Contest is now closed. Congrats to Annette and Mel K., our two winners, who both agreed love is agonizing!
Love hurts; I think we can all agree with that.
If you need any proof, just take a look at Michael Barson’s hilarious, cheesy, addictive anthology Agonizing Love: The Golden Era of Romance Comics.
A sample romance comic
BookPage editor Lynn Green interviewed Barson about his book, and the answers made me laugh out loud:
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about love from a romance comic?
If you just got hitched, don’t invite your mother-in-law to move in with you on your wedding night. That goes for both of you!
Is love any different today than it was in a half-century ago?
Love, and its surrounding mysteries and problems, is exactly the same, I am convinced. The only difference is that eHarmony didn’t exist in 1951. Not that it (or any of the other popular dot-com dating sites) seems to have done all that much good.
Is love always agonizing?
In my experience, yes. Because if it isn’t you that’s doing the agonizing, then the other person probably is. The real question is, would we really have it any other way? The empirical evidence of the past 100 years suggests the answer is no.
Finish reading the Q&A on BookPage.com, and enter to win this collection of comics for yourself. (Or use it to win the affection of that Special Someone.)
TO ENTER: Leave a comment with the answer to the following questions: Is love always agonizing? Why or why not?
CONTEST DETAILS: The prize is a copy of Agonizing Love. Two winners will be chosen using random.org. Prizes will be shipped to the U.S. The contest closes May 13 at 6 p.m. CST.
The heart does not break evenly!
Always agonizing –but that’s how to be alive.
Love can be agonizing when one person is more in love than the other, it can be easy to fall into an obessive love, not good. On the other hand, when love is right, there is an overwhelming sense of completeness and joy.
Love becomes agonizing after your 2nd anniversary.
Love is only agonizing if you let it become agonizing.
True love doesn’t run smoothly. Keep your sense of humor.
I would really love to win this book and donate it to the library where I work. We are building a graphic novel collection plus adding books about graphic novels. (criticism, author info, etc.) This would be a good addition to the collection.
Feels so good it hurts….because the fear of losing it is so much to bear.
Of course it’s agonizing at times. In all aspects of life, nothing runs smoothly all the time and this includes your love life.
To quote Pat Benatar, “Love is a battlefield”. When you’re losing, it’s agonizing, but when you’re winning, it’s glorious!
It is agonizing any time you open yourself up and leave yourself at the mercy of someone else.
Love isn’t never having to say you’re sorry. Sorry goes a long, long way in love! So does, I’ll clean up the kitchen, Let’s eat out, Your mother has such a sense of humor!, No, that dress doesn’t make you look fat, Go, watch your game, Honey, and I already took the garbage out. I’m just sayin’.
If love was not agonizing it would not be fun, my hubby and I celebrate our 29th anniversary this year and we are still friends. Even after raising 4 children!!
Love is always agonizing. You’re never sure if it’s real.
Congrats, Mel — you’re one of the winners! I’ll be in touch via email.
Love is only agonizing for the young. And weren’t we all young once?
We agonizing because we search for The One. Why must we analyze every relationship for longevity? Just go with it. They may be the one, but don’t think about that. Think about how much love you have in that moment.
Love is agonizing. That’s why we use the verb “falling” (in love). Hooray for band-aids (and wine…and chocolate…and…).
Congrats, Annette — you’re one of the winners! I’ll be in touch via email ASAP.
Worth the effort.
It’s definitely not as agonizing as what you get in books, but that’s half the fun of reading about it … isn’t it?
The gift of love brings peace, no matter what is happening around us.
Love is agonizing. When I was in the second grade, I had a crush on a boy. We liked each other until he found out I told friends that I liked him. That broke us up. Every time the song If I was Your Woman by Gladys Knight and The Pips played on the radio, it would bring up the break up. It would hurt all over again. It is funny how a song could affect how you love and your feeling of love.
Love is agony and ecstasy.
Not always, but enough of the time to keep it interesting!
I wouldn’t say love is always agonizing. If you don’t find the right person and you break up it would be very agonizing. Love is the best feeling in the world if it’s reciprocated and genuine. Not everyone finds true love.
makeupgirl21@comcast.net
Falling in love is nothing but drama, drama, drama!
Yes, love is always agonizing. Sweet agony when it consumes and burns and defies reality that one can feel that way, connect that way with another, and the adoration is mutual, requited. Plain-old-regular-debilitating agony when the love dies or disappears or when the mutal adoration becomes singular, unrequited. Or when your long-distance love breaks up with you. In an email.
Yes, it is. You have got to hang around for it to get better and also know when to leave!
Yes, love is always agonizing. You are trusting someone with your heart, and it’s hard to know when you can really trust someone with such a precious gift.
Yes! Young love causes agony. Especially for the parents of teens!
The agonyof love is also the happiness of love. The agony is wanting so much to be everything to the one you love. The happiness is that the one you love thinks you are everything.
Sometimes love can be agonizing. It just depends on the person and the time spent together.
Love is agonizing because you can only control your side of it.
Sometimes it is agonizing because you do something that hurts your love.
Is it better to have loved and lost than never having loved at all?
Answering that is agonizing.
Yes. Love is agonizing, and difficult, and hard work. Isn’t everything that’s worth doing?
Love is Agonizing , it does not start out that way, but over the years it gets worse and worse and girls you know what i mean !
When I was younger,I liked it deep and Agonizing because as teens we all did,dramatic,but when I matured I found the love of my life,but the agonizing part was when he was overseas for 15 months,with only letters,no computers,etc.,afer he came home,he wasn’t the same person but I fell in love with him again…war changes..43 yrs.,ups&downs but keep falling more in love,LUCKY me
Agonizing it can be,until you find out that special person feels the same,then ,you get to know each other…ain’t no tellin’ what will happen !
Love is sometimes agonizing … sometimes ecstasy
It can’t be controlled that is what makes it agonizing, but when equally shared with another person it is ecstasy.
Love can be agonizing and then it turns good and then it turns…
Love is always ups and downs.
Love and agony are like two sides of the same coin. Like light and darkness are only apparent through the presence or absence of the other, one only succumbs to agony if they’ve truly loved. So yes, they go hand in hand. But that does not mean that agony is ALWAYS the result of love – it just means that one is most likely to agonize over love, but only because it is worth every moment of agony spent on it!
love spelled backwards is almost evol[ve] and ‘heart of my heart’ i love that melody!
Love is agonizing in its complex beauty. Whether we are in the clouds or the depths, love keeps us going, whether its because we have it or because we dream of having a true love one day.
Love is agonizing, but it is worth every minute of it…Its hurtful, its beautiful, its stressing, its sensual, its crazy but in the end it is WORTH it.
love is always agonizing, it’s the nature of the thing