A certain kind of torture

Dear future hubster,

beware of fairy tales and telenovelas and even Shakespeare, and what they tell you about forbidden love.

Newsflash: there is nothing romantic or heroic about it. It's like your Sunday morning run with the Manhattan skyline backdrop, and Marine One flying by: it looks like you're straight out of a movie, the sky is blue and the jet skies make waves on the river. But none of that changes the fact that you're out of shape, it's 26 degrees and 75% humidity, and you just want to give up.

Forbidden love, if anything, is outrageous and/or irritating.

Outrageous when it comes down to religion, race, culture, tradition, money. Anybody who is forced to choose between belonging to where they always have, and belonging with somebody they choose, probably doesn't see any beauty in that struggle, and just wants to have a way that allows keeping both. 

And then when it's more about convenience, when what really is in our way are the decisions we don't want to make, because they would shake up life as we know it, because they involve other countries or other jobs or other apartments or other tiny people, then the "can't" in "We can't be together" just means that we could but we can't find it in ourselves to make the effort. 

Either way, it's heartbreaking. That's why it's a favourite topic of all kinds of art. For art, dear future hubster, often is inspired by pain that finds no other outlet.