To love something is to be perpetually subjected to a list of imperatives derived from the object of that love.
If you love me, then never allow your mind or body to deviate! If you love me, then give me children! If you love me, then live in South Africa! In other words, there are ways in which a statement of love, floating insignificantly in two human brains, can be nailed down and thereby made flesh. The more nails driven into the statement, the more likely it is that the statement has some sort of extrinsic validity.
We are uber-Popperian when we love something: the scientific method is applied rigorously. Experiments are carried out, and conform to our theory [he loves me], and so the theory is allowed to stand a little longer. Falsification of the theory means the unyoking of one person from the other, and the hypothesis is overthrown. You deviated? You won't give me children? You won't live in South Africa? The dawn of a new paradigm is upon us.
What happens when the tower of imperatives grows taller than your five-feet-something and overshadows it? Some of us feel that 'to love' and 'to patiently wait to be cut down' are equivalent statements. At this point, we are indeed cut down and permitted to walk away, safe in the knowledge that we've failed. The dawn of a new paradigm is upon us.
