A Theoretical Love

Modern love feels contaminated to me. Not in a sexual way, in a psychological one. It is not intimacy, it is exposure without structure. People do not fall in love anymore, they dissolve into each other too quickly, too openly, without any containment, sharing wounds before identity, collapsing before understanding, and calling that closeness as if proximity alone is enough to justify meaning.

What I see instead of love is a kind of mutual leakage. People smear themselves onto each other, exchanging trauma, late night confessions, half-healed wounds, and naming it intimacy simply because it feels intense. They cry together too early, sleep together too often, attach before either of them knows how to stand alone, and then confuse that emotional fusion with something valuable. Mentally, emotionally, and now even financially, everything blends too fast, as if boundaries themselves have become something outdated.

So when two unstable people meet, they do not stabilize each other. They synchronize instability. They become each other’s coping mechanism, staying awake at three in the morning, talking, touching, confessing, promising things neither of them can sustain, breaking and repairing in cycles that feel alive only because they are unstable. From the outside, it looks intense, almost cinematic. From the inside, it is erosion, slow but continuous, and the most uncomfortable part is that people do not even want to stop it, because erosion feels more alive than stability ever could.

This is the kind of love people defend to me. They call it human, they call it passion, they insist this is how connection is supposed to feel. And every time I hear that, I arrive at the same quiet question. If this is love, why does it decay so quickly.

Because what they are experiencing is not depth. It is a system they do not recognize. When attention becomes unpredictable, when affection appears and disappears, when closeness is inconsistent, the brain reads that instability as significance. It is the same mechanism that keeps people attached to things that do not actually nourish them. Silence followed by intensity does not create meaning, it creates dependency. And the mind, for reasons that have nothing to do with romance, holds onto what is unresolved far more tightly than what is complete.

So people stay, not because something real is growing, but because something incomplete is still active.

And they consume it. Quickly, repeatedly, until something inside them feels temporarily regulated, then move on to the next person who offers a new version of the same pattern. Not because they are healed, but because the illusion resets. The wound does not need to be understood, it only needs to be engaged again.

My way of approaching love does not make sense to them. They call it cold, mechanical, overthought, as if observation somehow removes the ability to feel. They say love should not be measured, that it should not have logic, that it should not be analyzed. But from where I stand, their version makes even less sense. People consistently fall into “love” at the exact moment their internal regulation is weakest, and what they call connection often looks like two people attaching themselves to avoid dealing with their own instability.

And I know how this sounds. It sounds like distance, like control, like someone standing outside of something she cannot access. But the truth is less flattering than that. I understand exactly why people choose this kind of love. I have been in love once, so hard that I prefer never to talk about it. But I am aware enough to move forward and leave that type of love when it's consuming my everything. It is immediate, it is intense, it gives the illusion of being chosen without requiring you to be stable, and for a moment, that feeling is easier than self-respect. It removes the need to stand alone, and that is a powerful incentive.

This is where my framework begins, not as decoration, but as a way to remove confusion. I do not evaluate people as emotional narratives when I decide whether to let them into my life. I see them as systems. A human being is a structure, not just a story. Patterns, habits, self-regulation, identity, limits. When two people meet, two systems come into proximity, and at the beginning, nothing is measured, everything feels possible, which is exactly what people romanticize as the honeymoon phase.

But undefined does not mean perfect. It simply means unobserved.

This is where Schrödinger becomes useful in a way people rarely apply. A system that has not been observed does not yet have a fixed state. Early attraction exists in that ambiguity. Someone can appear emotionally available, generous, stable, not because they are those things in a consistent sense, but because nothing has required them to prove otherwise. What people fall in love with is not a person, but a range of potential states that have not yet collapsed into reality.

And because uncertainty is uncomfortable, most people rush to resolve it. They accelerate intimacy, share too much too early, attach before understanding, and then interpret the speed of that collapse as meaning. They believe that because something feels immediate, it must also be real.

I do not rush that process.

Not because I am distant, and not because I am afraid of vulnerability, but because a system that has not been tested has not revealed anything. Collapse without pressure is not truth, it is projection.

This is also where Heisenberg becomes relevant, not as a quote, but as a principle. The act of observation changes a system. The closer you get, the more pressure increases, the more precise behavior becomes, and the more difficult it is for someone to maintain an unstable structure without it showing. Intimacy is not just closeness, it is measurement, and measurement introduces strain.

Anyone can look stable when nothing is required of them. Stability only becomes visible when something shifts, when plans fail, when expectations collide, when control disappears and uncertainty enters the space. That is when the system reorganizes itself, or fails to.

Some people adapt. Their identity holds even as conditions change. They do not distort reality to maintain comfort, they do not collapse under pressure, and they do not require control to feel safe.

Others do not.

They tighten. They attempt to manage the relationship instead of participating in it. They regulate through jealousy, reassurance, subtle manipulation, emotional pressure, not because they are malicious, but because their internal structure cannot tolerate instability.

This is where modern love begins to decay.

People romanticize anxiety, they mistake emotional volatility for depth, and they stay not because something is growing, but because leaving would require facing themselves without distraction. What they call endurance is often just avoidance with a narrative.

From my perspective, this is not love. It is a system trying to outsource regulation.

I am not interested in watching two people collapse into each other and calling it intimacy. I am interested in whether two systems can move closer without losing coherence, whether identity survives proximity, whether presence remains honest when illusion disappears.

There is also a layer people misunderstand. Those who are at peace with themselves do not approach love as a necessity. Not because they are closed, but because they are not dependent. Love becomes a choice rather than a solution. They are less reactive, less impressed by intensity, and more attentive to stability, not out of fear, but out of awareness.

This is not coldness. It is structure.

I have seen very different people arrive at the same place once they stop using love as regulation. They become selective, not because they fear losing something, but because they understand what instability costs over time. They are not drawn to chaos because they recognize it.

This perspective can look nihilistic if you reduce it. If nothing is guaranteed, if permanence is uncertain, if meaning is constructed, then attachment loses its urgency. But I am not a nihilist. I am a vitalist. I do not think love is meaningless because it is fragile. I think it is meaningful precisely because it is fragile, and because it requires clarity to enter it without illusion.

And I am not above desire. I like it raw enough to wake me up, close enough to feel real, sharp enough to hold my attention. I understand attraction, tension, presence, the quiet language between two people that does not need explanation. But only when I feel safe.

Because safety is not the opposite of passion. It is what prevents it from turning into something compulsive. Without safety, intimacy becomes impulsive, attraction becomes repetitive, and love starts feeding on instability instead of depth.

I am not interested in chaos that needs to be justified as chemistry. I am not interested in confusion that calls itself depth. I want clarity that does not need to be earned through suffering, presence that does not disappear under pressure, and desire that does not come from lack. I am not looking for anything until one day I look at someones eyes and see the mirror. Not someone as me, but exist within each other.

And if that sounds selective, distant, or difficult, then it should.

Because the only thing worse than being alone is being consumed by something that was never stable enough to hold you in the first place.