I admire Alan Watts's writing on Zen and philosophy, and many of his recorded talks have also been quite educational and enlightening, but Watts was, in real life, a horrible person—a drug-using, womanizing, unprincipled bastard. (Read a bio called Zen Effects by Monica Furlong for the story of Watts the asshole, dropping acid at Buddhist temples in Japan, etc.). Despite all that, what Watts has to say in the video below is relevant. Try to separate the words from the shitty speaker. As he says early in the video:
One of the biggest surprises of awakening is not that you float around in perfect bliss, but that it becomes almost impossible to fall in love again—at least in the way you used to. The swooning raptures, the feverish anticipation, the little dramas and sentimental scribblings—all of that becomes strangely unconvincing. It isn't that you've lost the capacity to love. Far from it. In fact, love becomes richer, deeper, quieter, but the old game of projection and pursuit just doesn't work anymore. You can't unsee what you've seen. You know now that most of what passes for romance is simply two hungry selves making arrangements with one another. And once you've spotted the trick, it's very hard to be enchanted by it again.
If all you see is transactions, then it's not love, and it's only superficial.
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