What Boleros tell us: passion and agony.

I recently read an interview to Walter Risso (An interesting character himself, by the way). When
asked about what we need to know about love, he firmly alleged < you should know only these
three things: 1. Love is reciprocal, 2. When someone doubts that he/she truly loves you, he/she
does not, and 3. You don’t deserve to be hurt.

That is when I asked myself if I had ever thought about this seriously. Beyond our feelings, why do
we associate love to pain, loss and obsession? “Boleros” as a cultural expression, for example, are
usually “corta venas” when they sing to dying if the other is not there, to the self-missvalue , to
anger, pain and humiliation. How can that be healthy? Is there another way of being in love?

Risso alerts us that Love is a personal and social construction in which certain values and beliefs
intervene as paradigms. In our western culture a vision of dependent love, that generates
attachments and weakness in our individual identity, has flourished.

Love like ours is a torture

that is carried in the soul to death
my fortune needs your fortune
and you need me even much more

This enchainment eliminates the possibility to visualize ourselves without being linked to the soul
of the beloved person, not being able to breathe, or even feel anything without the presence of
the other, until death do us part.

As I ever loved you

You will never ever imagine it
It was a beautiful way of feeling,
of living, of dying and under your shadow continuing

There is no time that I can be without you

You absorb my space
And slowly you make me yours
Pride dies in me
As I cannot be without you

In the name of that love, we idealize the other and we merge two into one. Although, on the way,
dreams, dignity and respect are left behind. So, we tend to live as if the only way to exist is while
connected with the other.

While I am with you, I forget

Everything and myself
It seems that everything I own
Is owning you
Since I do not feel the evil that brings me down
And I carry with me all the way
Ruining this life that I´ve got
Though I am not able to live

For this reason, when there is a breakup, the most basic feeling of anger that accompanies the
mistreatment of the partner through infidelity, usually associated to "machismo", always rises.
Thus, crises of loneliness generates in front of the impossibility of seeing beyond life as a whole.
That is why Risso insists, "Love is not a panacea. Realistic love is not eternal nor perfect. Love for
those of us who are not saints must be related to dignity and self-respect. "