Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The reasons I don't fall in love: I'm too old for this ***.
I can't stand break-ups. Break-ups are so hard...
You break up and... I don't want to break up with anyone again.
Also, when I'm in love, I lose myself.
Actually, I become one with the other in a bad way sometimes.
I don't know if I'm influenced by movies, hopes and farytales.
All those things about love I don't think that they really exist.
Young people are very concerned about the value of love.
This is something that motivates me...
as researcher of the intimate human relationships...
how worried young people are...
whether it is well worth to fall in love and invest in love.
The actor's job is to observe people.
Through observation comes up the material for every role.
I always thought that love...
is the emotion that shows us more about people.
But lately, under the current circumstances, I wonder...
whether people find the courage to make a new beginning...
and whether they dare to fall in love.
Is it possible that everyone has turn in on theirselves?
Are they hidding behind their Facebook profile or their cell phone?
Is there love out there after all?
LACTA PRESENTS...
DOES LOVE EXIST?
Whether love exists is a funny matter.
When I was younger, I used to believe that there is love.
Now, I think that it does not exist.
As I believed in Santa Claus, in world peace and justice...
I also believed in love.
Now I see that this is not the way it is.
My last relationship ended about a year and a half ago.
Since then - I don't know if it is because I'm now 30...
because I am going through an age crisis-
but I've started to distance myself from the whole idea.
When all those movies end with the credits...
and the happy music and all those things...
I get mad and I think that if there were not those things...
that we see since we are five...
we would not have such expectations from the others.
I mean, we are waiting for the Prince. Now, we're waiting just for the horse.
You're waiting someone to save you...
you believe something magic will happen.
In our days, we have great expectations.
And we've all been raised with those movies, men and women.
And it is a great lie and unfair to expect something like that.
Something perfect.
In my current point of view...
I think that being alone in life isn't something tragic.
More or less, we're all alone.
I can't have a relationship just to have a relationship.
So I go for all or nothing.
If something very good comes up, I'm here...
and I'm willing to change my life and turn it upside-down.
If it is not meant to be, I don't care being alone.
I write for a newspaper, Athens Voice...
and I deal with relationships related matters.
As I see it, we all live love in the years of depression.
Again, how you cope with that depends on your age.
To tell you the truth, at the age of 30 something...
I see scared people.
They are so worried whether they will have a job tomorrow...
and if they will have money to pay the rent...
that relationships and love are the least of their worries.
I do windsurfing for about 30 years.
I studied and I worked on a very demanding area of expertise.
At markets and mostly at stocks and options...
and I came back.
I started participating in races again and I was doing well...
and I found it hard to concentrate in business and watch the monitors.
I wanted to be at the sea.
And things turned that way that I was able to do it...
to be again at the sea.
There are now five years since I had a stable love affair.
I used to see married people in my line of work...
wasting away, dying, not having a life.
Eventually, that was something I wanted to avoid.
I think that I'm alone...
because I've handled wrong certain situations.
I haven't invested in love.
While I've invested in other sections of my life...
I haven't invested in love.
I didn't make the necessary sacrifices to keep it.
A single man is single for many reasons.
Of course, one of them is fear.
An other reason is that love didn't happen for him.
Maybe his dreams didn't let him commit to love.
Maybe he thinks it as something that will restrain him...
and won't let him follow a certain path.
Me, as a single man, I think I wanted more to move on...
and to have my freedom, and that is why I'm single...
and not because I didn't find the right one.
Something extreme that I've done with one of my girlfriends is...
that we went out for a drink and we ended at an island.
We went out for a drink in Athens and in the morning we're at the island.
Every single man wants to live the love and the passion.
Passion makes people not to think soberly...
not to process the information about their love object.
They cannot see their partner for what they are.
They tend to see want they want.
This is a mechanism of the nature, if I may say...
that ensures that you will approach the other person...
and you will experiment, you'll try to make contact.
If our mind was examining soberly the other person...
we would find many shortcomings and things we don't like...
and it is likely that we would draw away very soon.
That is why, for a short period of time...
necessary for intercourse to take place...
people live a great, magic tale.
It is what we call "love chemistry".
On our first date I wasn't anxious at all...
because I knew inside me...
that with that girl I could totally match.
Although what fascinated me was her secrecy.
Nevertheless, I thought that we would be a great couple.
She was in the class, at the school and she was distant.
