A disservice

I have posted stridently about romance and love, and I have been very supportive of an idealistic look at such sentiments. I want to acknowledge the people this outlook potentially does disservice to.

To the people who have been badly hurt after being taken in by pretty words, I apologize. Not everyone is sincere, and there are many scoundrels cajoling and carousing in the pilfered cloth of troubadours.

Just listen to your heart, and if it hears something wrongly, run away.

To the people who have honestly lost faith and settled, or have found some lusterless lifelong relationship in the mundane and unloving safety of someone familiar, I apologize. It is your choice to comfort yourself how you choose in this ugly world.

Refuge can be more important than comfort, and much more accessible. But settle well.

To those who have had their fill of romance and decided that more of it is far too much, no matter how little more there might be for you, I apologize. I understand you completely and I have been there with you. Romance is a burden.

It can be easier to appreciate what we have had and pursue something less taxing.

To the people who have spent so much of their lives in love and dedicated to it that they have forgone great things and feel the burden of lost opportunity, I apologize. You do not need my notions and insistence in them to coax you into further sacrifice.

Remember opportunity has its place, and true love should make room for it either way.

To those who have suffered as that great devotion was severed or stripped from them-their careful, loving ministrations spent on a phantom-I apologize. How can I, knowing what you have been through, call you jaded or cynical when you evade it?

We who truly love have a secret knowledge of its cost in this vapid, nasty world.

It is all I can do to advocate some try to adhere to romance and some basic code of the heart. But before I let everyone know where, after my duty to Marcie is discharged, I will focus my efforts, I wanted to cut some slack.

I'll likely need some, too. On all counts.