Whether love is for you the great reality or the great illusion depends firstly on whom you fall in love with and what you do about it, and secondly on their response to you. It takes two to prove that love is reality; one to love, the other to respond. It takes two to prove that love is an illusion; one to trust, and the other to betray. A man or woman thinks about love what their experience has taught them is true. It is no good teaching people about love by reference to other people's experience. Parents have tried for centuries; but their children never listen. It is one's own experience which alone is cogent to persuade. Naturally if the first love-affair ends disastrously, one does not necessarily lie down under the experience; one may very well be willing to try again - and again. But sooner or later, one is compelled either to accept some woman's response as the best that can be hoped for, in other words as one's criterion of what love is like; or one is compelled to admit one's disappointment. Either way in the end your experience teaches you what you believe about love. The only beliefs you really believe, are the beliefs you put into practice; intellectual beliefs about love gleaned from other people's experience are shadowy in comparison.