While all the other girls were joining us...
she was the only one that kept a distance.
And I wondered: "What is going on here?
Why she turns away from us?
What is the matter? Why she sits alone?
She doesn't like us? Is there something wrong?"
When we were talking, I was calling her "chicken"...
because I was going out late at night...
and sometimes, when we were talking, everyday actually...
she happened to be at home those days.
And she was telling me: "I will hang out at my couch", etc.
And I was going out.
One day that I sent her a text: "Do you want to be my chicken?"
And she answered me: "I do".
We gave our first kiss in a car on our way home.
The car pulled over at the first traffic light to leave us...
I turned, I kissed her and the green light was on.
The car went on and we were both feeling uneasy.
We thought that we were about to say good-bye, so we kissed...
and the car went on.
Tommorow is our one year anniversary with Christina...
on February 14th.
And I want to tell her that until now...
she is the best thing that ever happened to me.
One thing I have never told him until today...
is that I believe that he is my other half.
I have written songs for certain girls. I should say that.
But not lately. I did it around the age of 15-16...
when I was serving, that I had to write to get her attention.
- You served at 15? - No, at 18, but it doesn't matter.
Now I don't have a girlfriend, I am alone.
If I miss having a girlfriend?
I think no. At this period of my life that I have...
I would like to have, although I don't pursue it...
but I think I have a very tight schedule...
I do things that please me and if it happens I won't say no.
If I have written music for a girl?
Not just once, I have written many times.
Since I was little, I started writting about my feelings.
Luckily or not, I started falling in love very young...
and since writting songs is something that represents me...
I would prefer to express my feelings with a song...
rather than telling her.
I started writting for girls at the age of 15.
And I liked that.
I write much better not when I'm with her or I have broken up with her.
I write better when I'm alone.
When I want her, I don't know if she wants me...
and that is when I imagine, I get inspired.
I first met her at the national opera, about 15 years ago...
as a dancer. I was also a dancer.
We hung out together as friends. I was 18 and she was 24-25.
I threw myself at her, in quotes.
She turned me down.
He told you that I was turning him down?
With Agapios we were working many years together, that's true...
and we knew each other.
I had never thought of us as a couple.
I liked his appearance and his energy very much...
I was flattered when he expressed an interest and an admiration...
but obviously I was in a different phase in my life. I don't know.
It had never crossed my mind.
And I felt that our initial friendship...
was obviously concealling a feeling...
that we discovered in a very beautiful, relaxed and pure way...
and that brought us together...
it made us be together for ever... until now.
Knowing him as friend and then finding us in love...
and doing such beautiful things together...
was something that captivated me.
The truth is that I never saw her as a friend.
- We should be honest. - Ok.
From the first time I saw her, I thought:
"What a beautiful girl, with beautiful eyes, great body", etc.
And I always wanted to find a way to get in her life.
When my daughter was born...
I suddenly felt like my dad.
Literally, with mustache, stomach, pension.
I felt 30 years older.
I believe that after the birth of our second child...
we will live yet another new situation...
although I haven't thought whether it is going to be easy...
difficult, familiar or something else.
We are really waiting to see...
how things will be with another baby and Olia.
But I think that because we both wanted it...
and we have imagined the bright side of this...
we will handle it in that light.
My beautiful girl.
I love Komi because she stands me.
The most important for me is to have someone who can stand you.
I believe that romance fades.
It comes, it welcomes you, it says: "This is the lady.
Do you like her? She's all yours".
You live this whole experience, you taste it intensely...
and at some point is ends.
Theoretically it ends.
It is like the romance is leaving and love takes its place.
I love my wife. I love her very much.
Romance's purpose is to lead us to the safe harbor of a relationship.
This is weird...
because the journey is very seductive and magical.
Reaching in a way cancels the journey.
Because when we reach the safe harbor...
we no longer have to discover things about the other, usually...
and the other person has no longer something to discover about us.
A way to refresh our relationship is to renew ourselves.
Each one in a relationship should become more interesting...
continue to tend their garden.
They should not just dock at the harbor...
but they should keep traveling in order to improve themselves.
If we're changing in the relationship...
and we make our partner partaker of those changes...
then, we may keep out partner's interest to us alive.
Good evening.
- You made that heart? - Yes.
You are preparing for St. Valentine's Day?
Which is your feeling about this project?
