This is a great cover of the Modern English tune, which is a classic to the point of almost being a cliché of 80s music, but which is still a good tune. The one above is sweet and sensual, and it's fun to incorporate it into the overall "Love" meme I've been working on the blog this month, and a continuation of what I was musing about earlier this morning.
The nice thing with that song title is it's so lovey-dovey -- the song's not "You Make Me Melt" or "We Mix Well Together." Bahah! It's "I Melt With You." and so it embodies something of that idea of synergy, of becoming stronger and larger than yourself through love. Above and beyond the biomechanics of reproduction, mind you, there's the psychosocial strength of true love, that makes you melt and both strengthens the individual and bonds them to another. To a Romantic, it's a beautiful thing, that communion of spirits.
A better union is going to yield a purer blend, a stronger alloy; a less sanguine one is still capable of being spot-welded together, or bound up with duct tape and staples, but it's not going to match that alloy's strength, flexibility, and durability. Of course people aren't metal, but true love is an alloying of spirits, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. It must be.
I think some folks, for various reasons, are less comfortable with "melting with" someone else than others. You have to give up some of yourself to be able to love someone else, and for a taker, versus a giver, that has to be threatening. That's got to be a serious flaw in the ability to love, or to recognize true love when/if it even appears in one's life.
So maybe there really are weak loves and strong ones, represented by the nature of the relationships that result from them. A one-night stand is by its very nature devoid of love, about the most love-free human transaction you could have, short of outright prostitution. And, big shock, those tend to be the least-emotionally satisfying. With those as the street- and curbside view of relationships, and with true love cavorting in the penthouse, then you have a number of floors between. That's your continuum from loveless to true love, with the love growing stronger as you work your way toward the ideal.
The key is understanding what makes it stronger or weaker, then, and when you factor in individual foibles, quirks, stupidities, and out-and-out insanities (which'd likely be the love equivalent of taking a swan-dive out the window of one of those higher floors), it makes it really hard to get to that penthouse, that "Melt With You" place of peace.
So far in my musing/brooding, I think there's mutual attraction, appreciation, respect, trust, chemistry, acceptance, forgiveness, and reciprocity as vital and necessary elements to true love.
I distinguish between attraction and appreciation -- because you can greatly appreciate someone without being attracted to them; and, god help you, you can also be highly attracted to someone without appreciating them, too. And while chemistry is bound up in attraction, I think it's far more magical than that -- a good-looking person is attractive, but you can have two great-looking people together who simply lack chemistry; you can have two objectively unattractive people who have magnificent chemistry as well. You could have a Beauty and the Beast kind of pairing, too, bound up in chemistry. If you and someone else work, you just work; and it's an ineffable and beautiful thing. But if that chemistry isn't there, I don't think there's anything that'll make it work.
Chemistry matters. Big-time. No chemistry, no true love is even possible. I'm just going to flat-out declare that. A workable love could probably be had without much chemistry, but it would be like saltine crackers, not something magical, memorable, exquisite and beautiful.
And you'll notice I didn't include "Romance" in my list of vital components to true love, because I don't think romance is, strictly speaking, necessary to it. I think it's nice and wonderful if you have it -- hell, it's surely a blessed byproduct of that vital chemistry, a blending of attraction, appreciation, and desire. And as a Romantic, I hold that romance is a vital component to my conception of true love, I imagine a couple of statuesque Stoics could politely hold hands while sitting on marble pedestals and be perfectly happy with that. Romance is seasoning for love, but you can have love without that seasoning; it's just romance makes it so much better. No wonder the Romance genre continues to thrive even in an age when it seems fewer and fewer people read. Women in particular crave that romance, so while one can love without romance, it makes love more savory and sweeter and spicier.
But one cannot reach true love without that chemistry. It's what separates Mr./Ms. Right from Mr./Ms. Meh or Mr./Ms. Good Enough. And while someone can perhaps feign romance, I don't believe chemistry can be faked; either a couple of lovers have it or they don't.
