I love porn.

Really. If the discussion of intimacies and what goes on inside the bedroom and people’s heads when they enter relationships is porn, count me in. It’s extremely complicated. It’s baffling. We don’t know why we do it, but we just can’t help ourselves.

It’s something that I’ve been chewing on this week. I stumbled across this review of “Possession,” a film based on the A.S. Byatt novel. The more modern pair of lovers find it more difficult to rush into love compared to their Victorian counterparts. They have this endless parade of what ifs— What if they get bored with each other, what if it ends too quickly, or what if it doesn’t end. They plot elaborate contingency plans about what to do should they get too used to each other’s presence in their lives. It’s like getting involved requires a degree in disaster management. Which really isn’t far fetched, when you think about it.

If there’s one distinct trait of romantic entanglements (and “entangle” it is—convoluted, hogtied, a mad pretzel of emotions) in our current time, it’s the reluctance to be emotionally intimate. We gripe about alienation and urban living blah, when it wouldn’t be that way had we been a little bit willing to let people into our lives. We try to protect ourselves from future pain by not getting involved.

Anonimity becomes valued, like the way the characters in “A Pornographic Affair” did. Their affair has clear rules: No names, no talk about their lives outside the hotel room where they meet for their weekly trysts. No emotions other than lust. But after a certain time, you get used to the person. More than just bodily fluids are exchanged. They talk, they laugh, they enjoy each other’s company. Suddenly the plain stranger’s face becomes beautiful, the voice transforms to that of an angel’s. They shift from performing the fantasy to making love.

The natural progression would have been to change the nature of their relationship. Nobody wants to admit that feelings are involved, that they’re in it more than just the sex. Then, they think—Ah, this happens rarely, I should risk it. But at the moment when each of them are waiting for the right time to say the words out loud, they hesitate. She thinks that he wants it to end. His face says it all. He thinks that she’s going to laugh at him.

Neither wants to be caught at “breaching” their initial agreement, the words come out: “It will never work between the two of us. I will only hurt you. So before you end up hating me, I think we should end this.” So there you go, the tragedy of our times: A possibility at finding love amid the chaos of crowds and café noise destroyed by miscommunication and pride.

We are afraid to be loved. It’s really very sad.