ROMANTICISM IS AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM. WELL, ROMANTICISM; OR RATHER, THE LACK THEREOF, IS AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM THAT LETS US KNOW WHEN WE ARE SWIMMING IN A RIVER OF SHYTE AND NEED TO GRAB A BRANCH; AND HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE!

Love as Charity in A♭ Major, Exotic Scales & Variations Series

ALBERTI ROMANI · 27 min read · Sep 8, 2021

Fuck this philosophy of pessimism being peddled by Mr. de Botton and other co-dependents like him. There is plenty of light, laughter…and whole lot of love left in the world. Go get some of that light and bask in it! This imperfect, diminished, manipulative, soul-sucking entity to which you have hitched your wagon gives-not two fucks about you and your dying soul...

Love as Charity in A♭ Major; musically, it is part of the Exotic Scales & Variations Series of compositions. This series is about exploring little known musical scales, variations and ideas; using what I have learned so far about phrasing, voicing and improvisation.

It builds on the previous “Polishing a Stone Series” by capturing an idea as it is born—warts and all—giving it a rough outline, clear enough that the contours are visible; then “polishing”, developing and refining it over time—But the emphasis is in trying new and exotic musical ideas, scales and variations.

This article however, is an exploration of human interpersonal relationships. Although it uses marriage as its primary canvas, its conclusions can safely be extrapolated to all human, interpersonal relationships. Be warned however, these words will force you to look at the relationships in your life in a critical and completely new light. Once you have seen and learned what you are about to see and learn, you cannot unsee it, you cannot unlearn it. Proceed at your own risk…

Background

On May 28th, 2018 Alain de Botton published an essay in the New York Times titled, “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person”. This was a follow up of sorts to the Google Event in London in 2017. In both cases, Mr. de Botton argued that our “unrealistic” expectations, and not our partner’s shortcomings, were the real reason for our sense of rage, unhappiness and the general malaise that permeates our relationships.

The central thesis in his arguments seemed to be that, despite our best efforts, we will marry the wrong person; or to put it another way, all our relationships will be with imperfect partners. That for the sake of our sanity and long-term mental health, we should accept this as an unavoidable end and look to our dear beloved with sympathy, empathy and understanding.

Perhaps I am alone in this, but I have come to believe ALL relationships follow the same dynamics, regardless of type (that is, ALL relationships are inter-personal. Be it romantic, as in with your future spouse; familiar as in with your children, siblings, friends, etc. as well as transactional as in work, professional, and or business relationships). Yes there is, and always will be, some degree of overlap between them; but the dynamics remain the same in all circumstances.

When your life — the very marrow of your soul is being sucked away, being lonely is the least of your problems

Love has surely shifted my way—Marry me

Don’t get me wrong, I think Mr. de Botton makes some compelling arguments—arguments that may prove to be right, as when he says that,

“…we marry to make a nice feeling permanent. We imagine that marriage will help us to bottle the joy we felt when the thought of proposing first came to us…”

This is true for any relationship. We enter into a kind of social contract to time-freeze that same feeling of joy, hope and comfort…or even acomplishment. But please remember, any contract is also a promise to deliver “goods and/or services”

The part with which I vehemently disagree is his nihilistic attitude that relationships are a mirage—that their utility is ALWAYS less than advertised…that what’s inside the box is always less than what is expected based on the packaging. That we must lower these unrealistic expectations if we are to derive the joy, nourishment and the fulfillment we seek by entering into these relationships in the first place. He continues,

“…Indeed, marriage tends decisively to move us onto another, very different and more administrative plane, which perhaps unfolds in a suburban house, with a long commute and maddening children who kill the passion from which they emerged. The only ingredient in common is the partner. And that might have been the wrong ingredient to bottle…”

I agree with his assertion that,

“…The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently…”

Dragged me down below, Down to the devil’s show

But even this reformulation assumes the other party in the relationship is NOT a soul-sucking nightmare (like the cipó matador of the island of Java), slowly unspooling over the course of years or decades, like some putrid vine, or a flesh-eating disease…an estrago, to utterly consume the other partner’s life. To suck the VERY marrow and vigor off the other’s literal soul.

