- …somehow, our understanding of love has changed almost not at all. Across the ages from Plato’s day to our own, up and down the cultural registers from lowbrow to high, the notion of love as the union of souls persists… The couples counselor Harville Hendrix has written that the entire experience of falling in love can be distilled down to just four characteristic emotions. The first, he says, is a feeling of recognition—the thing that makes you say to your newfound love (the quotes are his), “I know we’ve just met, but somehow I feel as though I already know you.” The second is a feeling of timelessness: “Even though we’ve only been seeing each other for a short time, I can’t remember when I didn’t know you.” The third is a feeling of reunification: “When I’m with you, I no longer feel alone; I feel whole, complete.” The fourth is a feeling of necessity: “I can’t live without you.”… What is remarkable about this idea of love is how deeply entrenched it is—in our hearts as well as our culture—even as it utterly fails to correspond to reality… “There’s a kind of collusion in romantic love not to breach reality. So when two different realities finally do enter the picture, there’s a real competition for who has the truth… if you want to be in a relationship, you have to get it that you live with another person. That person isn’t you. She’s not merged with you. She’s not your picture of who she is. She doesn’t live inside your mind. She doesn’t know what you’re thinking, and you don’t know what she’s thinking. So you have to back off and move from reactivity to curiosity. You have to ask questions. You have to listen."

- Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong