The true challenge of relationships is not to fall in love with someone who may never want to see us again: it is to accept the far more interesting, and truly heroic challenge, of falling in love with someone who isn’t dying, stationed in the Arctic or married to someone else – and would have no objection to seeing us all the time.

Impossible situations feel so romantic not because we have found a soulmate, but because the absence of risk has loosened our hearts. We should – with time – learn to dare to turn our amorous attentions to that deeply dangerous threatening character: the person we know, who likes us a lot and who is available all the time. That would be truly romantic.