If you find yourself under these circumstances, you need to understand you are in grave danger! What you are dealing with is a deadly fungus, a black mold, a cancer…an infectious and deadly disease. A Rube Goldberg Machine, a foreign agent insinuating itself into your life. A succubus pretending to help & guide you; but only there to siphon off your life’s utility. Only there to steal your purpose and your resources. They are nothing but a vile weed. Nothing more than a unwanted, unneeded nuisance species siphoning off precious nutrients and sunlight.

You need to take a metaphorical Bolo knife to clear off the bush. You need to hack away at its trunk, arms and canes to save whatever you can of the already rotting, literally dying tree. Make no mistake about this, if you find yourself in such a situation, your physical and your emotional health is in danger. You need to get away from them as fast as you can.

This is not an exaggeration: fuck this idea of looking at such nightmare with sympathy…Don’t you get it? You’ve stepped onto a hidden, buried land mine. Oh God! what have I done? Too late. click-click-BOOM! Bloody stumps where just mere seconds ago were arms, and limbs…and dreams, and possibilities.

Figure out how much you have to cut-off to save whatever is left of you before you bleed out. Gather yourself and swing the knife before it is too late! Seriously, what is wrong with people like Mr. de Botton? What kind of co-dependent, brain-washed, masochistic bullshit is this?

“…Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling…”

Fuck No! Whatever grotesque misery we go through in our marriage, or any of our relationships for that matter, IS exceptional and appalling!

Say it isn’t true, don’t tell me romance is dead

Motherfucker NO! Romanticism, or rather the lack thereof, is an early warning system that lets us know when we are swimming in a river of shyte and need to grab a branch; and hold on for dear life!

I don’t know if this guy is stupid or a nookie junkie; but there is no cluster of multiple orgasms, no material gains, or bait (that old chesnut, what about the children…?) that would make such a state of affairs worth it. You need to wake the fuck up! This is a clear and present danger and your emotional, your physical existence is at stake. It’s all hands on deck! Yet, he writes,

“…We end up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not normal. We should learn to accommodate ourselves to wrongness, striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and in our partners…”

Bitch please. This shit is NOT normal! When your life—when the very marrow of your soul is being sucked away…when you are left withering and dying, no amount of forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective is going to snap you back to reality, beyond the here and now. The prospect of being lonely (or even spending the rest of your natural life alone), in these circumstances is the least of your problems.

I hear the silent screaming deep in the dark, somewhere in space

Allow me to paint you a picture: You need to understand that by this point you are an unlucky star that wandered too close to a gravity well (a fast-spinning black hole) and got trapped.

You’ve already crossed beyond the event horizon. You’ve reached the point at which the gravimetric forces are so strong that they stretch you out and “spaghetti-fy” you, until you are nothing more than super-heated plasma hopelessly falling into oblivion.

To use a different metaphor, you have been infected with a deadly disease; one that makes your flesh rot and fall away. Your organs have liquefied; and you are at death’s door, spewing blood, and puss, and piss…and shyte from every orifice.

You don’t have a lot of time. You need to run…or walk, or crawl. You need to fucking tuck-N-roll if you have to, but you need to get the fuck away from its orbit before you die. RUN!!!

I know that you may be thinking, “This guy is just bitter,” maybe he’s just “jaded after a bad experience,” or worse, that I may be exaggerating to garner some sympathy. I will leave the final judgement up to you; but what I would like to encourage you to do, as you read these words, is to review the relationships you have had, and see how the similarities begin to stack up.

Do you remember the hurt, the rage, sadness, the realization of precious time lost? Remember the blood, tears and treasure it all took from you? Oh yes, you do. All that cost was bourne by you and YOU alone. I am sorry to have to remind you of this, but as you know, it gets worse…

The worst amongst the worse is that as you fall into oblivion, into its darkness…its endless night, you will often hear them pontificate, distance themselves from the very nightmare they brought into your life. They will re-cast themselves as victims of the very monster they spawned.

They will mime your pain, they will counterfeit your despair…they will say, “See? Look. I am in pain too. I suffer too…I am a victim of this unfortunate turn of events…”

And you will then sit there transfixed. You listen with absolute disgust as they recast themselves as hapless victims. Oh, yes; mere bit players in the universe’s grand productions. But never in their leading role of perpetrators, of creators of the play…or, and this is my favourite, they will cast their actions, THEIR very own decisions and their consequences as YOUR responsibility.

