The price we are all price we are paying for our failure to understand our biological requirements for love and human companionship may be ultimately exacted in our own hearts and blood vessels. Pause for awhile in the city of Sacramento, part of rural America, and you cannot help but be struck by the harshness of the existence some have to endure. It is sad when your children can be healthy one moment, playing in the snow, then catch cold and be dead in a week.

Wives routinely died in childbirth or from mysterious fevers a few weeks later. A husband’s cough would awaken the dread of pneumonia or tuberculosis in his wife’s mind. They knew about disease and they knew about death. They were fully aware of their feelings of helplessness and hopelessness…they could not stop the ravages of diseases like pneumonia, which could disrupt their lives without warning. Death truly came like a thief in the night. However, it is only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vibrantly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.

As I lingered awhile in this rose garden, I could not help but recall how just three weeks earlier I had contracted pneumonia and with a few simple injections had quickly recovered.  It was like having an opinion bright than diamonds, my life was saved and I could press on. Pneumonia to me was a kind of curiosity because my son had the flu, and his friends took him to Tahoe, then started acting mean to him and put him out in the snow.

They also made him swim, while it was snowing, and made him take pictures to prove he was not depressed. When he got back to the cabin, his key card did not work and he had no cell phone to call for help, so he walked to the store and bought an adult beverage to stay warm. How could someone do this to a nice person? He is certainly nothing to fear. The legacy of terror is behind us now. With few exceptions, science has eliminated almost all of the forces that had once caused premature death. It is difficult to condemn a person who goes with the general opinion of his generation.

Why is it that the noblest of our passions should be also the most selfish? You do not have to choose a fixed identity or label. You will not have to decide whether you are love-addicted or love-avoidant. In relationships, you may be more likely to be vulnerable, open, and committed than you are in others. You do not have to be typecast by gender, either. Buying into gender stereotypes can cause women and men to become seriously disconnected in their couple relationships, without ever getting to the root of their unhappiness, because oversimplified assumptions about gender differences disempower both men and women.

The fact of the matter is you are meant to love and do not want to get lost in the dark shadows like Barnabas Collins and Josette DuPres Collins. Just as it took centuries to become public knowledge that men as well as women can be victims of children abuse and violence, so too it has been long overlooked that both men and women can be victims of childhood abuse and violence, so too it has been long overlooked that both men and women distance themselves from intimacy.

Three out of every four deaths among American males between the ages of 15 and 25 are caused by either accidents, suicide, or homicide. Women and men both yearn for intimacy and deeper connection, and both genders can create disabling distancing patterns in their coupe relationships. Without adequate information to help them name, tame, and transform the runaway self, both male and females distancers often convince themselves that the love they have is as good as it is going to get. It truly takes a community to create a healthy couple relationship.

One of the major mistake in trying to solve intimacy problems happens when the focus is exclusively on the couple. No couple is ever really alone on a desert island. Too often, everyone tries to fix the couple as if they exist in isolation. Friends, family, and helping professionals often fail to give enough attention to the importance of the big picture—the comprehensive view. There are many ways that the coupe is part of their village. They want to know what is going on, and not have the details hidden from them.

The fact of the matter is we have to integrate all the aspects of the community that help to create and nurture a healthy couple. Your own social and cultural roots, the significance of religious or spiritual communities, and the values of workplaces, extended families, neighborhoods, social capital, and the larger geographical community. I suppose it is the price of falling in love. I fear that it is the price of falling in love.