extremely limited; one would sense that the basic frame of reference of the other person, the basic context from
which one is being viewed and appraised, is different from one's own, and that the admiration does not mean what
it would mean in one's own context.
For example, suppose that a person with a self-confident affirmative sense of life, engaged in some difficult and
challenging pursuit, is admired by a person whose own sense of life is defiantly tragic—so that the admiration
projected is for the image of a heroic but doomed martyr. The recipient of such admiration would not feel properly
visible, because the image would clash with his own nontragic sense of himself.
In romantic love, optimally experienced, one is admired for the things one wishes to be admired for, and—equally
important—in a way and from a perspective that is in accord with one's view of life. That is full visibility.
A person's sense of life can be better (more appropriate to reality) or worse than his conscious philosophical
convictions; in other words, a person's psychology can be healthier or less healthy than his philosophy. As a
consequence of the fact that a person's sense of life and avowed philosophy may be inconsistent, and of the fact that
a sense of life can be very hard to identify, people are often tempted to feel that love is inexplicable, that it is "just
there," that it is not susceptible to rational analysis. An individual may be at a loss to explain why he feels uniquely
visible, uniquely in emotional accord, with one particular person and not with another (who, on the surface, may
appear to be an equally plausible romantic partner).
In the case of a romantic relationship between two people who are highly neurotic, a further obstacle to the
understanding of the grounds of their attachment is the fact that they experience a strong resistance to identifying
the nature of the emotional universe they share; they do not care to know of what elements their common sense of
life is made.
Regardless, however, of whether a romantic relationship is healthy or neurotic (or both in part), the key to
understanding that relationship is through an understanding of the participants' sense of life, and of the unique self-
experience which the relationship affords them. If a person wishes to identify the ultimate