It’s an odd feature of love that some of our most romantic moments involve becoming infatuated with people who are, to all intents and purposes, ‘unavailable’ – given that they live on another continent, are happily married to someone else, or perhaps aren’t even aware we exist..
What unites all these situations is an external obstacle to love which, paradoxically, serves to make our desire more intense. Our love is strong precisely because a proper relationship is not possible in the real world, because love is fated to be in some way unrequited or incomplete.