The disgust is complete. The revulsion is total. It begins as a phantom heat, a prickling of the dermis where their ghost still lingers, uninvited and obscene. You remember the weight of their touch—not as a gesture of intimacy, but as the sluggish, oily trail of a parasite seeking purchase. Their words, those soft, calculated murmurs, now feel like grit in your ears, while the memory of their lips on your skin acts as a chemical burn, searing a brand of subhuman ownership into your flesh. You can still catch the phantom notes of their scent—that cloying, saccharine musk of decay disguised as perfume—and the nausea hits you with the force of a physical blow.

It is a profound, ontological filth; you feel as though they have emptied themselves into you, depositing a thick, suffocating layer of spiritual excrement over your very being. It is a coating of grime that defies the physics of the bathtub. You could scrub until the skin weeps blood, you could let the years stretch into decades, you could flee to the furthest, most sterile corners of the map, and yet you would still feel the slick, repulsive residue of their essence clinging to your pores. They have painted you in their own ugliness, and no solvent in existence is strong enough to dissolve the stain of their proximity.

Your stomach, sensing the invasion of these memories, begins an agonizing, rhythmic revolt. The very thought of their continued existence, of their breath mingling with the same oxygen you require to survive, turns your internal organs into a knots of writhing serpents. Deep within your abdomen, the bile—that bitter, greenish-yellow fluid of pure hatred—refuses to sit still; it churns against the lining of your stomach, a caustic tide fighting to escape. You feel the retrograde peristalsis begin, a violent, involuntary upheaval where the muscles of your diaphragm and abdomen contract with such ferocity that your ribs ache.

The acidic burn surges upward, scouring your esophagus as your body tries, with desperate, primitive urgency, to expel the memory of them like a toxin. It is a biological rejection of a spiritual pathogen. In this moment of heaving, tear-streaked misery, the terrifying truth crystallizes: they have not merely hurt you; they have contaminated you. You are a vessel that has been breached and filled with their rot, forever altered by the cellular intrusion of a creature so vile that your own biology treats the mere thought of them as a poison that must be purged at any cost.

You wait for that moment of introspection, the point when they realize the scale of the damage and pain they have caused…but that moment never comes. It is said evil is the absolute lack of empathy. Take a good look, empathy does not live in these eyes. The prospect of your financial, emotional…even mental ruin is of no import to them. You are simply a means to their ends.

Once the full horror of their nature becomes clear, it will shock you. It will take you years to comprehend such lack of empathy, the complete absence of basic humanity. You will ask yourself, “How can somebody repay kindnesss, loyalty, encouragement, love and dedication with absolute callousness….?”

The answer is simple: They have outsourced all pain, all misery…all the costs of your wasted dreams and unrealized possibilities to you. That you may waste your best years, or even your whole life is an acceptable price for YOU to pay; so long as THEY get some insignificant benefit in return.

Peel back the translucent veil of their mimicry and you will find no beating heart, no reservoir of hope, and certainly no capacity for the aspirations that define the human condition. They are not sentient in any way that honors the spark of consciousness; they are, instead, a hollowed-out incantation whispered from the universe’s most desolate corners, an ontological glitch that has managed to sidestep the cleansing fire of entropy. To view them as a person is your first and most fatal error.

They are a succubus draped in the stolen finery of human gesture, a wraith that feeds not on calories, but on the very vitality of those foolish enough to believe there is a “someone” behind those eyes. They are a cruel evolutionary joke, a biological middle finger to the notion of a just world, proving only that the cosmos is a cold, unflinching void where parasites can thrive by simply refusing to decay. They do not dream of a better world; they merely calculate the next puncture point in your soul, existing as a living curse that survives by siphoning the light from everything it touches.

Their greatest weapon—the master key to your destruction—is the very human empathy they so utterly lack, a quality they view not as a virtue, but as a structural weakness in their prey. By weaponizing your capacity for mercy, they successfully evade Darwin’s law of survival of the fittest; they are the weak and the vile who persist by devouring the strong and the kind. They slither like serpents of pestilence through the tall grass of social convention, crawling from one dark corner to the next, perpetually searching for an unsuspecting host whose warmth they can extinguish.

