Decifering The Romantic Code*

I had first listened to "If you don't know me by now", a song by Harold Melvin and his band, at the Washington Square in New York. A black gentleman and regular there sung it. After many months, I listened to the song the other day. It goes as follows:

If You Dont Know Me By Now
Artist: Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes
Album: If You Dont Know Me By Now

If you don't know me by now
You will never never never know me

All the things that we've been through
You should understand me like I understand you
Now girl I know the difference between right and wrong
I ain't gonna do nothing to break up our happy home
Oh don't get so excited when I come home a little late at night
Cos we only act like children when we argue fuss and fight

If you don't know me by now (If you don't know me)
You will never never never know me (No you won't)
If you don't know me by now
You will never never never know me

We've all got our own funny moods
I've got mine, woman you've got yours too
Just trust in me like I trust in you
As long as we've been together it should be so easy to do
Just get yourself together or we might as well say goodbye
What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye, oh

If you don't know me by now (If you don't know me)
You will never never never know me (No you won't)
If you don't know me by now (You will never never never know me)
You will never never never know me (ooh)

The song brought me back to a question, an aswer to which I have been long searching: Could we possibly know another person?

As a born pessimist (with extreme arrogance and stupidity who once believed, and was proud, that he could understand people and then found it otherwise as enlightenment dawned on him), my answer will be a curt "No".

I no longer believe that one can know/understand anoher person completely; nor do I believe that one can make others fully understand oneself. And I think, most of the human inter-personal relationships end up bruished and battered due to this very same reason.

The major factor that contribures towards this is: we fail to differentiate between infatuation and love. (What I will say here is mainly about romance, but the same could also be applied, in a sense, to friendship). When one is infatuated with someone, one feels that one knows the other person completely. During that colorful phase, one finds everything positive about one's partner. But then, as times goes by, reality slowly starts setting in and one starts unearthing findings that one never witnessed/noticed before. And more often than not, such findings are detrimental to the relationship.

Then the relationship slowly, almost imperceptibly, collapses.

People who once promised to die if he/she could not be with the other person forever, would, at a later date, struggle to remember the name of "that" person; people who claimed he/she knew the other person like the palm of one's own hand, would be surprised as to why the other person became so different. And then, one of the two people in the relationship would decide to withdraw, ending it and leaving the other person behind. And obviously, the end-product of all these will be that the person left behind would have to pass through a painful rite of passage.

This again makes me ask myself the same question: when could, if ever, one know that one knows someone? Or, is it that one can never really know another person completely and, so one will never never never know anyone?

Believe me, I don't have answer to this question!
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Source: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/radio/ifyoudontknowmebynow.htm
*After, "Decifering The Chemical Code", a book by Professor Nicholoas D. Epiotis.