True Love: Fact or Fiction?

It's been a wild couple of weeks for love.

Silvio Berlusconi's wife Victoria, fearful, I guess, that she couldn't even get into the room with him, wrote a letter to the editor asking her husband for an apology for having repeatedly humiliated her in public; that she, and her family, were finally drawing the line. He apologized, publicly; the polls found Italians more sympathetic to him, however, than to her.

Gavin Newsom confessed to a "short relationship" with Ruby Tourk, his chief of staff's wife and joined her in rehab. I don't know if the US pollsters have gotten into whether they find Ruby or Gavin more sympathetic yet but there was some question about whether it should have been news at all. (Arianna said no in a persuasive post, but then she got 218 hits.)

Lisa Nowak drove almost a thousand miles in a diaper to confront (the charge says, murder) her rival for the affections of another spaceman. The media has gotten into this big time and until Anna Nicole Smith died, it dominated the news over Iraq or any other story. With fingers pointing this way and that, NASA has become in loco parentis, and has had to field intimate behavior questions normally reserved for family members. Since the screening process to become an astronaut is so rigorous, and they are adults, most people, NASA included, presumed that they could manage their own affairs. Apparently, negotiating life on the moon or here on earth doesn't call for the same coping mechanisms at all.

Anna Nicole, the confused and confusing ex-stripper, inherited millions, had a television show, testified at the Supreme Court and lost her son to drugs in a very short space of time. The paternity of her most recent child is in doubt with all kinds of people coming forward--her lawyer and a couple of ex lovers, already-- to lay claim to the baby girl.

Allen Shawn, the son of the legendary editor of the New Yorker, told of a telephone line the family knew was dedicated to his father's mistress (who also happened to work for him.) Shawn pere maintained a open life-long relationship with this woman but there never seems to have been a question about the paternity of Allen, his troubled twin sister and his brother Wallace, a multi million dollar estate perhaps not at issue.

Hillary has brought Bill back into her speeches which have acknowledged his power and resurrected him as a political tool; the question many ask is, does she love him or tolerate him? Is he just another member of her sophisticated support machine, a policy adviser of the first order, or someone who still keeps her warm at night?

Barack Obama looks like he loves his wife (and she seems like she would brook no straying (she won't even let him smoke).

The 2007 Oscar nominated films aren't quite as myopic as last years on the subject of straying but there are enough to still consider it a trend (Little Children and Babel, Venus, Notes on a Scandal, Dreamgirls.)

But politicians, scientists and public figures of all stripes are notorious for their roving eyes which are fed in no small part by people throwing themselves at these guys with abandon; apparently, the healthy levels of testosterone that makes them aggressive campaigners and fearless leaders has a corollary of trouble with keeping it zipped.

In the face of all this bad behavior, the experts have not been idle. Dr. Helen Fisher came out with a follow up to her marriage and adultery book that looked at brains on oxytocin....the love drug. Louann Brizedine studied the many stages of women's brains with and without estrogen. Books about Manliness, Masculinity, Maleness and M-Ness tried to figure out why guys are having so much trouble shifting gears in the 21st century. Professors at Penn and Occidental are studying love with their students. Researchers are asking us to make sure that we're not confusing love with sex, excitement, gratitude, romance, competition, or rescue by a white knight.

Which brings me to Joseph Campbell who reminded us that in the middle ages, ladies tested the temperament of their suitors not by the bling they gave them but by higher standards: did they have a gentle heart or compassion? It's possible that before getting involved, Victoria, Ruby and Lisa didn't spend enough time sending their guys into battle or out to guard the bridge.

But maybe no matter how much we test for love, (running afoul of our chiefs of staff, NASA, or the Italians) it seems to be the elusive grail of life, more apt to be tough than true. Maybe it doesn't exist? Didn't anyone else ever notice that inside the word intoxicating is the word toxic? It's possible that more ink has been spilled on the quest for true love than on Iraq this year but Valentine's Day may be as good a day as any to admit defeat on both fronts and get out while anybody is still alive.