Against love�s histrionics

The denouement of the forbidden love affair between Kris Aquino and Joey Marquez has been such a big scandal these past few days that I half-expected the Philippine Stock Exchange to crash and the peso to take a nose-dive. Fortunately, nothing of such sort has happened. What we have instead is a gross and pornographic spectacle of a relationship falling apart, of erstwhile lovers turned into the bitterest of enemies.

Such episodes in one�s life are the most embarrassing�doubly so when the circumstances leading to the breakup are narrated in national television ad nauseam and dissected in our country�s risqu� tabloids.

The White House�s advice to president Marcos in 1986 should apply to lovers intending to break up: Cut quick, and cut clean.

A sense of level-headedness is called for in moments like this. Now, if only Kris Aquino had the levelheadedness of her brother, we could have been spared the emotional excreta that inevitably comes from love�s decomposition.

I guess Kris and Joey�s love for each other was simply too intense to survive. Nowadays, people would not settle for a relationship whose emotions do not rival the intensity of Catherine and Heathcliff�s love. No, love must be tempestuous, the kind of romantic love we see on soaps. Why can we not see more of Elizabeth Bennetts and Mr. Darcys , who approach love pragmatically and with good sense not to subject oneself to great paroxysms of emotion? A love like Kris and Joey's, so showbizy and marked with too frequent protestations of love, was never bound to last. Perhaps only Kris believed otherwise.