A guy in Personality Cafe posted this:

Speaking from a framework of evolution, this is all just a show. We are just doing what we are programmed to do. There is no overcoming the selfish gene. Your significant other doesn't love anything about "you" as you, if such a thing even exists. They are really, truly just interested because of things like your looks, your wealth, your intelligence, your ability to make them laugh, your altruism. All these are matters of dumb luck. Everything is. They're in it for their own interests, and so are you. If some truly better option came along, evolutionarily speaking, you'd be dropped like a hot coal. Commitment is a function of options.

A really nice, helpful, warm person is really no different from a sociopath, no more praiseworthy, no more well-intentioned even. They're just doing what their programmed instincts tell them to do. They were lucky enough (perhaps) to get the sort of genome and be raised in the sort of environment which would produce those sorts of traits. They are nothing but an expression of evolution, just like the sociopath. Neither one is even remotely in control of who they are. We smile and applaud and love some people, and we hate others. While this may be useful, there's not really any truth to it. No one deserves credit and no one deserves blame.

Admittedly, in a sense I am turned off knowing this. I feel detached from people... impervious to them. Even if some beautiful, smart, funny, kind girl were to approach me and try to win my heart, she never really could. No one can anymore, because this truth is something I am unavoidably aware of. The instincts are still roaring within me, telling me to bond, bond, bond... but I can't un-know the facts of philosophy or evolution either. We are organic robots maximizing our fitness. That sure ain't the sort of love I was ever taught about.

Don't get me wrong, I've always subscribed to the theory of evolution, but I guess for most of my life I was able to compartmentalize and not think it had anything to do with relationships, at least not the ones I was involved in. I still believed in love as some sort of unconditional metaphysical bond between people that had something to do with being deserved in the sense that one was responsible for something underneath those things which brought it about.

But of course that isn't the case. That's why you see people of similar attractiveness and status in relationships together. Because those things are what it's really about. It would merely be impolite to be so straightforward, to the extent that people fool even themselves about why they like a person. If that's the case, the entire affair simply becomes sort of unappetizing to me.

In a sense I can still play some less involved version of the game, but never get too wrapped up in it like people always do. Losing someone, for example, could never hurt too much because I never would have believed I "had" them in the first place. It was all something I just went along with because it was there.

So can you stomach it? The fact that no one really loves you any more than the lack of other options they have? That they don't care about you but only your looks, your wealth, etc.?

Someone said it well when they said it is sort of like losing your belief in Santa Claus as a kid. Christmas becomes a lot less magical, especially at first. But is Christmas without Santa really that bad? As adults we know it isn't. Neither is this, in some sense.

I'm over it, anyway. While I may have lost a possibility to ever think anyone is special or that I am special to anyone, I still enjoy people in a non-deluded, realistic sort of way. I say, let's not kid ourselves about what this is. When you aren't being interesting to me, I'm not interested in you. And that applies to me too, and I wouldn't expect anything else.

What do you think about his feelings ? Do you agree that "love" doesn't exist?