There's a thread on the unrepentant melancholics tribe titled: "Unrepentant Melancholics Throughout History". The question there is: "Which historical figures/celebrities/artists do you think qualify as melancholic? Have they helped you in accepting your own true nature?"

I posted the following from Roland Barthes in "A Lover's Discourse : Fragments" (found here: www.koolpages.com/almalaika/Barthes.html ):

Dark Glasses

(The amorous subject wonders, not whether he should declare his love to the loved being, but to what degree he should conceal the turbulence of his passion: his desires, his distresses; in short, his excesses.)

...Yet, to hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other. I advance pointing to my mask: I set a mask upon my passion, but with a discreet (and wily) finger I designate this mask.


After I posted the above, I discovered this observation
(found here: urania.vineger.net/2002_08_...hive.html ):

Pourquoi? / Why?

Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so.

*****
When do you typically tell someone, "I love you?" Right away, when you first realize it? Later, when it's burning inside you and you feel like you'll burst if you don't blurt it out?

Conversely, when do you want to *hear* that someone loves you? The sooner, the better -- or the later, the better?

Last Friday, I had a first date with a guy whom I had "met" through an online dating website. While the date went quite well (meaning: I might agree to a second date), I was disconcerted when, after meeting me only once, he used the L word in an e-mail a day or two later. Fortunately, he didn't use the other two words; instead, the entire text of the e-mail consisted of that one word.

When a guy uses the L word -- or actually comes right out and tells me that he loves me -- too early in a relationship (e.g., after the first date!!), I cannot believe him. While I myself am readily self-disclosing (to a point), seeing such effusive emotion in a guy so soon is *such* a turn-off. Since this particular guy hardly knows me, I suspect that he may "love" me simply because I have a pulse.

The "I love you" that meant the *most* to me was blurted out over the phone by my long-distance penpal -- after we had been corresponding for nearly 11 years. I had told him many years earlier that I had loved him, but it took him that long to get up the courage to confess his feelings for me. I had never *dreamed* that I would hear such words from him, and I will never forget how shell-shocked I was when I finally did. (Alas, we hate each other now. But they say that there's a fine line between love and hate...)

As for me, I typically keep my feelings inside as long as I can. I don't fall in love very quickly (at least not anymore), and when I do, I don't mind keeping it a secret until I suspect that he may feel the same way about me.

Your thoughts?

Denise