Well Said

I found this on another forum. I think it's pretty accurate. What do you think?

Loneliness, if not understood, can be destructive to human intimacy & love. Loneliness can lead to over-possessiveness in relationships. Our loneliness often leads us to overexert ourselves in relationships. Loneliness can also be destructive of human intimacy and love as it leads us to over-expect in relationships. No relationship, however deep and intimate, can ever fully take our loneliness from us. And, as long as we go through life expecting this, we are doomed to constant disappointment. The issue of intimacy and love, of stripping away the riddle of loneliness, cannot be so easily resolved by people simply going to bed with each other. Meaningful love and intimacy, the type that helps rid us of our loneliness, is a complex, hard-to-do, seldom achieved thing.
Nobody falls into love! Love is always the result of some effort and some sacrifice, of some bleeding and some crying. It is the result of some willingness on a person's part to be hung up on a cross and to die a little. Only three types of persons think that real love is easy; those who are already saints, who through long years of painful practice have made love a habit; manipulators, who have confused their own self-gratification with genuine love; and unrealistic dreamers, who do not know what they are talking about.
The fear of being rejected is so great within us that we would sooner not make ourselves available to love than to present ourselves honestly and openly and risk being rejected. We would sooner live in loneliness than risk getting hurt. How often do we leave it to the other, or to circumstance, to initiate or deepen a relationship we desperately want? Only when we risk enough to let someone hurt us are we risking enough to let someone love us. When we make ourselves available enough to be hurt, we will finally be available enough to be truly loved. We must, despite our fear and shame, and despite the fact that we might be rejected and hurt, reach out.
Love means many things. It means more than sharing a bed or a building, more than being accidentally thrown together by force of circumstance, and more than being bound together by erotic or emotional attraction. It means sharing all things, sorrows and joys, growth and sickness, life and death. It also, it is to remain alive and interesting, means sharing silliness, playing pranks on each other, and keeping each other alert with wit and surprises. If we want real love beyond romantic daydreams, if we want o keep any commitments we have ever made in marriage, parenting, friendship or religious vocation, we can do so only if we are willing to sweat blood and die to ourselves at times. There is no other route. Love costs. Sweating some blood in the garden of commitment and shedding blood in the surrender of intimacy is the price of love, the cost of moving out of alienation.

From the book The Restless Heart by Ronald Rolheiser published by Doubleday