The Spell Breaks the Moment You Have Her
Forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter because it carries no regulations that could make it bitter or spoil its flavour. It remains tempting precisely as long as it stays out of reach. The moment it becomes attainable, the spell breaks.
Human psychology is a strange cocktail of wonder and absurdity. We want what we cannot have. And once we have it, we don't know how to treasure it. This has been true since antiquity. Religious texts and human history are littered with examples of it. And yet, until we grow old enough to introspect and wise enough to accept what that introspection reveals, we never quite learn how to value anything.
Treasuring what you have demands active effort — it doesn't arrive on its own. You have to remind yourself, repeatedly, that what you hold is worth holding. Hence the necessity of constant gratitude, which itself cannot exist without contemplating its absence. It's easy to be grateful for the food on the table when you picture the one who has none. Sobering, but effective.
The covetousness men display toward other women rarely translates into lasting desire — and the fault here lies not with the women men covet, but with the men themselves, who in the throes of passion promise the world just to win her over.
But once you have her, you realise she's a whole package. A person changes the entire texture of your life. Now she's present, constantly, sharing every thought with you — some welcome, some maddening. Men gradually recognise they didn't bargain for all of it, and women are left feeling their men have somehow changed.
The nature of desire is that it fixates on selective aspects of a person or thing. It refuses to account for the whole. When you're infatuated with someone, it's nearly impossible to picture them as a source of frustration. And so you always believe you're the one who would treat them better — they deserve better, therefore they deserve you.
That is precisely why forbidden fruit tastes sweeter: it carries no burden. No responsibility of permanence. You never have to witness their worst traits, because desire itself acts as a shield, filtering out everything inconvenient.
Anyone who thinks managing desire is easy hasn't felt the full weight of one. There are moments when you look at someone and quietly pray you'd go blind just to stop. There are times when you want someone so badly — so viscerally, so completely — that you'd willingly set your entire life on fire just to be with her. You're so exhausted from thinking about them, from the relentless obsessing, that sleep becomes a stranger. You go to bed with them in your head, and wake up to find them still there.
Desire takes many forms, but I'm speaking specifically of the forbidden kind — the ones you know must be ignored but cannot be. You cannot simply will them away. What is possible is to examine the nature of those desires without surrendering to them.
The only way to do that is to stop seeing them in the curated context of your interactions and instead imagine the full routine of a life with them. Amplify the worst traits you've sensed but conveniently dismissed. Because everyone arrives with their emotional baggage in tow — no exceptions. The real question becomes: are you genuinely equipped to handle the entire circus she'll bring with her?