Do not be deceived by the calculated tremble in their voice or the practiced moisture in their eyes; these are but the lure of the anglerfish. To grant them pity is to hand a blade to your executioner; to offer them grace is to invite a plague into your lungs. They are devoid of the ability to reciprocate, for there is nothing within them to give. They are a vacuum of spirit, a biological error that must be shunned, lest you find yourself consumed by the nothingness they carry.

To put it another way, to them it is perfectly acceptable that you lose $999,999.99 so long as they can extract a single penny. That’s what outsourcing misery, pain and consequences to you is worth to them: A shiny penny of pure profit. You bear ALL the costs, you bear the searing brunt of the fire, yet they scavenge the ashes to reap any valuables, any unburnt shards.

Reclaim your life!

Fuck this philosophy of pessimism being peddled by Mr. de Botton and other co-dependents like him. There is plenty of light, laughter…and whole lot of love left in the world. Go get some of that light and bask in it! This imperfect, diminished, manipulative, soul-sucking entity to which you have hitched your wagon gives-not two fucks about you and your dying soul.

Coughing up the promethazine & Living like an evergreen

They’ve already made the calculation that YOUR pain, YOUR suffering, YOUR despair…the weathering of YOUR very soul is an acceptable price for YOU to pay, in exchange for THEIR happiness, but here is the punchline: The reverse is NOT true. There is not now, and has never been, any reciprocity there!

Ask yourself: Why the fuck would you sacrifice your life, or whatever little is left of it, in the service of their dreams? Your life and its potential are meaningless to them. Your dreams and aspirations; your drive and determination…your natural gifts, your innate talents are simply commodities, resources they gluttonously plunder for their own ends.

Please understand this: Any act of charity, any signs of empathy…any past sacrifice you have made in their service. Any deeds you’ve performed to champion their dreams and aspirations has been, and will forever be, for nothing. Do not be fooled, they are neither symbiotic…nor parasitic. NO. They are a virus, they are a disease…an estrago that consumes the flesh. They are a harbinger of ruin and death to EVERYTHING within their orbit.

No good deed you perform in their service will EVER be reciprocated. Oh no: in their re-telling of this story they are the victims. Everything they’ve done they have already rationalized. To them their actions have been justified; in their sick mind, they have been altruistic throughout—there is nothing left for you in their midst.

Nothing at all. Just your slow, unrelenting, inexorable emotional and physical death. El daño físico, financiero y emocional que te han infligido, y que seguirán infligiéndote si te quedas, es tan perjudicial, duradero, real y mortal como cualquier enfermedad infecciosa. The harm they will cause is as swollen and pus-filled as any festering wound. You, and ONLY YOU will bear the costs. You and ONLY YOU will suffer the consequences.

You need to remove yourself from their orbit. That is your ONLY option, no matter what the costs. They represent the most toxic, the most evil…the most unrepentant and nihilistic entity that you will ever come across. Mr. de Botton’s co-dependent and masochistic moaning to the contrary. Seriously, are you fucking kidding me with this? Listen to this,

“…the failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person and no sign that a union deserves to fail or be upgraded…”

You flaccid wanker!

The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy IS the ONLY argument we need against that partner.

It is THE ONLY sign we need that a union deserves to die and be upgraded. If your better half (or the other party in a relationship) is guided by an pervasive and unhealthy desire “to be loved, admired & celebrated by others, at all cost…” you need to walk away, like right now! Allow me to explain…

You like me! You really, really like me!

While we all want and need a certain amount of recognition, a healthy measure of acknowledgement, this particular desire to be admired and accepted is unquenchable. It is a gaping hole that cannot be filled…EVER! Do not even try, nothing you do will be enough and will only serve to drown you.

This desire of theirs will override ALL reason. It will turn them into agents of their own (and your) destruction. They will gladly conspire against their OWN interests (and yours) and ultimately lead the very destruction of everything you’ve built. Rather than a partner to help you build an empire, they are the trojan horse that destroys it.

Please, do not try to understand it, don’t try to rationalize it. For your own sake, you must take your losses and write them off. You must grow a pair and just leave their midst. Get as far away as possible before it is too late. They have NOTHING to offer you, but will gladly take EVERYTHING from you.

