Individuals are far too vast to be reduced to a few factors- we feel more than we can know, and we know more than we can express, so any attempt to deconstruct a relationship would inevitably do it injustice.

You have to understand every single thing about him, and every single thing about me, to understand why we are friends. That’s clearly not possible. So what’s the answer to the question? We do not know, and we cannot know.

Any attempt to explain it would require simplification, and something is always lost in that process. We create primitive models in an attempt to make sense of the immense complexity- and the dangerous thing is, it’s easy to mistake the map for the territory. And maps, while convenient, must necessarily be flawed, incomplete, misleading.

Sometimes I read a book and I try to explain why I love it, but any explanation I give always seems woefully inadequate. I love it because it is it, and I am me- and everything about it resonates with everything about me. You may never be able to understand why I love the book unless you share every single one of my experiences, you have processed every bit of the same information that I have. But perhaps you may be able to relate, having been through similar things.

Otherwise, you may read it and get nothing out of it. And that’s okay.

But even if you don’t, at least you can relate to the experience of feeling something that you can’t communicate to others. We have to accept that it’s simply not possible.

“Why do you love me?” The most sincere, pragmatic (and romantic, in my opinion!) answer I can think of is- “My love for you is beyond my own comprehension- I wish I understood it- I do not, but I do know that I want to spend the rest of my life finding out.””