Two things strike me about this piece: first, it's sorely needed. I'm extremely tired of the noncommitment-as-empowerment narrative plaguing the last three generations. People are always writing about what they need, their health, their truth, their peace, their personal "journeys", etc. There's so little talk of what they provide; what they contribute; how they clarify; how they take care of others; how they make their immediate environment better; how their journeys link to the journeys of others, and so on. We are isolated and atomize and are becoming increasingly narcissistic and entitled as a consequence. We are all guilty here, this is not me riding a high horse.
The second thing is, you've avoided the trap that most people fall into when writing about love: licking all the icing off the cupcakes and discarding the rest. You speak about love so beautifully while avoiding the type of saccharine that someone like myself is allergic to. This resonates with me because it's about duty as much as it is about love.
You also touch on too much choice, which is absolutely crucial to understanding why relationships are suffering in the modern age. Some choice is good, and I would never claim otherwise as a classic liberal, but there is a point of diminishing returns. Too much choice, not only makes things complicated, but is destined to make us unhappy. Nothing is perfect, but when your choices are limited, it's easier to recognize that there are no perfect options. When choices are endless, you can't help but wonder what else is possible, and any imperfection with what you have causes instant buyer's remorse. Making a commitment, then seeing it through, becomes almost impossible.
Beautiful work, Tamara. Clearly, you're committed to your craft. I could've just said "I loved it", but love is not enough.
This is one of the most thoughtful, layered, and generous responses I’ve received, thank you! You have put your finger on something I wrestled with throughout the essay: how to speak of love without collapsing into sentimentality, and of duty without evoking repression.
Your critique of the “noncommitment-as-empowerment” ethos is so needed, it’s the kind of faux-liberation that sells well in a self-help economy but leaves us malnourished in practice. As you say, empowerment without responsibility is just a performance of autonomy, not the real thing. We talk so much about “self-care,” but rarely about the care of the other… which is, in many ways, the more important act.
And your point on choice is astute. When the horizon is infinite, permanence starts to feel like a loss rather than a gain. We forget that constraint isn’t always oppression, it’s often the precondition for meaning. As Zygmunt Bauman said, liquid love doesn’t hold its shape long enough to nourish us.
And your last line? Brilliant. But I didn’t expect any less.
This is an extraordinary piece, lyrical, incisive, and rich with both historical depth and emotional clarity. The way you braid philosophy, psychology, and cultural history into a single thread is masterful. All your essays are. Your language pulses with life, but it’s the architecture beneath the prose, the scaffolding of ideas, that makes it unforgettable.
I would only add that perhaps love and commitment don’t just need to coexist, they need to challenge each other. What if love’s wild unpredictability is what continually tests the structure of commitment for weak points, not to break it, but to refine it? Like fire testing steel. And maybe commitment, when resilient yet adaptable, becomes the crucible in which love evolves from raw emotion into something consciously created. Not just something we fall into but something we build, with ritual and repair.
You captured the paradox of modern intimacy with elegance, but also given it hope—hope not rooted in fantasy, but in effort, presence, and mutual evolution. Thank you for this stunning reflection. You are a formidable writer.
Thank you, Céline! You read the architecture beneath my words, and that means everything to a writer like me.
Your addition is brilliant. I like the image of love testing the structure of commitment not to destroy it, but to temper it, as fire forges steel. That interplay you describe, wildness and resilience, unpredictability and ritual, is where the real magic happens. We often think of love and commitment as forces to balance, but you reframed them as forces that refine one another, which is both truer and more dynamic.
That vision is wonderful: a kind of evolutionary intimacy that doesn’t settle, but shapes. Thank you for deepening the essay with your insight, this is exactly the kind of dialogue I hope my work invites!
Tamara, this is a masterwork, not just in form, but in its emotional architecture. As a man reading this, I feel both recognized and challenged in the best possible way.
You articulated, with surgical GRACE, the silent identity crisis many men face today, caught between inherited stoicism and the call to emotional depth, between being the fortress and being seen. We are often asked to show up vulnerably without having been handed the vocabulary—or the safety—to do so. And when love is no longer tethered to duty or dominance, but to emotional fluency, many of us are left scrambling for footing.
Your contrast between love and commitment—spark vs. structure—is especially resonant, especially to me. As men, we’re socialized to chase the flash and dismiss the scaffolding. But what you’re arguing for is nothing short of a shift in masculine maturity: from conquest to continuity, from performance to presence. Commitment, in this light, is not capitulation but a sovereign act, a conscious choosing, again and again, not because we must, but because we can.
Rebellious love has its poetry. But commitment as craftsmanship? That’s where the real art is.
Thank you for giving shape to what many of us have felt but rarely found the language to express.
An eloquent and generous reflection I thank you, and also grateful for engaging deeply, and for speaking from inside the experience my essay sought to name.
Your phrase — from conquest to continuity, from performance to presence — is a little manifesto in itself. It captures the exact reorientation I believe so many men are being called into, not as punishment for the past but as an invitation to a richer, more grounded future.
Commitment as craftsmanship… that’s where the beauty is built, line by line, over time. Not forged in fantasy, but in presence, repair, and a kind of earned elegance.
I’m truly honoured that my little essay resonated in that way for you, Alexander!
Your reply feels like a rare kind of conversation. What I admire most is your refusal to pathologize the male condition, instead, you extend an invitation, not an indictment. There’s deep generosity in that. The shift from conquest to continuity doesn’t erase the masculine script, but rewrites it with nuance, intelligence, and grace. You’re right, it’s not a punishment, it’s a passage. And like any real rite, it demands presence, practice, and, yes, patience with our own unlearning.
This notion of earned elegance—what a phrase. It reminds me that real intimacy is less like a lightning strike and more like calligraphy, slow, deliberate, imperfect, yet made beautiful in the repetition.
Thank you again for crafting language that dignifies complexity without dulling its edge. I’ll keep returning to this essay because it reads like a compass.
This is its own kind of calligraphy: measured, graceful, and deep. Thank you for seeing the intention so clearly. You articulated again something I care deeply about: the idea that we don’t have to discard old scripts to write better ones, we can revise with care, with history in one hand and possibility in the other.
I like your image of intimacy as calligraphy. It captures the essential, that beauty isn’t born from perfection, but from presence through imperfection. Each gesture, each return, a line added to the shared text of a relationship.
If this essay can be a compass, your words are a north star. Thank you for being in this conversation with such clarity and care!
