First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons--but the fact
                 that it is a joint experience does not mean it is a similar experience to the
                 two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two
                 come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all
                 the stored-up love that has lain quiet within the lover for a long time
                 hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his
                 love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it
                 is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for
                 the lover to do, he must house his love within himself as best he can; he
                 must create for himself a whole new inward world--a world intense and
                 strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about
                 whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a
                 wedding ring--this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human
                 creature on this earth.

                 Now the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish
                 people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering
                 great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he met in the streets of
                 Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen
                 woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil
                 habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else--but that
                 does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person
                 can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the
                 poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love
                 both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the
                 soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality
                 of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

                 It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost
                 everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep, secret
                 way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears
                 and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever
                 trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with
                 the beloved, even if this experience can only cause him pain.