If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition m… - Alain de Botton

It may come very fast, this certainty that another human being is a soulmate. We needn’t have spoken with them; we may not even know their name. Objective knowledge doesn’t come into it. What matters instead is intuition: a spontaneous feeling that seems all the more accurate and worthy of respect because it bypasses the normal processes of reason.

I can't understand people who don't like chocolate. I was once going out with a
guy, this guy Robert I was telling you about, and I was never really
comfortable with him, but I couldn't work out why. Then one day it all became
clear: he didn't like chocolate. I mean he didn't just not love it, this guy
actually hated it. You could have put a bar in front of him and he wouldn't
have touched it. That kind of thinking is so far removed from anything I can
relate to, you know. Well, after that, you can imagine, it was clear we had to
break up.

But fantasies are often the best thing we can make of our multiple and contradictory wishes; they allow us to inhabit one reality without destroying the other. Fantasizing spares those we care about from the full irresponsibility and scary strangeness of our urges.