This project is a cubid that wants to fly...
but it has weights that keep it down.
But I have left it uncertain. It may fly, it may stay on the ground.
How did you come up with this?
I was inspired by personal experiences.
This is how you feel now?
Yes. I think that this is a cubid that may take off...
or stay on the ground. It will have whatever it deserves.
But the most amazing thing I remember...
I won't say a name because it is about a famous designer...
who was very in love and apparently disappointed at that time...
and took a beautiful heart which was filled with roses.
Somewhere in the store he found a rock...
he took the rock and smashed the roses in the center.
I was amazed. That was the most incredible thing I have ever seen.
There are many crazy stories. Someone bought many roses...
he put them down on someone's feet, he bowed in front of her, etc.
Others have bought the same flowers for five women.
For the wife and for five more women.
But that passion I saw that moment amazed me.
- Will you grant me a red rose? - Of course.
I study in Law School of Athens, I'm a sophomore.
I'm very happy with my school. I think you can learn a lot there.
You obtain knowledge that you could not obtain from anywhere else.
If I happened to meet someone that I would call "great love"...
at the same time I had my exams...
I will honestly say that I would not sacrifice my studying.
I've worked too hard to get into this school...
I missed too many things that my classmates did.
I didn't go to the school's five days trip in order to study.
No love can come and take from me what I want...
what I've tried for and have dreamed.
Actually, many people are talking to me on Facebook.
Many times, without even knowing me.
They see that I'm in Law School and they say:
"I'll do the worst crime and you will exonerate me".
Or "I'll kill, I'll do anything to just come and see you in court".
"It's my dream". And other things like that.
Most of them say something relevant to my profession.
I have to admit that many times I respond to a smart comment.
I will answer positively if I consider something smart...
and believe that this person wants to approach me...
and couldn't find another way and he thought something clever.
Obviously, I wouldn't go on a date with a stranger...
because I think it is a little risky.
But I give them credit for trying even through internet...
to send a message and say something like that.
I have been in a date once or twice with girls I met on Facebook.
I can't say that something happened with all of them.
But it was fun, we had a good time.
At the beginning, what I was expecting and what happened...
was that we were awkward...
because we had only talked through Facebook which is a bit impersonal.
You sit behind a keyboard, you write whatever you want...
the other person cannot see you, you don't feel shame.
In person, you are more tight. You need some time.
Me, as Miltos, I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't search on Facebook to find a girl.
But I don't think it is something bad or immature.
It is something great that represents anyone that wants to do it.
Social media is yet another way...
to get in the market of potential love partners...
to pick up love partners.
However, they are a particular matter...
because we are not yet skilled as societies...
to naturalize them. And I'll tell you what I mean.
Facebook, all the other methods, the dating sites...
use an "a la carte" way of choosing a partner.
However, interaction and negotiation...
are the most dynamic and creative elements of relationships.
The negotiation of the desires, plans and dreams...
we have for a relationship.
Teenagers learn through the actual interaction...
the game of negotiation of a relationship...
of a relationship's formation.
It is as if they write a script together.
Social media narrow down that procedure.
They make people have less patience.
They become more arrogant, if I may say.
They easily move on.
Nevertheless, I'm expecting in the following years...
that this procedure will more and more be naturalized...
that it will become more usual.
At some point, people should learn to also function in social media...
as they function in reality.
Hello, Marios. How are you? Everything ok? Sit.
You came on foot?
What is love for you?
Love. Something too strange, too big.
I don't even know how to describe it.
What makes you consider it something big and strange?
I don't know, I think it is very complicated.
Are you affraid?
I don't know if I can feel it, if I can support it.
- You haven't fell in love? - I think I have.
But next time you say: "Now I'm in love...
last time I wasn't".
- So it passes quickly? - I think it does.
What is your relationship with social media?
Quite good, especially with Facebook.
- Are you talking with people? - Enough.
Have you found a girlfriend through Facebook?
- Just one? - Yes.
- You're only on Facebook or... - Only on Facebook.
- How many frieds do you have? - I don't know, I have many.
Over 1.000 friends.
What is more important for you now, a career or a great love?
Certainly a career.
Why do you put career over a great, intense love?
Why...
I think that if you achieve something, you find yourself.
Can you imagine your life without the social media?
To meet a person and quit the whole game.
At this point, no.
When you're on Facebook, Instragram, Twitter...
