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Would we have a different idea of Love if Romeo had bothered to ask of Juliette’s surname right off the bat?
“What for out thou fuck!” He may have said upon hearing “Capulet”. Future generations reference point of eternal unattainability would have been “Romeo + Just Another Random Party”.
But it is our ability to find out information and then ignore even the most important details of someone’s identity that really defines how, and even why, we fall in love. “I have a wife and kids” hasn’t bothered most civilians, politicians or Sienna Miller when the prospect of love is concerned. What is even more shocking, really, is how natural and right that scenario is. Shakespeare wasn’t creating a utopian idea of emotion when he killed off Juliette and her Romeo. He was merely acting like a reporter for Us Weekly, showcasing the facts in a setting much more ostentatious than our own.

Hindsight is the platter we serve our mistakes on. When reflecting on a previous relationship, it is the negative qualities of a person that are displayed on a buffet of perception to justify why the relationship didn’t work out.
“He/She was too dirty/clean/adventurous/boring/intense/superficial/pretty/ugly/skinny/fat/smart or stupid.”
It helps us swallow the reality that It didn’t work out with someone we were in Love with. Listing their positive qualities is only going to make us remorseful or, even worse, regretful, and so we focus on why we should hate them, even if the qualities are a direct reflection of why we once Loved them.

I once asked my dad how he knew my mother was The One and then, subsequently, how he had stayed married to someone for nearing thirty years.
“You instinctively make a list of the qualities you want someone to possess,” he informed me. Which is true. All I have to do is look to Zac Efron to have a picture paint a thousand-word list. “And then as you get to know that person, you see if they possess these qualities. They will be saturated with some, and will lack others. Eventually, you make a subconscious decision of what characteristics are more important to you.”
These qualities, apparently, can outweigh the cons. Because, if you simultaneously find out that you want someone who can cook Spaghetti better than Italians and someone who can do that, the fact that they kill kittens in their spare time becomes forgivable. Because what is important to you has been satisfied. Obviously, in the aforementioned event of a break-up, both of these qualities will simultaneously be listed as flaws.

Intelligence is the easiest quality to attack in another person. Whether you are working together or sleeping together, “They are stupid” is the first way one will articulate their reasons for dislike. Possibly because of the subjective nature of the proposition, but mainly because everyone understands the frustration of being in the presence of a functioning retard. And more people know what it is like to sleep with one. It is a unifying insult that needs no further explanation.
We meet idiots every day. Someone, between coffee and scotch, will be unaware of ironic context, will mispronounce a word or will have watched “The Hills” the night before. If The Idiot possesses no other attractive qualities, they are bitched about, or at best, ignored. But, if The Idiot possesses every single other quality one needs to enable a trip into Love, stupidity is one thing that can be easily ignored. Possibly because of the subjective nature of the proposition, but mainly because you Love them so you respect them. You listen to what they say out of love and that love creates an air of authority and, finally, intelligence.
I am almost certain that “The Irrationality Of Love” is directly translated to “You Can Love Someone Smarter”.
But in the face of a break-up, “He/She is just so fucking stupid,” is the first insult thrown like Cupid’s arrow. Once the Love goes, His thinking that Freud is a type of fight is no longer cute. Cupid becomes stupid.

There is no prize or virtuous euphoria for discovering that you fell in love with The Idiot. While falling in love with a fat person, a mean person or an insecure person can be a portal into your depths as a generous human being, falling for a functioning retard stands alone as the greatest personal insult. Sure, you’re smarter than someone. That is always a nice feeling. But you were stupid enough to fall for an idiot.

If love can make one misinterpret intelligence, or likeability, what else can it veil? (Aside: Has anyone else ever contemplated the ironic coincidence of a Bride’s veil? No? Just Me?). The presence or absence of Love seems to be able to define the nature of someone’s qualities and make them almost tangible. It is this subjective quality that has started to bother me, because the need to change a positive into a negative to recover doesn’t seem like a healthy process. Shakespeare, maybe, had a better grasp of Love than, say, Freud.

It is the qualities that exist above and beyond Love that are really fascinating. One of my ex-boyfriends is hilarious, no matter how solipsistic I perceive him to be. Another has the most beautiful eyes I have ever looked into, despite the amount of questions I have for what is happening behind them. These qualities may be the only real ones because they have stood the test of time and existed outside of emotion. Or, they merely highlight how a person is only seen as three-dimensional if they are defined by Love. Because, if you end up hating a quality you once loved, did you ever really Love it?

Romeo never used Juliette’s surname against her. While it ultimately killed them, he never held her accountable for something he had chosen to involve himself in. Love is the acknowledgement of the flaws and surviving despite of them. As a generation, we are becoming less forgiving of who someone is and using it against them in the event of heartbreak. We insult instead of accept and then wonder why hate is the more prominent emotion. While Shakespeare reflects that some things never change, evolution seems to suggest that we are not alike in dignity. Instead, we are stupid enough to believe our own fiction over another’s fact. Just to make us Love ourselves.