Great stuff!

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Second- true love is not a scientific phenomenon. Love has never been observed or tested in a lab. “There is no perfection in this world” that’s true too. I think that there is a possibility for love, but there has to be significant sacrifices. The perfect conditions for love don’t exist, but people can overcome the imperfections by choosing some of the desired traits while abandoning the others.

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There is no perfection in this world, period. Does that imply that my experiances of love, hate, fun, joy, anger, sadness and so on, aren’t real or true?

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R and C,
Help me understand what you are saying, please.
True love is a myth because the perfect lover doesn’t exist?

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Thanks for the marvelous piece, Isha.
I think this piece is meant to examine the seemingly oxymoronic state of human relationships through the perspective of the woman.
The protagonist has four idiosyncratic relationships, personified in the four characters being portrayed in the story. Each relationship has its positives, but in essence they are all lacking. The suggestion that emanates from the piece is profound and should be considered. The writer seems to be relating that, although interpersonal relationships can be fulfilling at times, one personality cannot encompass all the desirable traits, hence true love as well as complete devotion and commitment is a myth.
The perfect relationship would be one where there is: admiration, devotion, commitment, security, serenity, physical and psychological attraction, manipulation, mysteriousness, disclosure, relatedness, excitement, novelty…….the list goes on and on; It’s impossible to mention all the characteristics of the perfect relationship. The tragedy of being human is that it’s impossible for one person to exhibit all of the desirable attributes. Some of them are even contradictory and can only be held by different individuals.
In the story we meet the lover, the strange friend, the daughter, and the husband. There seems to be a unique relationship between the protagonist and each of the four individuals. She seems to admire the lover, but can’t get intimate with him. The definition of a lover is complete nakedness of mind and body. Complete disclosure can be attractive, but on the other hand people like to be mystified. People like to believe in myths. They want to be enthralled by something that seems powerful and loftier then their banal existence. People are repulsed when they realize that what they worship and admire is not very dissimilar to them; people want to worship a grand idea or an omnipotent being. When the protagonist realizes that the lover has similar shortcomings to her, shortcomings that renders him human just like her, she is disgusted by him. On the other hand the strange friend seems to behold the very imperfections that lover seems to lack, but it’s still not sufficed.
The stranger has the desirable features of being aloof, distant, manipulative, and mysterious. He is also open in his way, and gets right down to business. The protagonist descends into intimacy with him, but there is no fire. She doesn’t feel him. Amazingly the same exact character that mystified her also makes her feel burglarized. Manipulation is admirable and attractive, but sequentially the protagonist feels fooled and exploited. “She doesn’t feel his kisses anymore and is left naked.” The complexity and the discrepancy of relationships are portrayed. The protagonist can’t admire the lover for his nakedness of mind before her eyes, yet she feels undressed and naked before the stranger.
The relationship between the protagonist and her child is not fully explored in the story, but one can assume from the little information that is given that the protagonist is completely devoted to her daughter. She waits for her daughter to fall asleep before she lets the lover come to her bed. She hugs and clenches her daughter in her sleep. The protagonist seems to see in her baby daughter a sort of ally. She seems to pity her for her future struggles that she is dealing with now. She confides in her and finds some peace and comfort in her existence.
The irony of ironies is that in the husband the protagonist finds solace. It’s quite clear from the progress of the story that she is not in love with her husband. When he hugs her and tells her that he missed her, she groans. It could be that the husband symbolizes what the other relationships lack, and ultimately what he presents puts her at peace. The husband seems to provide financial and emotional security. He works late at night to provide for his family. In the pureness of his heart he unwittingly trusts her. He is uncomplicated, unlike the lover and the stranger; hence he can provide a proper sense of calmness and serenity. Ultimately though, it’s not enough. Although the husband provides some of the desirable traits, the protagonist yearns for more, and she will keep on searching for the perfect combination that she will never find.

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The writer may or may not have intended to provoke you precisely in the way that she has. Call the protagonist “emotionally immature” with an “inability to perceive love” (whatever that means) if you like. But even if all you say is true about the protagonist, it still says something true and necessary about the complexity of human emotions and, indeed, our varied perceptions of love and how we use it for our own needs.

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It’s a beautiful story, the writer clearly has no agenda, and you butcher a piece of art by ascribing political motivations to what is clearly a personal experience.

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