Secretly in love

I acknowledge that I am inclined to do romantic love badly.  We mistake it for things that are close or familiar in shape or size.  Love causes visual impairment.  A horse, seen at a distance in a field, ought not to be mistaken for a cow.  So much energy, way too much time are devoted to trying to make it, what we think is love, come out the way we want it to.  Doubt, suspicion, insecurity, jealousy, lack of control over the actions of the swoon-inducing other, fault-finding, impatience, under-developed compassion, estrangement from one's true self, spoiled and bratty demands and expectations, self-involvement, fragile ego, childhood issues, and general confusion turn what we like to think of as love into the war zone of disappointment we've created.

When we mistreat love we harm ourselves and any hope of the connection we believe we desire.  It takes a true veteran, of this lifetime or something previous, to maintain the balance of trust and surrender necessary for love to be anything but a dream and one's love object to be anything but the victim of an attempted hostage situation.  Mature, patient, accepting love is not often seen and because of that is frequently misunderstood by observers.  As with the rest of life, love requires being comfortable with what is not shown or said but simply known.  Simply applies to love in so many ways, chief among them acknowledging that love simply is.
 
For these reasons, and probably dozens more as yet unnamed, I took the above quote to heart.  There IS romance to being secretly in love, even as a two-way street, meaning secret to others but known to those involved.  There is the primitive fear of angering old gods by speaking aloud of something at once fragile and enduring, of diluting red passion to a watery shade of peach with too much talk.  Not all who love are shown a clear path of action for such does not always exist.  In a state of no apparent next move, we decide it must not be love because we can't see where it might go.  It doesn't have to become anything.  It is already there.