I am convinced that these words of Rilke are of crucial importance for us who have, in the words of someone (I forget who), passed from puritanism to promiscuity without ever having experienced genuine love, eros, deep sensuality, what Suzanne Lilar (an unjustly ignored feminine thinker) called sacral love.
Introduction, page 27

A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of its fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!
Rilke's Letters on Love, page 34

All companionship can consist only...