Love is Where Dreams Go to Die

Relationships are where dreams go to die. They lure you in with promises of completion, a false sense of perfection, as though finally someone else can understand and fulfill the parts of you that gnaw and ache. You get in deep enough, get wrapped up in someone else, and before you know it, you’re "happy." You’re comfortable. An insidious word, one that dulls your senses and makes you a shell of yourself. You stop pushing, stop creating, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, you’re fat and content.

"Fat and happy." It’s a backhanded phrase, and for good reason. It’s a truth society whispers but rarely admits outright: happiness, the kind they sell you, is the enemy of art. You want security, comfort, a partner who shares your life? Fine. But that’s the price: creativity gives way to routine, and your mind, once rumbling with restless ideas, falls into stasis. I can’t fault people for this; life is brutal, and a padded existence is better than none at all. But the things that stand the test of time don’t come from comfort. It comes from friction, from despair and longing, from the sharp edges that happiness seeks to smooth over.

For men, especially, inspiration has been a constant companion of darkness. It is despair that drives you to the brink, that forces the inner world out into art, into music, into books, into anything but more comfort. All the great works? They were created not by happy men with steady jobs and nice houses but by those barely scraping along, finding fuel in sorrow and regret.

The meme is true: a man doesn’t need much to be content. Just a mattress on the floor, a space to think, unclouded by pillows and platitudes. But the trappings of relationships bring that inescapable march toward domestic mediocrity: throw pillows and decor that quietly mock you, each one a small nail in the coffin of who you once were. It's death by a thousand paper cuts, small and inconsequential on their own but lethal when compounded over time.

Because let’s be real: most relationships are simply arrangements of mutual toleration, stability dressed up as satisfaction. They aren’t magic; they’re endurance exercises. A way to stave off loneliness, even if it means you sacrifice your spark on the altar of “good enough.” They are tranquilizers, designed to soothe the restless, the dissatisfied, into submission.

And maybe some people are built for that, those with a tolerance for banality, who find solace in stability. But the others, the ones with spirit, who need to burn the ships, who thrive on zero attachment? They can’t survive these arrangements without losing what makes them alive. For them, happiness is too much to ask for, a wishful dream they’ll never see realized, not because they don’t want it, but because they know it’s the enemy of creation. It’s the anchor tied to their throats, offering security but dulling their appetite for risk.

So it’s ironic, then, that love is all we think about. Knowing full well the pitfalls, the suffocating comfort, the slow death of ambition, we still circle back to it, as though it has some kind of magnetic pull.

It’s like staring at the ocean, knowing the waves will drown you but still wading in, captivated by the promise of something beyond reason, beyond control. It’s true that we yearn for what we don’t have. Maybe that’s the beauty of it. That the very thing that drains us is also what draws us in, knowing we’ll lose parts of ourselves to it, knowing the price, and still, somehow, always hoping it will be different.

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