Snapchat, yes, and I don't know on what else...
and you hide behind a machine...
That is why girls have increase courting...
and attack sometimes first. And I say it in a good way.
Hiding behind a machine is easier for a girl and for a boy.
That annoys me and that is the reason I'm not on Facebook...
or anywhere else.
I will sound cynical because we say it very often...
but unfortunately we have missed the contact...
that you could have at a cafe or a bar.
You see someone, you learn their name...
and you search them on Facebook.
You send a message "Hi, how are you?" and you begin with something simple.
You follow a procedure where you are at home...
the other person may be on the road or home...
and you start a court this way that is...
Ok, it's always good to court...
but I think that the traditional way is much better...
especially for us that we've experienced it.
Of course someone can be happy without a relationship...
depending on his lifestyle.
I don't think that a relationship is the most important thing in life.
- Especially after a certain age. - From 16 to 18.
I think that up to a certain age you can't have a mature relationship.
I think I haven't fall in love...
because sometimes I'm more enthusiastic than necessary.
My reactions are a little bit weird.
Why are you laughing?
Why are you laughing? He has a point.
I'm telling the truth.
They fall in love with me, I just...
I just haven't fell in love.
I understood it soon enough, when I met my wife...
although I knew her many years.
She was my best friend's sister.
At some point, we got together...
and we both understood pretty soon...
that we will move on in to something more serious.
When you have family, children and you love your partner...
the point is to be faithful, not to deside to be unfaithful.
I don't think it is obligatory to be monogamous.
You'll feel the urge, but it is a matter of decision...
whether you'll decide to be monogamous or not.
People relax at their safe harbor.
Some of them, when security begins to become a burden...
they try to sail from the harbor...
and find other harbors, other partners...
without meaning that they want to turn away their primary partner.
They want to preserve that bond...
but they also want to feel that they are still love objects.
They want to feel again the lure and the magic of love.
So, although...
It's interesting here, how nature has programmed us.
Although we wish to preserve that bond...
what provides its preservation is another interest.
Personally, I don't think I could forgive adultery because...
I don't think I could ever forget it in order to forgive it...
and say: "Ok, we move on and what happened, happened".
I will think about it every day and we won't be able to move on.
First of all, I don't think male and female adultery are the same thing.
In my opinion, a woman's adultery is way more significant...
because a woman gives herself. It is different.
Man's nature is to siege.
In women it is not so impulsive or instinctive.
It may have to do with revenge.
Of course, she may not be emotionally or physically covered...
in her relationship.
I disagree with Nikos...
that there is a difference between male and female adultery.
The guys before said that the times have changed...
that the woman makes the first move.
So, Nikos contradicts himself.
He said earlier that times have changed...
and the woman makes the first move and now he says it's not the same...
He didn't say it is right or that he agrees.
Just a moment.
When we cheat and we ask for forgiveness, so does a woman.
My last relationship lasted about two months.
Two fake months, full of lies.
I caught her lying, although I had evidence right in front of me...
which I was describing at her over the phone.
She answered: "No, this is not true, no, no, no...".
But I was seing it.
Until I told her: "If you won't tell me the truth...
because I'm tired of the lies, I'll come there and make a fuss".
I wanted to prove not that I'm stupid...
but that I see things in my own eyes. Tell me the truth.
At the end, she admitted everything.
I very much liked the question whether there is love.
And my answer was... I still remeber it.
I answered: "Which kind of love?
The one we change like it's going out of fashion...
or the one that talk about and you're filled with love...
that changes your expression, fills your mind and your heart?"
My last relationship ended about a year ago.
It lasted ten years...
of which the seven existed only in my mind.
We were three years together, we were happy...
we had many problems, each one their own.
We broke up and I was always saying that I will be with that man.
Certainly I want to have a family, to have children.
This is what we've learned, it is our nature.
I'm 30 years old...
my hormones are over the top.
But I won't compromise with a man I don't like...
I don't want in my life, just to have a family.
I want to fall in love, to admire him, to like him...
to be happy waking next to him and to have children with him.
I want very much to have children...
but if I won't find the right partner, I'll not have.
I have a dog, I have a nephew.
It's fine. I'll give to other children what I have to give.
It is not necessary to become a mother.
And I think it's selfish to raise a child alone.
I could easily be a mother.
I go off a man if I see that he is insecure.
