Alex: Well at least we'll be loved...

Summer '00...
Alex told me about a mutual friend one day: "She was fuckin' whinin' about some guy she went out with dumping her. They were together for two weeks and he was fucking his ex-girlfriend the whole time and SHE CARES. I can't stand that girl." I can't stand her either, really. But I can't say I don't understand either. You meet someone you like them and they like you. That's worth a lot. It feels good to have someone who's really there with you. And once you have it you don't want to let go...

And reading today ...
People are crazy irrational, emotional beings. It's out of control. Barry Schwartz, The Costs of Living:

We should be mindful that people who do things for some people out of love may well do things to others out of hate. People who give special treatment to those they know and like may deny such treatment--or any treatment--to those they don't know or don't like. And as their feelings for the people they know change--out of envy, spite or resentment-- their treatment of those people will also change. Given the mercurial character of human emotions, and the dynamic character of personal relations, a social world based on these relations would be unstable and unpredictable. If, instead, people calculated their selfish interests in calm, cool, rational fashion, and then relentlessly pursued those interests, social life would become much more stable and predictable.

When love affairs turn sour, lovers rarely become neutral toward one another. Instead there is an impulse to lash out, to be cruel, to hurt, even if doing so is hurtful to oneself. It is better to understand that people will stay connected to others only as long as the cost-benefit calculations they engage in say it is worth their while to do so, better to understand that intimate relations are just an exchange of goods and services than to be deluded into thinking that love will rule over self-interest and lead people to act for the benefit of those they love no matter what the cost. Thinking realistically about love encourages us to develop a social system that protects people against the disappointment, exploitation, abandonment, and heartbreak that dependence on a romantic conception of love so often brings.

Then he goes on to say how that this kind of economic imperialism discredits love and dismisses all its qualities that the market can't provide ("compassion, care, tenderness, intimacy, openness, and vulnerability").

So fine. Alex is an economic imperialist. I'm sure he'd "love" it if you called him that.

I've never broken up with someone or been broken up with and felt so weird that I just treated the person like crap and wrote them off and never wanted to speak to them again. Sure there's some emotional pain. Weeping and feeling like your chest and throat switched places, but so what. You get over it and try to be friends. You liked her before you split. It's not okay to like her after? Not to say that this sentiment was always reciprocated in my past relationships (I once had a pair of underwear returned to me by mail, shredded). A lot of people think it's crazy to be friends with people you've dated. Like it's poison.