“Si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l’autre, vous êtes foutu”  (If you’re trapped in the dream of the other, you’re fucked)

—Gilles Deleuze

Have you ever been in love?  Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable.  It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.  You build up these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…..You give them a piece of you.  They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore.  Love takes hostages.  It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple phrases like “maybe we should be just friends” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart!  It hurts.  Not just in the imagination.  Not just in the mind.  It’s a soul hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

—Neil Gaiman

This signature song by Heart, vocalized by Ann Wilson captures the subterranean terror inherent in a disposition of the self to another, a self without armor, “in love.” The risk in incalculable.  What about love?  It’s walking a high wire without a net. And yet we do, we must.

Another video recorded in 2017 captures Wilson singing this great tune in almost  a capella mode.  For a treat CLICK HERE

I’ve been lonely
I’ve been waiting for you
I’m pretending and that’s all I can do
The love I’m sending
Ain’t making it through to your heart
You’ve been hiding, never letting it show
Always trying to keep it under control
You got it down and you’re well
On the way to the top
But there’s something that you forgot

What about love
Don’t you want someone to care about you
What about love
Don’t let it slip away
What about love
I only want to share it with you
You might need it someday

I can’t tell you what you’re feeling inside
I can’t sell you what you don’t want to buy
Something’s missing and you got to
Look back on your life
You know something here just ain’t right

What about love
Don’t you want someone to care about you
What about love
Don’t let it slip away
What about love
I only want to share it with you
What about love
Don’t you want someone to care about you
What about love
Don’t let it slip away
What about love
I only want to share it with you

lyrics written by Brian Allen, Sheron Alton and Jim Vallance

Or to state the matter differently, — Slavoj Zizek quotes and supplements Lacan in his book entitled Violence:

Love is giving something one doesn’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.