficient for me.