Tamara — this is extraordinary! Your words carry weight in their precision. You’ve written something that doesn’t just speak about love and commitment, it models what it means to stay present with nuance, paradox, and tenderness.
I found myself especially moved by your reframing of romanticism. Rather than discarding it as illusion, you trace its arc and ground it in something sturdier: presence. Not the "spark" that validates a feeling, but the "fire that keeps you warm" — through the storms, through the "unfinishedness."
This line: “Not the chemistry of recognition, but the courage of continuation.” Wow! Yeah, that’s it.
Your reflections brought to mind a quote I love from William Barrett, who wrote that Romantic melancholy was not mere sentiment but “the revelation to modern man of the human condition into which he had fallen… estrangement from being itself.” Romanticism, at its core, is not fantasy. It is the ache of longing to belong again.
And maybe that’s what real commitment offers. Not permanence, but participation. A vow not to possess, but to return. So thank you for this, and for the presence it clearly took to write it.
You’ve done more than reading my essay, you’ve joined it, expanded it. That quote from William Barrett is breathtaking, estrangement from being itself, and it captures something I was circling: that Romanticism wasn’t naive, it was wounded. It knew the fall, and still dared to long.
Your idea that commitment is not permanence but participation, yes, of course. A vow not to freeze love in amber, but to re-enter it, with presence and courage, again and again. There’s resilience in that, a devotion to the unfinished. That framing as participation is actually such a rich and necessary shift. It reminds me of something from Martin Buber: in true relationship, the “I” and “Thou” meet in presence, not control. Love then becomes not a state we enter, but a space we create and re-create with every encounter.
What if real commitment is not only returning to the other, but to the relationship itself, as a third, living entity between two people? Like a fire, it needs tending with feeling, and with attention, ritual, and yes, effort. This makes the commitment dynamic — an act of mutual authorship that holds the ache and the awe together.
And your final lines? They belong in the essay. Or at least, beside it. Thank you, Glenn, for honouring it with such depth and generosity!
"…autonomy in duet.” Wow! This is the greatest love letter to love in its truest, most consistent, and most enduring form - one that is accompanied by full commitment. It's not meant to be easy; in fact, it requires effort, much like dancing. This effort shapes us into a body of two, inseparable in many unspoken yet beautiful ways. Big (content) sigh!!! I loved every word.
What a beautiful way to receive this essay, Otilia! I like your metaphor of dancing: the effort, the rhythm, the attunement it requires. Yes, love at its best is a choreography of two sovereign beings learning to move as one, without stepping on each other’s feet or losing their own balance. It’s not effortless, but it’s artful. I’m so glad the essay landed with you in that spirit! Your poetic soul is on the same length wave as mine.
This is glorious. I love and envy - in equal measure - the way you write. Every single sentence struck a chord with me. Thank you. I will save this and read it again, and probably again. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Nancy, that means more than I can say. To be read once is a gift; to be reread is a profound kind of trust. I’m grateful you connected with my essay, and flattered (in the best possible way) by your “envy”, it’s the kind that fuels both of us forward, I hope.
It’s magical and poetic. I write for my day-to-day work and there’s nothing creative about the way I write. I write to persuade, like you do, but I don’t have the confidence to write like this. I can’t even remember the last time I wrote an essay, probably at school or university. Maybe one day I will. 🙏🏼
Thank you so much again, and I want to gently push back on that last part. If you are already writing to persuade, you are writing creatively, you are shaping thought, choosing words, crafting rhythm, even if the form is different. The essay form is just a muscle, not a mystery. It remembers how to move the moment you give it permission.
And when you do write that essay one day, I have no doubt it will carry the same clarity, honesty, and quiet power that came through in your comment. I’ll be here cheering you on!
T., your first sentence says so much. Love is a feeling, but commitment is a choice. Maybe all that needed to be said? The profound recognition of what forms intimacy is where you took this to another level. Equal parts of love and commitment. And you’re right, it is indeed rare.
I like Celine’s thoughts about love testing commitment. I suppose the same could work in juxtaposition. A failed commitment testing love.
You’re incredible. I love to see so many people enjoy and recognize your work.
Thank you for your words loaded with warmth and insight. That first sentence felt like a key I had to earn to turn. And yes, you’re right, just as love tests commitment, a failed commitment can test love, revealing whether it was anchored in something enduring or merely floating on idealism.
Intimacy, then, becomes a meeting point, and also a pressure point, where we see what breaks, and what bends into something stronger.
I’m so grateful you’re here reading and reflecting with me, Billy!
Truly, you’ve built a wonderful community here. I’m honored to be a little part of it. I’ll stop there as AGK is sensing saccharine! 😂 Really, I have yet to find another “place” with this much thought provoking content both from you and your readers. I learn a lot, everyday.
Honestly, I am very proud of my subscribers. This community is educated and wonderful. It’s not just my words that make this space feel alive; it’s the quality of thought and heart in replies like yours. And don’t worry, Andrew can handle a little sweetness when it’s this sincere! :)
Tamara, it's as if you know where to locate another. I know this is schmaltzy, and yet I need time to fully express how moved I am by this piece, here's my first pass... I've learned from your essays how brave, complicated, witty, dedicated, thorough, complex, skilled, and brilliant you are, but it keeps going up 10 notches and I'm shaken and stirred by your words.
The question I hope to ask when I'm facing death, the rider on the white horse, is did I love well? We know everything we love we will lose, and living with uncertainty creates an acute sense of sorrow and an ongoing relationship with grief and gratitude. As a robust adult, we do sacrifice at times to protect what we love, to my mind that bridges to your thesis of intimacy versus sovereignty. Too much intimacy and we lose ourselves. Too much sovereignty we become isolated, instead of living with silence and solitude.
Although I could underline every sentence you write (I'm overflowing with schmaltz;), this struck me in terms of the notion of power, "The dissonance between love and commitment has always existed, though it was expressed through different systems of power and belief." And I think of Jung's quote, "Where love reigns, there the will to power is absent. Where power predominates there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." Love without power is filled with sentimentality. Power without love leads to force, judgement, criticism. I sometimes brood over, what is "right relationship" with power? There is no shortage of power or love in the cosmos, and soul power, I believe, is a consequence of intimacy. Personally, I have been blessed in a long-term relationship as you have expressed, and although I have the experience, I would have never been able to so eloquently express it to the world as you have. It's what I mean by you know where to locate another. An amazing gift to the world.
