Love is a Sickness...

While reading the online magazine SexIs, I came across an article and video by Nikol Hasler that reminded me of a poem that I'd read many years ago, long before I'd met my wonderful husband. It is a poem about love, but it is definitely not the usual sweetness and light that you expect from poems about love.

Love is a Sickness
by
Samuel Daniel

Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that most with cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full, nor fasting.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,
Heigh ho!

At that time in my life, I was pretty miserable with trying to find someone that I could actually love and who would love me back. I was also witness to so many dysfunctional romances that seemed to thrive on abuse and wither from kindness, that it made me wonder if all “love” was like that. I'm usually not that into poetry, but this poem from the 16th century stuck in my mind because it showed that human relationships really haven't changed over hundreds of years.

Fortunately, not all relationships are really like that, but it still surprises me what some people will put up with simply so that they won't be alone.