An excerpted dialogue on the topic of faithfulness from Venus in Furs, by Leopold van Sacher-Masoch.

Man: "I will not reproach you with anything", I said apologetically. "You are a divine woman but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love.

Venus: "What you call cruel", the goddess of love replied eagerly, "is simply the element of passion motivated by natural love, which is woman's nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything that pleases her."

Man: "but can there be a greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?" I demanded.

Venus: "Indeed!" she replied. "We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there- woman or man? You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duty where there should be only a question of pleasure."

(...)

Man: "The idea of sharing a woman, even if it were an Aspasia, with another revolts us. We are jealous as is our God. For example, we have made a term abuse out of the name of the glorious Phryne. We prefer one of Holbein's meagre, pallid virgins, which is wholly ours to an antique Venus, no matter how divinely beautiful she is, but who loves Anchises today, Paris to-morrow, Adonis the day after. And if nature triumphs in us so that we give our whole glowing passionate devotion to such a woman, her serene joy of life appears to us as something demonic and cruel, and we read into our happiness a sin which we must expiate."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ideas about love here are very interesting to me. Certainly my life makes me question the existence of love at all, and so now I'm looking for alternative explanations to how it should work. I suppose I am not really expressing my mind here. I know that despite my ambitious intentions toward this blog, this entry will be less than entirely scholarly.

It's not that I don't believe in love. I do. I also think that I am full of love. I have so much love to give, tenderness wells inside me, I am a woman capable of loving, and loving well. But I'm not penelope. I'm just another dethroned romantic. Like the Jeff Buckley song goes;
"Maybe I'm just too young, to keep good love from going wrong"