I’m humbled by your words, Susan, and deeply stirred by your framing of love, power, grief, and the human project of trying to “love well” in a finite life. That question — Did I love well? — belongs on the lips of every honest soul at the edge of the unknown.
Your invocation of Jung’s quote is perfect. The shadow play between love and power philosophical and it’s also lived, daily, often unconsciously. We navigate it in every choice to yield or assert, to stay or step back, to speak or hold silence. I like your idea that “soul power” might be the offspring of intimacy, a force not of domination but of resonance, born when we allow ourselves to be altered by contact with the Other. Expanded, not eroded, not eclipsed.
I think sovereignty and intimacy are not opposites, but frequencies we must learn to harmonise. Like jazz musicians in improvisation, we need both autonomy and attunement to create something alive. Too much control, and we kill the music. Too much fusion, and we disappear in the noise. The art is in the dynamic… a shifting duet, not a fixed identity.
And your phrase — you know where to locate another — that might be the most beautiful definition of both love and writing I’ve heard. It’s the highest compliment I can imagine. Thank you for locating me, and for letting me locate something of you in return!
Yes, you illuminated this for me, "I think sovereignty and intimacy are not opposites, but frequencies we must learn to harmonise. Like jazz musicians in improvisation, we need both autonomy and attunement to create something alive," and I can see how together sovereignty and intimacy create a living culture, a village mind. Your devotional attention to the space between this village has endurance, I can remember to keep it in front of me, like a ritual space. The generosity you bestow to each of us is a movement of the heart. You give with no expectation other than participating. That is the intimation of a master of the wisdom. I am humbled by your wisdom and like in the Labors of Hercules, I am on my knees looking up to the stars in gratitude to have found your space between.
The truth you put forth here will be viewed as anachronistic, indeed anathema, by too many contemporary westerners.
It’s the very antithesis of the stuff such tv horror shows as ‘love at first sight’ put forth. I cannot watch them: they force me into anger & despair.
Your thesis isn’t compatible with the ‘easy-come/easy-go’ ‘dating’ applications prevalent. And doesn’t sit well with speed dating, planned obsolescence & consumerism.
In the rural villages in which my parents were raised, in Poland & Wales, spouse choice was not broad. Nevertheless, they met following my father fleeing the Soviets in eastern Poland, & settling in U.K. They married there in 1951, & were strongly & faithfully united for life, in spite of occasional upsetting arguments, until my father died in 2006. Neither strayed.
It’s ironic to consider the reality: if it wasn’t for Hitler & Stalin, my parents would never have met, & neither my sister nor I would have been born. I’m compelled to mention that, as evidence that good can grow from bad situations. Even more unlikely, had my mother not had a miscarriage following the birth of my sister, I wouldn’t have been conceived. Her state of relatively elevated anxiety throughout her pregnancy with me no doubt contributed to my emotional sensitivity. I’m glad it has.
Quoting from Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’, “Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, ugly & venemous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head”.
Sage advice to those who deluded themselves by thinking that ‘true love’ is all milk & honey.
The same is also echoed in the rather saccharine song from mid-last century: “I give to you, & you give to me, true love, true love”.
Unity in love requires mutual generosity.
Perhaps unintentionally on your part, your ideas bear upon current psychosocial phenomena including the polarization between those who insist that ‘diversity is our strength’, & those who understand that unity is the only lasting bond.
I ponder whether the syllabi of secondary schools in the west should include the writing of an essay critically exploring this fundamentally important topic.
Finally, in the caption of your third featured artwork, as well chosen as ever, you write ‘martial unity’. Whether your intention was to write marital rather than martial is of little consequence: each is apt.
Your comment is one of those rare ones that sweeps across history, memory, politics, and paradox with both gravity and grace, thank you, Russell! You layered my essay with lived wisdom and ancestral echoes, and I’m genuinely moved.
Your story of your parents is so poignant, and precisely the kind of love story that gets erased by today’s hyper-curated culture of instant attraction and infinite scroll. What you offer is a counter-narrative: not love built on algorithms, but on adversity, endurance, and the kind of mutual generosity that transcends both fantasy and convenience. Your life, as you say, was forged in the crucible of history’s most devastating forces…. and yet what emerged was love, resilience, and emotional sensitivity. Sweet are the uses of adversity, indeed!
I like your point about “unity” versus “diversity,” particularly as it relates to love. Perhaps the truest diversity is internal: two distinct inner worlds choosing to bridge difference by tending it, not by dissolving it. Love, in this view, becomes a microcosmic act of reconciliation. And yes, real unity doesn’t demand uniformity; it requires commitment to shared meaning, especially in the face of difference.
As for your idea about introducing this into secondary education…. Ohhhh I couldn’t agree more. We teach students how to dissect texts, balance equations, and ace standardised tests, but we rarely teach them how to love well, how to suffer meaningfully, or how to hold complexity without collapsing into cynicism or sentimentality. Imagine the depth that could be sparked by an assignment that asks: is love enough?
Ah yes…. martial vs marital? It was supposed to be “marital”…. Let’s keep both (although I’ll correct that little mistake). Because love is tender, but commitment is often a disciplined campaign. Not a battle against one another, but a shared struggle for the relationship itself. A lifelong truce that has to be renegotiated daily.
Your comment belongs beside my essay. Thank you for making the conversation so much deeper. I always look forward to your reflections.
Finally getting back to this comment and have re-read this beautifully complete and concise post four times now. There is quite simply nothing more to say, you covered it all so well Tamara! So I'll tell you the thoughts it sparked in me.
The chord it struck and that you allude to throughout, is the importance of understanding that "love" and "commitment" commitment must find balanced orbits and that balance starts with self. If that self is a wilderness, yet to be tamed or worse, never even explored, then love will just be infatuation and sex and looked at, as the actual commitment - shallow as it might be.
That of course would be a blanket laid on shifting sands - certainly not a house - to be swapped out anytime the grit became unbearable.
You pulled me back to past studies of Greek Philosophy and those six main archetypes of love. Oh, that I'd understood and tried to apply them back then, but the ignorance of a college Icarus is boundless.
The thoughtful genius of the Greeks, in giving frameworks and forms to such a formless and fickle concept, is apparent and appreciated now. Their foundational concepts were (and still can be) a road map to balancing a part of life, that refuse to be balanced - emotions. The individual was given a path of reason to understanding not only the feelings in the moment, but the phases of life they applied to. In their daily alchemy, the facets of love became normal, understood and accepted, as normal and expected parts of life, no different than air, water, arms or legs. It built on itself and opened the door to commitment in a natural "this is just what follows and make sense" sort of way. That's not to say it was a utopia or that there were not problems and issues, but their more thoughtful and human approach to love, blows the algorithms of today, to the moon.
