If the fall into love happened so rapidly, it is perhaps because the wish to love has preceded the beloved - the need has invented its solution. The appearance of the beloved is only the second stage of a prior [but largely unconscious] need to love someone - our hunger for love moulding their features, our desire crystallizing around them. [But the honest side of us will never let the deception go unchallenged. There will always be moments when we will doubt whether our lover exists in reality or as we imagine them in our minds - or whatever they are not just a hallucination we have invented to prevent the inevitable loveless collapse.]
‘Essays in love’ - Alain de Botton
