Wow, this was a full on read! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for sharing. I really resonate with much of your personal findings on the matter of love, especially that of the romantic kind.
We are continually blasted with endless streams of rubbish that attempt to program the stages of love. Addiction has never been such a pandemic of the collective soul, where the force feeding of adrenalin, dopamine and serotonin antagonisers by the marketeers, sales teams and money men, amount to a hormonal hi-jacking from all angles.
yes, and 99% is just that: manufactured.
In the "Art of Happiness" the Dalai Lama calls this "maufactured", "self created suffering" Please listen to this audiobook ... I believe you will love it !
The Art of Happiness is a book by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, a psychiatrist who posed questions to the Dalai Lama. Cutler quotes the Dalai Lama at length, providing context and describing some details of the settings in which the interviews took place, as well as adding his own reflections on issues raised.