It can take a very long time indeed for some of us to come to a highly basic-sounding realisation: we should only contemplate going out with people who are very enthusiastic about us.
From the start.
Without the need for persuasion.
Without any call for begging or chasing or strategic withholding of affection or visits to therapy.
Just plainly and simply keen, open and ready; from the get-go.
This can sound extremely odd and deep down surprising because so much in our culture and in our pasts fosters an altogether different kind of philosophy, to an extent that we may never quite have noticed.
In many cases, what we call love is really — upon examination — the business of overcoming obstacles and resistances to love.
It's precisely not about meeting up with someone who is already smiling at us and already on board.
What we have understood by a 'love story' for the last two thousand years is essentially a study of one person — as keen as mustard — trying their very hardest to persuade another — disengaged and elsewhere — to look their way.
The beloved is beautiful or dashing, brilliant or beguiling, but there must always, according to the literary canon, be some substantial problem or another.
