from what he (or she) was before. On the other hand the sense of well-being that comes when one is loved is real enough; and the sense of desolation that comes when that love is withdrawn is also real enough. If it were not so, if love were an illusion in this sense too, if the well-being were an illusion, then one would have thought that with a bit of an effort one could work oneself up into this happy state without being loved and one cannot do it. It is as hopeless as trying to lift oneself by one's own bootlaces. And the desolation too, one would have thought that with a bit of an effort one could snap out of it, and see it for the illusion that it was, and be one's normal cheerful self again - and again one cannot. One can put a cheerful face on things: one can hide one's grief; but time alone heals. The exaltation and the abasement of love are both terribly real, and it is only inexperience which is so rash as to treat them as illusions.
This is something quite different from anything described before. The exaltation of love is in a different class of experience from the exhilaration of confidence or of a team relationship. The abasement of love is catastrophically greater than a sense of inadequacy or failure, which is all that has been described hitherto. It may be that the world would be a more straightforward place, and life possibly both simpler and better, if love did not exist, and one only had to reckon with confidence and lack of confidence. But love does exist in people's lives, and one has to take account of its disconcerting presence.
The first thing to notice is that the exaltation and abasement demonstrate that love is a mechanism by which one person affects and brings influence to bear on another. If love existed solely in the mind, which is contrary to the experience of everyone who has ever been in love, then presumably the awareness that one was loved by another would affect one's consciousness, and help to create the type of team relationship already described. And presumably this does in fact happen. It is however only half the story. The other half of the…