There have always been fractures and a splintering of the two - love & commitment - but to my mind, there was a concerted and intentional effort towards this, just after WW2. This was when mass manipulation and scheming, to re-engineer the building blocks of Western societies and cultures began in earnest - on an industrial level. If one can erode and demoralize the basic unit of a society - the individual - then the relationships between them will fall easily and the rest is momentum.
I loved how you offered the saving rope of understanding, to those floundering in a sea of misunderstanding and confusion - Commitment as Freedom. You are correct, it is how we exist in those liminal spaces where the beauty and value of a masterpiece is not in the ability to have it delivered overnight, but rests in the months and years of labor, consideration, re-works, anguish, elation and finally acceptance of an emerging true form, not seen at the start.
If love were thought of as splendorous honey, then the commitment would be the laboring bees who reverently go about their work and purpose. Those two elements being requisite for not only their existence, but that of the hive and their kind.
Now for a bit of flattery of your mind and soul, that are akin to a magnificent emerald waterfall, tucked away in the deepest jungles, full of power and majesty, but offering the lightest and most refreshing delights of their mists. The confluences that form the intellectual ropes that dance gracefully from the heights, are never seen by those dancing in their magic and pools of gifts below - your readers - but they are reverently appreciated just the same.
You are a magnificent treasure Tamara - this won't be the last time you hear that from me.
This is one of those comments that feel like a long-lost letter from a kindred spirit, thank you for the generosity of thought, feeling, and language you’ve offered here! Thank you also for travelling through it, with memory, history, philosophy, and grace as your compass.
Your insight about selfhood being the foundation upon which love and commitment must orbit is striking and essential. If the self is unexamined, undisciplined, or merely reactive, then any relationship becomes a projection screen for unmet needs and unhealed wounds. What you call a “blanket laid on shifting sands” is precisely the fragility so many mistake for connection: chemistry mistaken for character, attention mistaken for intention.
The Greeks’ nuanced taxonomy of love (eros, philia, agape, pragma, ludus, storge) was intellectual and deeply human. They gave shape to emotional ambiguity, allowed love to be more than just erotic fervour or domestic duty. They understood that to make commitment sustainable, love needed form, and that form was philosophical. What you called their daily alchemy is something we now try to outsource to apps and impulse. No wonder we are starving.
Your historical note on post-WWII social engineering is haunting. The destabilisation of the self has long been a precondition for control, first by ideology, now by economy. When commitment is framed as oppression, and freedom as infinite deferral, we are left with neither rootedness nor flight….. just drift.
And your metaphor, commitment as the labouring bees to love’s honey, is stunning. That is it. Beauty sustained by devotion. Sweetness born of loyalty in repetition. The hive, like the heart, demands care beyond the first bloom.
As for your final lines… I’m genuinely moved. Not just by the flattery (which is lush and exquisite), but by the reverence behind it. The kind of reverence that makes me want to write better, listen harder, and keep showing up. If my words are a waterfall, yours are the deep forest that gives it meaning.
Thank you for walking through this piece with such soul!
Thank you so much, Rameez! I like your use of “knitted”, that’s exactly how it felt writing it: threading together ideas, history, feeling, and form into something cohesive but still soft around the edges. I appreciate you taking the time to read and say so.
i read this word many years ago and it stayed with me, therefore, it always pops up whenever i write something related to craft. And, also, this is quite a coherent piece, i must say and you have a way with words. I wish i could put half as clarity and precision in my writing as this.
Thank you, what a powerful question, and such a necessary one! Because, of course, no essay like this can be written from the safe perch of detachment. It’s a mirror made from lived experience, cracked and polished in equal measure.
Where do I see myself? In nearly every tension the piece describes. I’ve been the romantic and the realist, the spark-chaser and the scaffold-builder, the one who left too soon and the one who stayed too long. I’ve believed in love as revelation and questioned it as projection. I’ve wrestled with the pull toward sovereignty and the ache for real intimacy, and I’ve learned (still learning) that real partnership means living in that liminal space where both must coexist.
I write about these dynamics not as someone who has mastered them, but as someone who has been shaped by them…. sometimes gently, sometimes with the force of a lesson I didn’t ask for but needed. The voice in this essay is mine, yes, but it’s also collective, stitched together from stories, studies, poetry, philosophy, and what life has insisted I pay attention to.
So, if there’s authority in the writing, it’s earned not through certainty, but through participation. I stand inside the questions I raise.
Tamara, there is so much wisdom and Love in your writings, coming from an open heart.. alone these sharings are enough to stir mind and heart into days of self reflection.. so, as days are not available right now :).. i just wanted to throw out 3 things that came to me in the moments i read your reply..
1 Candle in the Wind… as in Elton John and the Diana Tribute version, but then your description came over more as a pebble in a stream, that sometimes was quiet, and sometimes a raging torrent in heavy rains, but forever just a form being shaped by its destiny
Great question, and one that cuts right to the heart of my essay.
The delineation between love and commitment isn’t always clear in real time, but it becomes crucial when we confuse feeling with sustaining. Love is the initial current — emotional, often involuntary, deeply tied to chemistry, projection, and longing. Commitment is the structure we choose to house that current. It’s not just staying, but staying with intention. Not because the feeling persists, but because we have decided the bond is worth tending, even when the feeling ebbs.
One is the spark, the other the hearth.
They’re intertwined, yes, but not identical. And knowing the difference is often what prevents us from mistaking intensity for intimacy, or permanence for possession.
Two things strike me about this piece: first, it's sorely needed. I'm extremely tired of the noncommitment-as-empowerment narrative plaguing the last three generations. People are always writing about what they need, their health, their truth, their peace, their personal "journeys", etc. There's so little talk of what they provide; what they contribute; how they clarify; how they take care of others; how they make their immediate environment better; how their journeys link to the journeys of others, and so on. We are isolated and atomize and are becoming increasingly narcissistic and entitled as a consequence. We are all guilty here, this is not me riding a high horse.
The second thing is, you've avoided the trap that most people fall into when writing about love: licking all the icing off the cupcakes and discarding the rest. You speak about love so beautifully while avoiding the type of saccharine that someone like myself is allergic to. This resonates with me because it's about duty as much as it is about love.
