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hieroglyphic sign for love meant “a long desire.” The state of not having, though on its surface an anathema in our rapacious consumer culture, is truly the essence of narrative. Whether the protagonist seeks treasure, a military victory, or a beloved, not having generates tension and suspense with the constant and pressing question: Will they get what they seek?
    Once that question is answered, what happens next can’t possibly hold the same drama. Passionate new love soon simmers down into the banality of a real relationship, with its petty arguments, trivial manipulations, and other small disappointments. In the concluding scene of The Graduate , the long quest to win Elaine by Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, comes to a triumphant end as he wrests her away from her wedding to another man. The exuberant pair hops onto a city bus. They don’t stay exuberant for long. Their smiles of victory fade to solemn, almost blank expressions. The newly freed lovers now must get to know each other not as glorious possibilities but as real people, about to experience the flawed and undoubtedly lesser reality of mutual love.
    When I first fell for B., I was more than willing to wait for that flawed, lesser reality. I’d already had enough of it with my ex-boyfriend, who, once the early thrill of our romance faded, grew increasingly consumed by erratic work, disappointment over a broken book contract, and trading in his cantankerous BMW fora new Subaru, with monthly payments that would desiccate his already shaky budget. I wanted to relish my longing for B. It gave my life purpose. When I sat down to write, I wrote for him—to become the kind of person he would be proud to love. I read books and watched movies I imagined myself discussing with him (initially, I often did). I primped in hopes of seeing him. Just walking through the neighborhood turned into a sexually charged game of Where’s Waldo? Is he there, in front of the Giant Eagle supermarket? Or huddled in a booth at the pizza shop? Or on campus, walking through the wrought-iron gates of the shadowy, cavernous ground floor of the Cathedral of Learning? I relished being in that story, that story of not yet . Whatever doubt or melancholy I went through in those early weeks was also sweet, my anthem sung in Lauryn Hill’s throaty alto again and again on my stereo: When it hurts so bad / Why’s it feel so good?
    At times I thought B. understood completely what was happening, that we were creating this drama together. For my thirtieth birthday, he had given me the Milan Kundera novel Slowness , in which a character recounts the affair between Madame de T. and a young Chevalier in the eighteenth-century French classic Point de Lendemain . They spend an evening together, both knowing that the night will conclude with lovemaking. But Madame de T. persists in delaying the act. She makes small talk, she becomes angry. She walks with him through her courtyards and gardens, discussing her philosophy of love, sex, and fidelity. The conversation creates tension and suspense, all in the service of, as Kundera puts it, “protecting love” and turning desire into something memorable, a work of art.
    THE IDEA THAT unrequited love can feel like an exalted state of being came to prominence in eleventh-century Arabia, in a blend ofMuslim and Platonic views about love and desire. Andalusian poet Ibn Hazm wrote admiringly of the lover’s yearning to spiritually unite with the beloved, even as he cautioned against lustful physical consummation of the attraction. The lover, he believed, should be the slave of his beloved. He should address her as sayyidi— “my lord”—or mawlaya, “my master.” The submissiveness bettered the lover, making him brave, strong, and generous. During the Crusades, these ideas spread to Europe, providing the foundation for what we now recognize as the courtly love ideal.
    Like the spiritual longing Ibn Hazm described, courtly love entailed a