L
LOST LOVE
Many women ask me how they can regain the love of some man which they have lost. Sometimes, a girl tells me, weeping, of a once ardent lover who has become cold and neglectful, who no longer comes to see her, and she wants to know how to bring him back, and make him once more crazy about her.
Oftenest, however, it is a wife who seeks desperately for some magic whereby she can light again the love fires in the heart of a husband who has ceased to care for her, who is tired of her, and who does not even take the trouble to hide from her the fact that he regards her as a burden, of which he would rid himself if he could.
It is the tragedy of these women that they are doomed to love men after the men no longer love them. Not even neglect, and insult, and faithlessness, kill their affection for those on whom they have set their foolish, doglike hearts. So they cling with desperate hands to the men who are trying to break away from them, hoping against hope, praying some miracle will happen that will give them back their lost love.
But their prayers are never answered. The miracle never happens. No sorcerer can teach a woman how to weave a spell a second time about a man. The love potions that the credulous buy from fortune tellers, never work, and though a woman conjure never so deftly, she cannot bring back the heart that has slipped out of her keeping.
For of all dead things, nothing is so dead as dead love. No power can breathe into it again the breath of life, and make it a vital thing once more.
We do not know why we love. We do not know why some particular man or woman makes a peculiar appeal that makes us prefer him or her to all the other men and women in the world. We do not know why the touch of certain hands thrill us; why the quirk of a smile, or the look in an eye, draws us; why we have a sense of comradeship with certain individuals; why some man or woman fascinates us; or why we desire one man or woman more than another, who may be better looking, more intelligent, more worthy in every way.
Nor do we any more know why we cease to love than we know why we love. We do not know why the touch of the hand that has thrilled us ceases to thrill; nor why the charm that was once so potent vanishes into thin air, nor why the fascination flees, and the one who once held us enthralled becomes a bore who wearies us to tears. It just happens, and we are as helpless before one situation as before the other.
There are not many men who are cruel enough to find sport in breaking a woman’s heart, and who deliberately win a girl’s love, and play with it, and fling it away. There are not many husbands who would not remain their wives’ eternal lovers, if it was in their power to control their affections. That was their romantic dream when they married. That way their happiness lay, and they would have kept their romance had it been a matter of their own volition.
Unfortunately, the disillusion came. The glory and the circling wings departed. Somehow their wives lost their allure for them, and strive as they might, they could not see them again with the eyes of a lover, or bring back their charm. Many a man would be just as glad to fall in love again with his wife as she would be to have him fall in love with her once more, but he cannot do it. You cannot fan dead ashes into a flame.
Perhaps if wives realized how impossible it is to resurrect a dead love, they would guard the living love more carefully, and run fewer risks of killing it. They would not take the chance of disillusioning their husbands by going about sloppy and slovenly at home, and thus presenting a fatal contrast to the trimly dressed women in their offices, and the beautified ladies they meet in society. They would reflect that no man would have much appetite for domestic kisses when flavored with cold cream, and that if a wife wishes to be regarded as a ladylove, she must look the part instead of resembling a sack of potatoes.
And they would see to it that love is not assassinated on their hearthstones by ceaseless, senseless quarrels, by whining, and complaining, and nagging, and petty tyrannies. Nor would they permit love to die of that commonest and most deadly ailment, boredom. For if a woman can interest her husband enough before marriage to make him pick her out from all the rest of the world for his life partner, she can interest him enough to hold him until the end of the chapter if she is willing to take the trouble and perform the labor necessary to do so.
If, though, a woman, through carelessness or ignorance, has lost the love of the man she loves, there is absolutely no way in which she can win it back. Through duty or a sense of honor she may hold his body, but his soul has gone from her forever, and she is wise if she accepts the inevitable.
If she is a girl, she should let the sweetheart who is tired of her go, instead of trying to hold him. Some other man she may make love her, but not the old one for whom she has lost her charm.
If she is a married woman whose husband has ceased to love her, let her agonize no more over the impossible task of reviving his passion for her. Let her fill her life with other interests and thank God that there are so many other pleasant things in the world besides love.
For of this she may rest assured. There is no reviving of dead love. When once we have lost our taste for a person everything is over. It is finished, as the French say.