You also touch on too much choice, which is absolutely crucial to understanding why relationships are suffering in the modern age. Some choice is good, and I would never claim otherwise as a classic liberal, but there is a point of diminishing returns. Too much choice, not only makes things complicated, but is destined to make us unhappy. Nothing is perfect, but when your choices are limited, it's easier to recognize that there are no perfect options. When choices are endless, you can't help but wonder what else is possible, and any imperfection with what you have causes instant buyer's remorse. Making a commitment, then seeing it through, becomes almost impossible.
Beautiful work, Tamara. Clearly, you're committed to your craft. I could've just said "I loved it", but love is not enough.
This is one of the most thoughtful, layered, and generous responses I’ve received, thank you! You have put your finger on something I wrestled with throughout the essay: how to speak of love without collapsing into sentimentality, and of duty without evoking repression.
Your critique of the “noncommitment-as-empowerment” ethos is so needed, it’s the kind of faux-liberation that sells well in a self-help economy but leaves us malnourished in practice. As you say, empowerment without responsibility is just a performance of autonomy, not the real thing. We talk so much about “self-care,” but rarely about the care of the other… which is, in many ways, the more important act.
And your point on choice is astute. When the horizon is infinite, permanence starts to feel like a loss rather than a gain. We forget that constraint isn’t always oppression, it’s often the precondition for meaning. As Zygmunt Bauman said, liquid love doesn’t hold its shape long enough to nourish us.
And your last line? Brilliant. But I didn’t expect any less.
This is an extraordinary piece, lyrical, incisive, and rich with both historical depth and emotional clarity. The way you braid philosophy, psychology, and cultural history into a single thread is masterful. All your essays are. Your language pulses with life, but it’s the architecture beneath the prose, the scaffolding of ideas, that makes it unforgettable.
I would only add that perhaps love and commitment don’t just need to coexist, they need to challenge each other. What if love’s wild unpredictability is what continually tests the structure of commitment for weak points, not to break it, but to refine it? Like fire testing steel. And maybe commitment, when resilient yet adaptable, becomes the crucible in which love evolves from raw emotion into something consciously created. Not just something we fall into but something we build, with ritual and repair.
You captured the paradox of modern intimacy with elegance, but also given it hope—hope not rooted in fantasy, but in effort, presence, and mutual evolution. Thank you for this stunning reflection. You are a formidable writer.
Thank you, Céline! You read the architecture beneath my words, and that means everything to a writer like me.
Your addition is brilliant. I like the image of love testing the structure of commitment not to destroy it, but to temper it, as fire forges steel. That interplay you describe, wildness and resilience, unpredictability and ritual, is where the real magic happens. We often think of love and commitment as forces to balance, but you reframed them as forces that refine one another, which is both truer and more dynamic.
That vision is wonderful: a kind of evolutionary intimacy that doesn’t settle, but shapes. Thank you for deepening the essay with your insight, this is exactly the kind of dialogue I hope my work invites!
Tamara, this is a masterwork, not just in form, but in its emotional architecture. As a man reading this, I feel both recognized and challenged in the best possible way.
You articulated, with surgical GRACE, the silent identity crisis many men face today, caught between inherited stoicism and the call to emotional depth, between being the fortress and being seen. We are often asked to show up vulnerably without having been handed the vocabulary—or the safety—to do so. And when love is no longer tethered to duty or dominance, but to emotional fluency, many of us are left scrambling for footing.
Your contrast between love and commitment—spark vs. structure—is especially resonant, especially to me. As men, we’re socialized to chase the flash and dismiss the scaffolding. But what you’re arguing for is nothing short of a shift in masculine maturity: from conquest to continuity, from performance to presence. Commitment, in this light, is not capitulation but a sovereign act, a conscious choosing, again and again, not because we must, but because we can.
Rebellious love has its poetry. But commitment as craftsmanship? That’s where the real art is.
Thank you for giving shape to what many of us have felt but rarely found the language to express.
An eloquent and generous reflection I thank you, and also grateful for engaging deeply, and for speaking from inside the experience my essay sought to name.
Your phrase — from conquest to continuity, from performance to presence — is a little manifesto in itself. It captures the exact reorientation I believe so many men are being called into, not as punishment for the past but as an invitation to a richer, more grounded future.
Commitment as craftsmanship… that’s where the beauty is built, line by line, over time. Not forged in fantasy, but in presence, repair, and a kind of earned elegance.
I’m truly honoured that my little essay resonated in that way for you, Alexander!
Your reply feels like a rare kind of conversation. What I admire most is your refusal to pathologize the male condition, instead, you extend an invitation, not an indictment. There’s deep generosity in that. The shift from conquest to continuity doesn’t erase the masculine script, but rewrites it with nuance, intelligence, and grace. You’re right, it’s not a punishment, it’s a passage. And like any real rite, it demands presence, practice, and, yes, patience with our own unlearning.
This notion of earned elegance—what a phrase. It reminds me that real intimacy is less like a lightning strike and more like calligraphy, slow, deliberate, imperfect, yet made beautiful in the repetition.
Thank you again for crafting language that dignifies complexity without dulling its edge. I’ll keep returning to this essay because it reads like a compass.
This is its own kind of calligraphy: measured, graceful, and deep. Thank you for seeing the intention so clearly. You articulated again something I care deeply about: the idea that we don’t have to discard old scripts to write better ones, we can revise with care, with history in one hand and possibility in the other.
I like your image of intimacy as calligraphy. It captures the essential, that beauty isn’t born from perfection, but from presence through imperfection. Each gesture, each return, a line added to the shared text of a relationship.
If this essay can be a compass, your words are a north star. Thank you for being in this conversation with such clarity and care!
Tamara — this is extraordinary! Your words carry weight in their precision. You’ve written something that doesn’t just speak about love and commitment, it models what it means to stay present with nuance, paradox, and tenderness.
I found myself especially moved by your reframing of romanticism. Rather than discarding it as illusion, you trace its arc and ground it in something sturdier: presence. Not the "spark" that validates a feeling, but the "fire that keeps you warm" — through the storms, through the "unfinishedness."
This line: “Not the chemistry of recognition, but the courage of continuation.” Wow! Yeah, that’s it.
Your reflections brought to mind a quote I love from William Barrett, who wrote that Romantic melancholy was not mere sentiment but “the revelation to modern man of the human condition into which he had fallen… estrangement from being itself.” Romanticism, at its core, is not fantasy. It is the ache of longing to belong again.
