Love drives us mad, but madness rescues us from ‘horrible sanity’

By David McElroy · February 15, 2022

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
— Edgar Allan Poe, in a letter to George W. Eveleth

I had just spent most of a year wanting to be rid of a woman I had been dating for three years. I broke up with her one time but I felt so guilty that I changed my mind a few days later. I wanted her to decide I was right — that we had no future. After months of this waffling from me, the day finally came.

She was giving up on me and moving on. Suddenly, I felt hurt and stricken. I had made a terrible mistake. I wanted her back.

I was in my first year of working full-time after college. My work suddenly suffered. There was one day when I didn’t show up for work until halfway through the day. I was a basket case.

A co-worker had the perfect solution for me, though. She said I needed to pretend to be seriously ill, enough to get put into a hospital. I don’t recall the details, but she had a very serious plan. She was sure this would bring my ex running back in fear that I was dying.

Although I didn’t seriously consider her plan, this has always stood out to me as the height of love’s insanity. People in love can be desperate. They can do insane things.

But I’ve had crazy thought. What if these periods of love-driven insanity are the very best parts of life? What if it’s the period of “horrible sanity” that make life unbearable? Without the unbearable insanity of love, does life have any meaning?

I’m of two minds about this, of course. One part of me knows it’s nonsense. The desperate and crazy feelings that come when we want someone can feel dangerous. We can feel as though we’re just one step short of breaking down. I’ve felt that way before.

I’ve written about that more than once. In fact, there’s no other subject that brings as much email response to me. I’ve noticed that things I’ve written about missing someone or feeling desperately alone get the highest readership very late at night. And I often get emotional emails from heartbroken people who write to say they feel the same way.

More than one person has written me to say that he or she thought that nobody else in the world felt as he or she did on the inside — about loving or missing someone — but that I had expressed what this person felt deeply inside. Some of these people write just because they’re hurting and lonely. Others write to ask for advice.

I try to give people reasonable advice when I can, but maybe I’m the last person who should be giving advice. After all, I’m just as alone as they are. My choices about love have left me hurt and alone, too.

When I do give other people advice, I give them a rational analysis of whatever situation they tell me about. I can see their situations clearly and objectively in a way that they can’t. For the most part, they can’t see the people they love any more objectively than I can see for myself.

In some of the cases I’m asked about, there are clear and obvious solutions. Most of the relationships that people ask me about sound as though they need to end. Many of them sound as though they never should have started. But even as I’m giving people reasonable and rational advice, I know they’re unlikely to listen.

People who are in love mostly want to hear that they should hold onto love, even love they have for people who don’t love them anymore. Even love they have for people who abuse them. People who’ve hurt them. People who they no longer trust.

People who are truly in love don’t typically act like rational people. In fact, if you’re not acting at least a little bit insane — as a result of the love you claim — you’re probably not really in love. And that contradiction sounds insane to me, but it’s true.

I was driving home from work one evening recently when a phrase hit me out of nowhere. I was thinking about love and its effect on me. I was thinking about how love can limit my choices and keep me from pursuing things I might otherwise pursue. Out of the blue, I heard these words in my mind.

Love constrains me, but it saves me, too.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I meant by that at first, so I pondered it for the rest of my drive home. By the time I pulled into my driveway, it seemed to make sense.

Love is what I live for. Love in all its forms. I don’t love as widely as I wish I did. I wish I could love more people, but that’s hard for me. When I do love, it’s something that causes me to be unreasonably devoted. Desperate. Determined. Blind, even.

When I love, it’s not just words. It’s a fierce fire that burns brightly inside me. It’s a blazing fire that’s almost impossible to put out. If I love a woman, I’ll do anything for her. This isn’t so unusual. It makes me willing to sacrifice anything and everything — if she will just love me in return.

If love didn’t exist, I’m not sure I would find another reason to live this human life. If I could live for another thousand years — but I would experience no love along the way, only limitless pleasure — that wouldn’t be a life I would find worth living.

On the other hand, even a short life with the right love would mean everything. I recently found myself so overwhelmed by a particular love I was feeling that I thought something odd. If I were told that I could have just one year with this love — and then I would die, giving up the rest of my life — I knew I would gladly accept. It wouldn’t even seem like a sacrifice.

Is that insane? Probably. But it’s the sort of thinking and feeling which can make life feel completely meaningful to me. I need to love and be loved. I need that more than I need life itself.

Love is a power source for me. Even though it can be insanity, it’s that flame of absolute love that might save me from the nihilism of “horrible sanity” which life would be without love.

Note: The art above is from 19th century French painter Gustave Courbet’s self-portrait called “The Desperate Man.”

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For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

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