## Metadata - Author: [[Tara Isabella Burton]] - Full Title:: In Defense of Falling in Love - By Tara Isabella Burton - Category:: #🗞️Articles - URL:: https://thelostword.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-falling-in-love?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email - Read date:: [[2026-02-15]] ## Highlights > We were drunk, and didn’t define our terms, and probably all enjoyed playing into our expected roles more than we enjoyed narrowing down the precise limitations of our disagreement ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgkypgvgrxe6s5jkm5dts40)) > Falling in love, understood as a erotic vulnerability, or a stronger form of infatuation (but distinguished, let’s say, from sexual attraction), is a bad idea because: > a) it makes you crazy; > b) it makes you make ill-advised decisions about who to marry and’ > c) is likely to be more a result of your own projections and idealizations about the other person, downstream of your own projections and idealizations about yourself, and the kind of relationship a person like you should be in, and the fantasy of the other person playing that role, than it is about the kind of actual mutuality and engagement with true otherness that lasting, real, agapic love requires. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgm0tm5cana5z20xyw0rr85)) > I still think it’s no less worth doing than any other form of artistic creation. > It’s only by falling in love that we learn to be ourselves in the first place. I can’t think of a more foundational requirement, for a partner, than *the person with whom you act out the illusion of who you think you are.* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgm1h64c5j5xj01kcmssa1t)) > the distinction between “intense physical attraction” and “idiotic infatuation” and “truly falling in love” can be made in hindsight only. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgm2kym7ksd63tfm9pnnvnp)) > Lover and beloved are always characters. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgm7njb0etjve1v1ae75xk7)) > to create (or, in those blessed cases of reciprocated love, co-create) a shared expression of reality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgn14r77jv6b0vvz0y5yx9z)) > is less about the fostering of illusions than the creative wielding of them. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgn28vfejdc85p7f7env9x0)) > Of course it’s not the same thing as “loving someone.” That’s the lasting love, the self-sacrificial love, the love that requires really seeing someone else, *not* as character, or as fantasy, or as projection, but as another distinct human being – as artist, and not just art. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgn32sy1f20xpzr72qvts6n)) > I see the world anew; not *as it really is,* maybe, but through a different lens. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgn732rg3ag7bjkjxdtsk1h)) > we have neither world enough, nor time, in this life, to do such a thing, that is part of what finitude is, and that is where I think my friend was right, that when you make a decision about the building of a life with someone, it also matters whether you like to leave parties at the same time. You have to keep the frame in place somewhere. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgtt1jp4gqvkwwza3z4g0x3)) > we aren’t stable. Life changes us. We never get to say we have it all figured out. We’re never too good to be made fools of. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgtvqsymvesk4qshkpfjdhy)) > I can’t think of anything more important, when facing the kinds of changes we can never anticipate, than someone with whom you can do the perpetual, creative work of playing around with who you think you are. > Someone, in other words, with whom you can share a stage. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgtw00nchdj16seb4bv3043)) > You create illusions together, and discover which of them are true. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01khgtxpfkcptt1p6e4726g29d))