And maybe that’s what real commitment offers. Not permanence, but participation. A vow not to possess, but to return. So thank you for this, and for the presence it clearly took to write it.
To stay is not to settle,
but to remember again and again
that relation is where the world begins.
Admiration. Gratitude. 🙏
You’ve done more than reading my essay, you’ve joined it, expanded it. That quote from William Barrett is breathtaking, estrangement from being itself, and it captures something I was circling: that Romanticism wasn’t naive, it was wounded. It knew the fall, and still dared to long.
Your idea that commitment is not permanence but participation, yes, of course. A vow not to freeze love in amber, but to re-enter it, with presence and courage, again and again. There’s resilience in that, a devotion to the unfinished. That framing as participation is actually such a rich and necessary shift. It reminds me of something from Martin Buber: in true relationship, the “I” and “Thou” meet in presence, not control. Love then becomes not a state we enter, but a space we create and re-create with every encounter.
What if real commitment is not only returning to the other, but to the relationship itself, as a third, living entity between two people? Like a fire, it needs tending with feeling, and with attention, ritual, and yes, effort. This makes the commitment dynamic — an act of mutual authorship that holds the ache and the awe together.
And your final lines? They belong in the essay. Or at least, beside it. Thank you, Glenn, for honouring it with such depth and generosity!
"…autonomy in duet.” Wow! This is the greatest love letter to love in its truest, most consistent, and most enduring form - one that is accompanied by full commitment. It's not meant to be easy; in fact, it requires effort, much like dancing. This effort shapes us into a body of two, inseparable in many unspoken yet beautiful ways. Big (content) sigh!!! I loved every word.
What a beautiful way to receive this essay, Otilia! I like your metaphor of dancing: the effort, the rhythm, the attunement it requires. Yes, love at its best is a choreography of two sovereign beings learning to move as one, without stepping on each other’s feet or losing their own balance. It’s not effortless, but it’s artful. I’m so glad the essay landed with you in that spirit! Your poetic soul is on the same length wave as mine.
This is glorious. I love and envy - in equal measure - the way you write. Every single sentence struck a chord with me. Thank you. I will save this and read it again, and probably again. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Nancy, that means more than I can say. To be read once is a gift; to be reread is a profound kind of trust. I’m grateful you connected with my essay, and flattered (in the best possible way) by your “envy”, it’s the kind that fuels both of us forward, I hope.
It’s magical and poetic. I write for my day-to-day work and there’s nothing creative about the way I write. I write to persuade, like you do, but I don’t have the confidence to write like this. I can’t even remember the last time I wrote an essay, probably at school or university. Maybe one day I will. 🙏🏼
Thank you so much again, and I want to gently push back on that last part. If you are already writing to persuade, you are writing creatively, you are shaping thought, choosing words, crafting rhythm, even if the form is different. The essay form is just a muscle, not a mystery. It remembers how to move the moment you give it permission.
And when you do write that essay one day, I have no doubt it will carry the same clarity, honesty, and quiet power that came through in your comment. I’ll be here cheering you on!
Thank you. That made my day Tamara. 🙏🏼
Few can write about commitment without being pathetic. You worked a miracle in this piece, it’s so poetic and wonderful, truly a masterpiece.
Thank you so much, what a generous thing to say! I tried to treat commitment with the gravity and grace it deserves, without the usual clichés.
T., your first sentence says so much. Love is a feeling, but commitment is a choice. Maybe all that needed to be said? The profound recognition of what forms intimacy is where you took this to another level. Equal parts of love and commitment. And you’re right, it is indeed rare.
I like Celine’s thoughts about love testing commitment. I suppose the same could work in juxtaposition. A failed commitment testing love.
You’re incredible. I love to see so many people enjoy and recognize your work.
Thank you for your words loaded with warmth and insight. That first sentence felt like a key I had to earn to turn. And yes, you’re right, just as love tests commitment, a failed commitment can test love, revealing whether it was anchored in something enduring or merely floating on idealism.
Intimacy, then, becomes a meeting point, and also a pressure point, where we see what breaks, and what bends into something stronger.
I’m so grateful you’re here reading and reflecting with me, Billy!
One of my favorite places to be.
We shall build a place one day, with your music and my poetry.
Truly, you’ve built a wonderful community here. I’m honored to be a little part of it. I’ll stop there as AGK is sensing saccharine! 😂 Really, I have yet to find another “place” with this much thought provoking content both from you and your readers. I learn a lot, everyday.
Honestly, I am very proud of my subscribers. This community is educated and wonderful. It’s not just my words that make this space feel alive; it’s the quality of thought and heart in replies like yours. And don’t worry, Andrew can handle a little sweetness when it’s this sincere! :)
Thank you, Billy, for noticing and liking it.
I love your thoughts.
Tamara, it's as if you know where to locate another. I know this is schmaltzy, and yet I need time to fully express how moved I am by this piece, here's my first pass... I've learned from your essays how brave, complicated, witty, dedicated, thorough, complex, skilled, and brilliant you are, but it keeps going up 10 notches and I'm shaken and stirred by your words.
The question I hope to ask when I'm facing death, the rider on the white horse, is did I love well? We know everything we love we will lose, and living with uncertainty creates an acute sense of sorrow and an ongoing relationship with grief and gratitude. As a robust adult, we do sacrifice at times to protect what we love, to my mind that bridges to your thesis of intimacy versus sovereignty. Too much intimacy and we lose ourselves. Too much sovereignty we become isolated, instead of living with silence and solitude.
Although I could underline every sentence you write (I'm overflowing with schmaltz;), this struck me in terms of the notion of power, "The dissonance between love and commitment has always existed, though it was expressed through different systems of power and belief." And I think of Jung's quote, "Where love reigns, there the will to power is absent. Where power predominates there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." Love without power is filled with sentimentality. Power without love leads to force, judgement, criticism. I sometimes brood over, what is "right relationship" with power? There is no shortage of power or love in the cosmos, and soul power, I believe, is a consequence of intimacy. Personally, I have been blessed in a long-term relationship as you have expressed, and although I have the experience, I would have never been able to so eloquently express it to the world as you have. It's what I mean by you know where to locate another. An amazing gift to the world.
I’m humbled by your words, Susan, and deeply stirred by your framing of love, power, grief, and the human project of trying to “love well” in a finite life. That question — Did I love well? — belongs on the lips of every honest soul at the edge of the unknown.