I've experienced countless and intense jealousy incidents...
with a certain partner.
A very intense incident was...
Actually, it happened all the time. We were fighting in public.
"Why did you look? Who are you looking? This one is looking at you".
When someone looks at me, I look. I have eyes.
I had ended up walking with my eyes on the ground.
I wasn't looking around to avoid another fight.
Yes, love exists. And I'm nothing but optimistic.
I'm not in a relationship now...
and I haven't been in love for a long time.
But I'm not pessimistic. Definitely not pessimistic.
I could say that I'm scared.
I'm affraid to invest in a relationship because I've copped it.
I think I'm scared, but I'll get over it.
I will detect it and I will get over it.
Love or career? What career?
It's too visionary and fake. Career in our days?
Will this career happen?
Even if you make a career, will you lay down with it at home?
Love, without question.
During depression...
the preservation of relationships is helpful for people...
as well as the formation of companionship and love relationships.
Romantic love in itself, I'm not sure it can help.
Love thrives in all times and under any circumstances...
even in prison camps.
I wouldn't say that in the long run it can help people...
to deal with the problems created by the depression...
because love demands things.
It is a feeling that requires high maintenance.
"My love and a hut" is a nice, romantic fabrication...
but when we are in love, the opposite applies in reality.
If we have managed to transform love into companionship, it helps.
Depression does make you stressful, shaky...
it makes you lose your thought, your romanticism...
your imagination and your dream.
But it is very important to come close to your partner...
under those circumstances.
By saying: "That is how things are. We are here, we are together.
We move together, it's ok".
As long as we can provide our child with the necesary...
and be decent.
I believe that money does not affect the relationships.
For example, if you don't have love, how will you build a career?
And what is the meaning of a career...
if you don't have someone by your side to love you?
That's how I see it.
Young people are very concerned about the value of love.
This is something that motivates me...
as researcher of the intimate human relationships...
how worried young people are...
whether it is well worth to fall in love and invest in love.
I would say that this trouble is common in girls and boys.
It seems that the current social circumstances...
makes young people think of love as a commodity...
like any of the consumer goods.
So, is it worth it to spend time, to make an effort...
or is it a loss, a waste of time?
My usual answer to young people is that it is certainly worth it...
this is something undoubted...
because it is the first and primary fermentation...
that helps someone self-expand, enhance himself...
through the acquaintance with another person, and mature.
Everything we say is great. Everything I say, I write...
that I don't want to fall in love again, God forbid...
nothing changes and such things...
but tonight, it may happen while I'll be out for a drink.
I may fall in love. I may see someone and say "yes".
I may get rid of my fears.
Usually, no matter what we say, reality turns out different.
A fanatic single could suddenly change his mind...
by meeting someone.
I do windsurfing to impress all women.
I've written a song with my friend over there, at the left, Antonis...
that is called "When I look at you".
I wrote this song with Antonis...
and I don't know how he was feeling or how he was feeling for a girl...
but I wrote it because I was in love with a girl and she didn't know it.
And in my couplet I repeat the phrase "When I look at you"...
and I add something else each time.
Because, honestly, when I saw her, I felt something very beautiful...
something crazy, something that penetrated me as Miltos.
And yes, I liked her very much.
And I wrote this song without knowing what will happen with her.
And I did the stupidity to write at the end...
"When I look at you, you belong only to me".
But I don't think it's stupid...
because when we look at each other, she is only mine.
I'm the only one that sees her, she's the only one that sees me...
and it is just the two of us, there is nothing else.
Science rationalizes it.
Some people are affraid of it.
And others doubt it.
But in the end, we all need love.
Against all odds...
and despite the technologies that change the way we come together...
it seems that we never stop searching for our soul mate.
Because this is the best way to find out ourselves.
One thing is certain: There is love out there.
But in order to find it, you have to make the first step.
On the national holiday, on October 28th...
we made a trip to Naphplio.
We went at Naphplio, we were on an excursion...
we ate, we drunk, had fun.
It got late and we should return to Athens. As friends.
And I proposed her to stay at my country house at Epidavros.
And she answered very easily: "Why not? It's late", etc.
I took it differently than her.
We went to my house, we start saying:
"I'll sleep at this room, you'll sleep at the other room".
We were acting totally as friends.
After she layed down at the bed I was supposed to sleep in...
I layed down next to her and...
things went crazy!