Stefan Zweig. The impatience of heart (№ 161887)

... I have always believed that for the human heart there is nothing more painful than torment and thirst for love. But from that hour I began to realize that there is another, and probably more cruel torture: to be loved against your will and not be able to defend yourself against the passion that is harassing you. To see how the person next to you burns in the fire of desire, and to know that you cannot help him in any way, that you have no strength to tear him out of this flame. One who hopelessly loves is sometimes able to curb his passion, because he is not only its victim, but also the source; if a lover cannot control his feelings, he at least realizes that he is suffering through his own fault. But there is no salvation for someone they love without reciprocity, because you are no longer in control of someone else's passion, and when you want yourself, your will becomes powerless. Perhaps only a man can fully feel the hopelessness of such a situation, only he, forced to resist, feels himself both a victim and a criminal. Because if a woman defends herself from unwanted passion, she subconsciously obeys the instinct of her gender: it seems that nature herself has put this initial gesture of rejection into her, and even when she evades the most ardent lust, she cannot be called inhuman. But woe, if fate destroys the scales, if a woman, having overcome shyness, opens a man’s heart, if she offers him her love, not yet being sure of reciprocity, and he, the object of her passion, will remain cold and unapproachable! This is a dead end, and there is no way out of it - for not meeting the woman’s desire means striking her pride, hurting her bashfulness; rejecting a woman’s love, a man inevitably offends her highest feelings. Here the delicacy of refusal does not matter anymore, all polite, evasive words are meaningless, the offer of just friendship is insulting; if a woman betrayed her weakness, all resistance of a man will inevitably turn into cruelty; refusing her love, he always becomes guilty without guilt. Terrible, indissoluble bonds! You have just been free, you belonged to yourself and owed nothing to anyone, and suddenly you are lurking, being persecuted, like prey, you become the goal of someone else's, unwanted desire. Shocked to the core, you know: now, day and night, someone is waiting for you, thinking about you, yearning and languishing for you, and this someone is a woman. She wants, demands, she longs for you with every cell of her being, with her whole body. She needs your hands, your hair, your lips, your body and your feelings, your nights and your days, everything that is male in you, and all your thoughts and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, take everything from you and absorb it. Whether you sleep or stay awake - somewhere in the world there is now a creature that is anxiously awaiting you, jealously watching you, dreaming of you. What is the use, if you try not to think about the one that always thinks about you, what is the use if you try to slip away, because you do not belong to yourself, but to her. The other person now, like a mirror, stores your reflection - no, not like that, because a mirror reflects your face only when you yourself approach it by your own will; she, this woman who loves you, she has absorbed you in her flesh and blood, you are in her all the time, wherever you hide. You are now forever imprisoned in another person and you will never be yourself again, you will never be free again, and you, the innocent, will always be forced to something, obligated to something; all the time you feel how this relentless thought about you burns your heart. Overcome with hatred and fear, you are forced to endure the suffering of the one who yearns for you; and I know now: for a man there is no oppression more senseless and inevitable than to be loved against the will - this is torture from torture, although it is guilty without guilt.