Your invocation of Jung’s quote is perfect. The shadow play between love and power philosophical and it’s also lived, daily, often unconsciously. We navigate it in every choice to yield or assert, to stay or step back, to speak or hold silence. I like your idea that “soul power” might be the offspring of intimacy, a force not of domination but of resonance, born when we allow ourselves to be altered by contact with the Other. Expanded, not eroded, not eclipsed.
I think sovereignty and intimacy are not opposites, but frequencies we must learn to harmonise. Like jazz musicians in improvisation, we need both autonomy and attunement to create something alive. Too much control, and we kill the music. Too much fusion, and we disappear in the noise. The art is in the dynamic… a shifting duet, not a fixed identity.
And your phrase — you know where to locate another — that might be the most beautiful definition of both love and writing I’ve heard. It’s the highest compliment I can imagine. Thank you for locating me, and for letting me locate something of you in return!
Yes, you illuminated this for me, "I think sovereignty and intimacy are not opposites, but frequencies we must learn to harmonise. Like jazz musicians in improvisation, we need both autonomy and attunement to create something alive," and I can see how together sovereignty and intimacy create a living culture, a village mind. Your devotional attention to the space between this village has endurance, I can remember to keep it in front of me, like a ritual space. The generosity you bestow to each of us is a movement of the heart. You give with no expectation other than participating. That is the intimation of a master of the wisdom. I am humbled by your wisdom and like in the Labors of Hercules, I am on my knees looking up to the stars in gratitude to have found your space between.
Equally grateful, Susan!
And I dream of meeting, one day, in a café or in a garden all my favourite subscribers to talk for hours and debate.
I'm holding that dream!
Truly masterful essay Tamara.
You blow me away with your insight and beautiful narrative.
Thank you so much, Jillian! I’m grateful you connected with my essay.
The truth you put forth here will be viewed as anachronistic, indeed anathema, by too many contemporary westerners.
It’s the very antithesis of the stuff such tv horror shows as ‘love at first sight’ put forth. I cannot watch them: they force me into anger & despair.
Your thesis isn’t compatible with the ‘easy-come/easy-go’ ‘dating’ applications prevalent. And doesn’t sit well with speed dating, planned obsolescence & consumerism.
In the rural villages in which my parents were raised, in Poland & Wales, spouse choice was not broad. Nevertheless, they met following my father fleeing the Soviets in eastern Poland, & settling in U.K. They married there in 1951, & were strongly & faithfully united for life, in spite of occasional upsetting arguments, until my father died in 2006. Neither strayed.
It’s ironic to consider the reality: if it wasn’t for Hitler & Stalin, my parents would never have met, & neither my sister nor I would have been born. I’m compelled to mention that, as evidence that good can grow from bad situations. Even more unlikely, had my mother not had a miscarriage following the birth of my sister, I wouldn’t have been conceived. Her state of relatively elevated anxiety throughout her pregnancy with me no doubt contributed to my emotional sensitivity. I’m glad it has.
Quoting from Shakespeare’s ‘As you like it’, “Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, ugly & venemous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head”.
Sage advice to those who deluded themselves by thinking that ‘true love’ is all milk & honey.
The same is also echoed in the rather saccharine song from mid-last century: “I give to you, & you give to me, true love, true love”.
Unity in love requires mutual generosity.
Perhaps unintentionally on your part, your ideas bear upon current psychosocial phenomena including the polarization between those who insist that ‘diversity is our strength’, & those who understand that unity is the only lasting bond.
I ponder whether the syllabi of secondary schools in the west should include the writing of an essay critically exploring this fundamentally important topic.
Finally, in the caption of your third featured artwork, as well chosen as ever, you write ‘martial unity’. Whether your intention was to write marital rather than martial is of little consequence: each is apt.
Your comment is one of those rare ones that sweeps across history, memory, politics, and paradox with both gravity and grace, thank you, Russell! You layered my essay with lived wisdom and ancestral echoes, and I’m genuinely moved.
Your story of your parents is so poignant, and precisely the kind of love story that gets erased by today’s hyper-curated culture of instant attraction and infinite scroll. What you offer is a counter-narrative: not love built on algorithms, but on adversity, endurance, and the kind of mutual generosity that transcends both fantasy and convenience. Your life, as you say, was forged in the crucible of history’s most devastating forces…. and yet what emerged was love, resilience, and emotional sensitivity. Sweet are the uses of adversity, indeed!
I like your point about “unity” versus “diversity,” particularly as it relates to love. Perhaps the truest diversity is internal: two distinct inner worlds choosing to bridge difference by tending it, not by dissolving it. Love, in this view, becomes a microcosmic act of reconciliation. And yes, real unity doesn’t demand uniformity; it requires commitment to shared meaning, especially in the face of difference.
As for your idea about introducing this into secondary education…. Ohhhh I couldn’t agree more. We teach students how to dissect texts, balance equations, and ace standardised tests, but we rarely teach them how to love well, how to suffer meaningfully, or how to hold complexity without collapsing into cynicism or sentimentality. Imagine the depth that could be sparked by an assignment that asks: is love enough?
Ah yes…. martial vs marital? It was supposed to be “marital”…. Let’s keep both (although I’ll correct that little mistake). Because love is tender, but commitment is often a disciplined campaign. Not a battle against one another, but a shared struggle for the relationship itself. A lifelong truce that has to be renegotiated daily.
Your comment belongs beside my essay. Thank you for making the conversation so much deeper. I always look forward to your reflections.
Sincere thanks for your comprehensive response, Tamara. I’m at a loss to respond adequately, so will sleep on it: not far off here in the antipodes.
Finally getting back to this comment and have re-read this beautifully complete and concise post four times now. There is quite simply nothing more to say, you covered it all so well Tamara! So I'll tell you the thoughts it sparked in me.
The chord it struck and that you allude to throughout, is the importance of understanding that "love" and "commitment" commitment must find balanced orbits and that balance starts with self. If that self is a wilderness, yet to be tamed or worse, never even explored, then love will just be infatuation and sex and looked at, as the actual commitment - shallow as it might be.
That of course would be a blanket laid on shifting sands - certainly not a house - to be swapped out anytime the grit became unbearable.
You pulled me back to past studies of Greek Philosophy and those six main archetypes of love. Oh, that I'd understood and tried to apply them back then, but the ignorance of a college Icarus is boundless.