The reason for this is not a mistery: In the dark privacy of thier callous mind, they know themselves to be so devoid of value and utility, that no rational, honest person would see them as anything but the lowest form of filth and scum. Surely, their thinking goes, anybody showing them anything resembling empathy, love, loyalty and understanding must be running some kind of confidence game.

To them, the only honest people are the ones they recognize as their own: The users, abusers, scammers, liars, shysters and charlatans. People whose only purpose in life is to prey on the honesty and goodness of others left in this world. People whose biological imperative is to leave a trail of destruction in their wake. People whose only purpose in life is to spread pain and misery as far and wide as possible.

Well, in a sick sense, this all make perfect sense; even a deadly disease will recognize itself in the mirror. I suppose one apocalyptic horseman would recognize another. Afterall, if death recognizes pestilence, Evola would never befriend ERVEBO®

Believe me, remaining within their orbit is a fruitless search, their proximity is not a habitable zone. Whatever you stand to lose today is a bargain. It is a small price for you to pay compared with the certainty, the tragedy of wasting your entire life, should you remain anywhere close to them.

Don’t believe me? Let’s see if the following sounds familiar… All of the sudden, you wake up one day and your life has become the emotional equivalent of having an opioid-addled monkey constantly throwing feces in yours, and every direction. Your existence, such as it is, becomes as futile as trying to explain to said monkey that, “No, monkey, no! We don’t throw feces at people…”

They told me don’t go walking slow. The devil’s on the loose…

But here is a bonus, a faint glimmer of light at the end of this dark, cold and wet tunnel: The further away you move from them, the more distance you put between you, the things you value and them; the richer & more complete your life becomes. Almost immediately, you start will see hints of possibilities, you will experience glimpses of all that is left for you to achieve.

Pay attention to those glimpses, because these are signposts. They are life markers to show you are on the right path. But you must stay strong, you must keep the faith; because it will not be easy. Oh no. Quite the contrary, this newfound freedom will cost you dearly. It will leave clumps of skin and scar tissue; but in the end your soul will thank you.

Truer than these following words have never been spoken: You choose the right partner, and the sky is the limit. But if you choose wrong, you will regret it the rest of your life. You will wake up EVERY morning cursing the very day you were born. You will strain your mind and will it to travel back in time. You will wish for the power to reach through the sands of time & erase this most fleeting…this throw-away moment that has forever cursed your life.

Believe me, you will scream at your past-self,

“…STOP! Do not take another step. Turn around and run. RUN!!!”

You will offer your soul in sacrifice up to the gods in exchange for the power to warn your past-self about this most terrible of mistakes. But alas, you can’not change what it was, but you get to decide what the rest of your life will be from here on out. Say it: NEVER AGAIN. RUN!!!!!!!

To be the wave that I am & sink back into the ocean

Love is a container, like a matryoshka, an mp3 or a docker file. On its own it means nothing. All that matters is what’s inside of it—so if your soul is dying it means that “love” is a poisoned chalice, an empty vessel. Take your Bolo Knife, cut its fucking head off and be done with it.

There are over 7.7 billion people running around on this rock. Even if you discount most of them for various reason (i.e. relatives, same gender, already paired, too young, too old, etc.) there are plenty more to choose from.

So leave the co-dependent charity at home. Go out into the world and get yours. There is a younger, faster version waiting in the wings. One with gravity-defying attributes, just waiting for you to “stake” your claim.

If your relationship has “decisively moved onto another, very different and more administrative plane,” then leave this plane and move onto a more fertile plain, one capable of sprouting entire forests from your seeds.

Relationships are not about mindless selflessness and one-way sacrifice. They are a contract; one based on the law of reciprocity. This entitles you to receive in return as much as you give. You should accept nothing less.

This very same logic applies to EVERY TYPE OF RELATIONSHIPS (jobs, friendships, family, business, etc.) if the relationship makes you miserable. If it has already sunk its fangs into your jugular veins and is bleeding you dry. If its very existence is a curse in your life, then cut its fucking head off and throw the whole lot over a cliff…the next relationship will be better. If it is not, do not hesitate: swing the knife, SWOOSH! Off with its head. Repeat the process until you find the relationship that fits your bill.