Echo and Narcissus (Waterhouse painting) mythology. In Ovid's version of the myth, Narcissus was the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. His parents were told that he would live to an old age if he did not look at himself. He rejected all the nymphs and women who fell in love with him. One of these was the nymph Echo, who was so upset by her rejection that she withdrew from life and wasted away until all that was left was a whisper. Her prayers were heard by the goddess Nemesis who caused Narcissus to fall in love with his own
Falling in love arguments obscure the way sexual passion often leads not to secure attachment but to attachments thwarted, as well as the sheer frightening difficulties of all falling in love. Biologist Jeremy Griffith suggests that people fall in love in order to abandon themselves to the dream of an ideal state (being one free of the human condition). Stendhal charted the timing of falling in love in terms of what he called crystallization—a first period of crystallization (of some six weeks) which often involves obsessive brooding and the idealisation of the other via a coating of desire; a period of doubt; and