When A Great Love Dies

“You’re only allowed three great ones,” Sonny tells Calogero in the movie ‘A Bronx Tale’.

In this scene, a mob boss is telling his protégé that in his lifetime, he will come face-to-face with three great women. Three sparks will light up under him from the far reaches of Kismet. Three people will enter his life with whom he can build a satisfying life. No more, no less. It is therefore imperative that he recognise them, and do everything in his power to turn that divine spark into a lifetime flame.

There’s something poignant about this scene. Something which points towards the finiteness of life, the momentousness of love, the importance of engaging life at our fullest while we have the chance.

This makes a lot of sense. If life waited for us to embrace the responsibility, sacrifice, patience and humility that cultivating a great love entails, the human race would be finished. To nudge us in the right direction, life strikes us with lightning, enchanting us and softening us to receive a great love.

When A Great Love Strikes

People come and go all the time. We are indifferent towards most of them, and mildly interested in the rest. A cool outfit, a sexy walk, a magnetic presence; anything can have us pausing for a moment and raising an eyebrow. For an enchanted moment in time, we admire this person.

Then we get on with life.

You can’t fall for every person you see, can you?

Until one day, zap! The universe strikes. Your senses brighten. Your spirit softens. You feel it wash over you, and you are powerless to stop it. Feelings.

There’s also something more. You… know. What do you know? You don’t really… know what. You just know. This person is going to be consequential. And so it begins, a journey which alters the trajectory of your life.

At first, you may resist. You hold back from making the call, or you sabotage in subtle ways. You try to slow down the tsunami driving you towards that other person, but the best you can do is steer a bit. Beyond that, there’s not much more you can do. You get taken for a great ride.

Months, or even years down the way, the tsunami crashes over the shores of your shared life with your great love. In certain cases, it leads to a deep, satisfying, mutual love. A lifetime with your soulmate.

In many cases, a great love quickly transforms into its opposite: A great disaster. Pain. Confusion. Manipulation. Control. Frustration. Fury. Despair. The great tsunami of love becomes a hurricane of dysfunction. The tsunami spits you out, leaving you disoriented and broken for years after — until the next ‘great love’ comes along, that is.

When A Great Love Dies

A soldier leaves the US Army traumatised after having been subjected to extreme abuse and humiliation at the hands of his superiors. His ordeal went beyond discipline and training. There was something personal behind it. Something sadistic.

After months of tolerating his treatment, he lashed out and called out his superiors. Made it known to anyone who would listen, until he was discharged without reason.

Since leaving the military, he has trouble sleeping, and is subject to rage attacks, especially when he has been drinking. He gets bouts of paranoia, believing that someone is following him. He alternates between extreme anxiety and depression. Before joining the military, he had a strong sense of who he was and lived a relatively satisfying life. Now, he has no idea who he is, no idea of time or space. He is in a constant hurricane of trauma, unable to get his feet on the ground.

One night, he falls to his knees and prays, asking God to send him someone to love. A person with the patience, depth and kindness to build a life with him. Not long after, his prayer was answered. She came along. She was exactly how he had imagined her. A great one.

Eventually, however, his inner darkness descends, warning him that he might do something crazy. He can feel her warmth, her care and love, but inside him is a raging fire. The demon inside him rises, and forces him to end the relationship. He breaks it off, unable to bear the vulnerability of love while being exposed to the torture of his trauma.

Eventually, she finds someone else using her remaining quota of great ones. And our soldier carries a regret far more painful than his trauma could ever be. Years pass, and his great one builds a life with someone else. Eventually, he feels ready for love, but it is too late. Timing and trauma proved more powerful than great love.

The Incapacity To Embrace A Great Love

Sometimes a great love comes at the wrong time. Other times an outer force burns it to a crisp.

While the romantic in us would make us believe that a great love can survive anything, that is simply not true. Life provides the blueprint for happiness. But life is also flawed. Sometimes, our fate is a tragedy. Suffering. Injustice. Betrayal. Heartbreak. Grief. All of it can visit us, and cause such immense destruction to our soul that we remain unable to surrender and adapt to a great love.

When our life foundation is strong enough, we can easily welcome a great love and sail with it in our strong ship for two. But not all of us have the proudly-built ship of a happy childhood and fortunate life. Some of us are naked in the water, being thrust around uncontrollably, bashing our heads on the rocks and not knowing which way is up or down.

Taking Fate Into Your Own Hands

Is it true? Does each person get precisely three chances at a great love? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But everyone can attest to having experienced a great love.

Before urbanisation, humans spent the majority of their lives in a village, being exposed to a limited pool of people. The chances of running into a great one had to be high, or perhaps the village elders gave you a push, creating the necessary pressure to compel you to dive in. When you reached a certain age, a certain member of your village would have sat you down, and patiently explained that it was time. There was very little chance involved. The issue was forced. Monogamy, great love and marriage were enforced by your tribe.

Since the breakdown of small community living and the rise of urban life, the universe has been forced to adapt and intervene. Without a village elder to grab you by the ear, without a mob boss to remind you of your great one count, the universe takes over and plays the role of trickster, lulling you towards making a choice.

More and more, I meet people who choose not to have children. Some even choose to stay out of relationships altogether. Their fear of vulnerability may be too great, or the price of love has proved too high. They may feel too broken, too unworthy, too cynical.

We are also evolving in fascinating ways since the breakdown of community living. Breakups and divorces are rife in our society, with relationships only working for limited time frames as each person develops rapidly in a modern world. Rather than one great love being the one that lasts a lifetime, we may burn through them all before the end. In the words of Sonny the mob boss: “They come along like the great fighters, every ten years. Rocky Marciano. Sugar Ray Robinson. Joe Louis. Sometimes you get ’em all at once. Me? I had my three when I was 16. That happens. What are you gonna do?”

Without the solid ship of a tribe to sail us through life and provide us with the structure and security to embrace lifelong monogamy, we are forced to create our own. Perhaps it is better this way. It feels like the collective consciousness of the world is rapidly evolving at this moment in history, and we need to love on our own terms while healing our intergenerational wounds. A great love may spark within us at any inconvenient moment, and only burn momentarily, each time forcing us to grow and awaken as human beings.

And for those of us who have had our three great ones and who fear we may not get another, nothing is stopping us from getting off our butts and approaching someone we are mildly interested in, and having the audacity to make an attempt at a fourth. What would a mob boss know, anyway?