The thoughtful genius of the Greeks, in giving frameworks and forms to such a formless and fickle concept, is apparent and appreciated now. Their foundational concepts were (and still can be) a road map to balancing a part of life, that refuse to be balanced - emotions. The individual was given a path of reason to understanding not only the feelings in the moment, but the phases of life they applied to. In their daily alchemy, the facets of love became normal, understood and accepted, as normal and expected parts of life, no different than air, water, arms or legs. It built on itself and opened the door to commitment in a natural "this is just what follows and make sense" sort of way. That's not to say it was a utopia or that there were not problems and issues, but their more thoughtful and human approach to love, blows the algorithms of today, to the moon.
There have always been fractures and a splintering of the two - love & commitment - but to my mind, there was a concerted and intentional effort towards this, just after WW2. This was when mass manipulation and scheming, to re-engineer the building blocks of Western societies and cultures began in earnest - on an industrial level. If one can erode and demoralize the basic unit of a society - the individual - then the relationships between them will fall easily and the rest is momentum.
I loved how you offered the saving rope of understanding, to those floundering in a sea of misunderstanding and confusion - Commitment as Freedom. You are correct, it is how we exist in those liminal spaces where the beauty and value of a masterpiece is not in the ability to have it delivered overnight, but rests in the months and years of labor, consideration, re-works, anguish, elation and finally acceptance of an emerging true form, not seen at the start.
If love were thought of as splendorous honey, then the commitment would be the laboring bees who reverently go about their work and purpose. Those two elements being requisite for not only their existence, but that of the hive and their kind.
Now for a bit of flattery of your mind and soul, that are akin to a magnificent emerald waterfall, tucked away in the deepest jungles, full of power and majesty, but offering the lightest and most refreshing delights of their mists. The confluences that form the intellectual ropes that dance gracefully from the heights, are never seen by those dancing in their magic and pools of gifts below - your readers - but they are reverently appreciated just the same.
You are a magnificent treasure Tamara - this won't be the last time you hear that from me.
Thank you!
This is one of those comments that feel like a long-lost letter from a kindred spirit, thank you for the generosity of thought, feeling, and language you’ve offered here! Thank you also for travelling through it, with memory, history, philosophy, and grace as your compass.
Your insight about selfhood being the foundation upon which love and commitment must orbit is striking and essential. If the self is unexamined, undisciplined, or merely reactive, then any relationship becomes a projection screen for unmet needs and unhealed wounds. What you call a “blanket laid on shifting sands” is precisely the fragility so many mistake for connection: chemistry mistaken for character, attention mistaken for intention.
The Greeks’ nuanced taxonomy of love (eros, philia, agape, pragma, ludus, storge) was intellectual and deeply human. They gave shape to emotional ambiguity, allowed love to be more than just erotic fervour or domestic duty. They understood that to make commitment sustainable, love needed form, and that form was philosophical. What you called their daily alchemy is something we now try to outsource to apps and impulse. No wonder we are starving.
Your historical note on post-WWII social engineering is haunting. The destabilisation of the self has long been a precondition for control, first by ideology, now by economy. When commitment is framed as oppression, and freedom as infinite deferral, we are left with neither rootedness nor flight….. just drift.
And your metaphor, commitment as the labouring bees to love’s honey, is stunning. That is it. Beauty sustained by devotion. Sweetness born of loyalty in repetition. The hive, like the heart, demands care beyond the first bloom.
As for your final lines… I’m genuinely moved. Not just by the flattery (which is lush and exquisite), but by the reverence behind it. The kind of reverence that makes me want to write better, listen harder, and keep showing up. If my words are a waterfall, yours are the deep forest that gives it meaning.
Thank you for walking through this piece with such soul!
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this. You have knitted it so very well. thanks for this beautiful piece
Thank you so much, Rameez! I like your use of “knitted”, that’s exactly how it felt writing it: threading together ideas, history, feeling, and form into something cohesive but still soft around the edges. I appreciate you taking the time to read and say so.
i read this word many years ago and it stayed with me, therefore, it always pops up whenever i write something related to craft. And, also, this is quite a coherent piece, i must say and you have a way with words. I wish i could put half as clarity and precision in my writing as this.
You can always keep on writing. The more you write, the more you’ll perfect your craft.
Thanks for the motivation
A masterpiece..I will need to read many times.. but one question arose..where does the author see herself in all these perspectives and genres?
Thank you, what a powerful question, and such a necessary one! Because, of course, no essay like this can be written from the safe perch of detachment. It’s a mirror made from lived experience, cracked and polished in equal measure.
Where do I see myself? In nearly every tension the piece describes. I’ve been the romantic and the realist, the spark-chaser and the scaffold-builder, the one who left too soon and the one who stayed too long. I’ve believed in love as revelation and questioned it as projection. I’ve wrestled with the pull toward sovereignty and the ache for real intimacy, and I’ve learned (still learning) that real partnership means living in that liminal space where both must coexist.
I write about these dynamics not as someone who has mastered them, but as someone who has been shaped by them…. sometimes gently, sometimes with the force of a lesson I didn’t ask for but needed. The voice in this essay is mine, yes, but it’s also collective, stitched together from stories, studies, poetry, philosophy, and what life has insisted I pay attention to.
So, if there’s authority in the writing, it’s earned not through certainty, but through participation. I stand inside the questions I raise.
Tamara, there is so much wisdom and Love in your writings, coming from an open heart.. alone these sharings are enough to stir mind and heart into days of self reflection.. so, as days are not available right now :).. i just wanted to throw out 3 things that came to me in the moments i read your reply..
1 Candle in the Wind… as in Elton John and the Diana Tribute version, but then your description came over more as a pebble in a stream, that sometimes was quiet, and sometimes a raging torrent in heavy rains, but forever just a form being shaped by its destiny
2 Open heart Chakra.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anahata
3 https://youtube.com/shorts/kzbW12rlcyE?si=Zf4mzXuSB858FU-p
I wept...
… and this is a gift.
Thank you!
Where do you get the delineation between commitment and love to begin with?
Great question, and one that cuts right to the heart of my essay.
The delineation between love and commitment isn’t always clear in real time, but it becomes crucial when we confuse feeling with sustaining. Love is the initial current — emotional, often involuntary, deeply tied to chemistry, projection, and longing. Commitment is the structure we choose to house that current. It’s not just staying, but staying with intention. Not because the feeling persists, but because we have decided the bond is worth tending, even when the feeling ebbs.
One is the spark, the other the hearth.
They’re intertwined, yes, but not identical. And knowing the difference is often what prevents us from mistaking intensity for intimacy, or permanence for possession.