what medieval tragedy taught me about my situationships
TONIGHT on LOVE ISLAND!: the islanders drink a love potion and things get real.... tragic....
This season on Love Island US, our collective jaw dropped at the train wreck that was Jeremiah and Huda. Did you guys catch how on the very first day in the villa, Huda said “love you” to Jeremiah before quickly correcting herself and taking it back? Too late, Huda. We heard you, girl.
Love Island is an expedited version of the real world. We see the type of relationship development that would occur over a couple of years happen in the span of 8 weeks inside the villa. The only thing that moved faster than Huda and Jeremiah’s relationship, was the fall of their relationship… even by Love Island standards, it all happened so freaking fast.
The speed was off-putting to everyone. America and the other islanders watched between the cracks in our fingers, protecting our heads and waited for the rocket ship built out of pheromones to come crashing back down onto the villa, burning the whole place down.
Their dynamic made me think of the medieval myth of Tristan and Isolade which is about the medieval equivalent of a situationship. In the myth, Tristan and Isolade accidentally drink a love potion that was actually meant for Isolade and her soon-to-be husband, the King. This love potion causes Tristan and Isolade to fall deeply in love. Awwwwwww? No. Not awwwwww. No matter how they try to stay away from each other, the extreme intensity of this romantic love drives them both crazy over the years. Tristan eventually dies of grief (about Isolade) and, seeing that Tristan has died, Isolade dies too… of a broken heart… girl stand up. I love how dramatic Tragedies are because toooootallllyyyy. DEATH is soooo the appropriate reaction to a situationship.
This myth is the first time I’ve ever seen romantic love depicted as a warning, which is, I can only say from the perspective of surviving like 400 situationships, accurate. In the myth, the potion, the experience of deep romantic love, was not meant for mortals. It was meant for a king and a queen, who were thought of as extensions of the divine world during those times. The myth tells us that mortals can’t handle the intensity of such a romantic love. To let romantic love run rampant and do whatever it pleases inside of us, is to step into Tragedy. We light up, we misunderstand, we are destroyed.
Dr. Robert A Johnson says that the myth of Tristan and Isolade is symbolic for our western tendency to misuse romantic love as a well for divine love and transcendence. We want the person we are in love with to be everything to us. But we are not really looking at the person in front of us. We are looking just over their head, at an idealized experience that can’t sustain itself for very long. At the end, we realize we don’t actually know the person who we were just in love with.
As the idealized versions that Jeremiah and Huda project onto each other begin to fracture until it is undeniable that they never truly existed and were instead hallucinations caused by a love potion they were each too quick to ingest, it is too much for Huda to take. She embarks on a crash out that is so misguided and devoid of self-awareness, that it makes the whole villa sick. She runs around the villa acting out, insulting Jeremiah to his face and behind his back. Eavesdropping on his conversations with others, using what she heard as fuel for her rampage. Then after all of that, she tries to kiss him and start shit over from the top. No one can soothe her back to a place of balance. The potion is simply too much for her.
To be honest, I have a lot of empathy for Huda. That’s simply what the love potion does to us. I’ll be the first to admit it… I’ve been Huda. I’ve been very quick to drink the love potion with men I had only known for a few days. And then I’ve crashed the fuck out. Huda gave me a gift with her crash out. She reminded me what it really is.. and what it really isn’t.
Because lately, the person who I’m becoming in romantic dynamics has been scaring me. Not because of the Huda/Isolade of it all. Because of the opposite. I slept with this man and felt nothing for him afterwards. We never spoke again and I didn’t care at all. ‘I’ve got the lever turned to OFF’ as Bukowski said. Considering the types of men I’ve been getting involved with, this is a good thing. But what about when I meet a man who I can be warm with? Will I be able to turn it back on?
Maybe I’ll never drink another love potion ever again. Despite all of the destruction, this is disappointing. But really, it isn’t a bad thing. I can’t be trusted with the love potions. I loveeeee a good projection. I make them realistic as fuck. And I love to crash out too. Publicly. On the internet. Huda-style.
The myth of Tristan and Isolade doesn’t offer many good solutions to this little problem of mishandling romantic love. The only advice is to confer with whatever spirituality you have in bloom within you. Look to the divine for divine love, not to mortals. Look to what can actually make you transcend for transcendence, not to men. That’s not particularly satisfying. Because men are so cute!! and fun!! and… distracting. The answer is not to decenter men temporarily because men are an answer for a different time. But to decenter men because they will never be the answer. It’s a shame that I must be cold. But it is also my ladder to peace.