‘Cosmic Love’ aka the friend-zone

CAIRO – 9 November 2017: Some people fall in mutual love at first sight, but for Florence it was the darkness of unrequited love.

Since the moment she saw that person it was as if love tore through her eyes placing her in cosmic blackness, where even the stars and moon have all been blown out.

She was left in a state of blinding, endless suffering where nothing else mattered but her feelings for him and nothing else even seemed to occur in life;

"No dawn, no day,
I'm always in this twilight"

The problem with unrequited love is that it might be the most romantic type of love because it is practically limitless, as therapist Leon F Seltzer, Ph.D., explains on Psychology Today's website.

“An ‘untried’ love is virtually without limits precisely because, never really having begun, there has been no time for disillusionment to set in. The beloved—frequently distant, uninterested, unavailable, or unapproachable—can remain an object of indefinite idealization.”

What Florence depicted through her darkness-tearing vocal chords is a bitter, melancholic and wholeheartedly felt the one-sided love that is constantly fed by vague, ambiguous hope which sounds like heartbeats in the dark, pulling her to follow them until she finally loses her way back.

"And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat
I tried to find the sound
But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness
So darkness I became"

via GIPHY

Using whatever strength left in her, tired Florence fights and stops everything for a moment, even the loudness of the music, so she can pull his love out of her and see her way out of this darkness. But at that moment, she hears his heart beating and realizes he is in the darkness too, so she stays in the darkness with him.

"I took the stars from our eyes, and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you…"

While many choose to interpret this ending as a revelation of a mutual feeling by the loved one, it can also be seen as if the man Florence loves did not want to let her go free; he chooses to relocate her once again within the vicious circle of unrequited love where he is endlessly appreciated and she is running on false hope.

via GIPHY

Florence established an ending that is pretty much like that of any unrequited love, where one is left in confusion regarding the whole experience, and whether to refer to that loved one as a lover or a dark companion. This is supported by the intensity with which she sings the final chorus of the song.



Maybe W. Somerset Maugham was right when he said: “The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.”