“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. The difficulty in finding true love is due to a lack of connection, communication, and past experiences or unknowns between individuals or just one. What makes it so elusive to find is not love itself but the ideas surrounding love, many will create an obsession, bad habits, or go as far of a stretch as violence for love. All of these contributing factors can be seen in various situations, such as Othello murdering Desdemona, Roderigo’s obsession and willingness to do anything for Desdemona, both sides of the Mojave phone booth’s obsession for and lack of communication, and last but not least, yourself. In both Othello and the Mojave phone booth, the love in the air is disrupted due to a lack of connection. In Othello, many characters such as Roderigo, Othello, and Bianca do not achieve true love because of an absence of communication and connection. For example, Othello murders and suffocates his wife, Desdemona, because of the sly man Iago. Iago had spread lies into Othello’s mind about how Desdemona had been cheating on him with his ex-general, this is an example of an insufficient amount of communication and trust, if Othello had communicated with the people around him and trusted Desdemona, she would have never died. This also ties in with violence because Othello never would have killed Desdemona if she was any other woman who cheated on another man, but because it was his wife his love for her meant that he had to kill her for what he had done to him.

Furthermore, another example of love or obsession is seen in the Mojave phone booth, the man is overly obsessed with the phone booth which creates a bad habit, and disregards some of his responsibilities so that he can call it at every moment hoping somebody will pick up. Now, imagine if we replaced that phone booth with a person, the same thing still applies, people will become obsessed with this persona and try to push their limits or take time away from other important things so that they can gain a glimpse of this love from someone. If you were Othello and your friend was Iago, the same would apply, that great relationship would have fallen to ruins due to somebody else’s opinion or thoughts on your problems or life. Another reason love may seem so elusive or unobtainable is that you don’t know the unknowns, which is exactly what the Dunning-Kruger Effect is. For instance, when you love a person you don’t know if they love you. When you have feelings for somebody you don’t know if those feelings are reciprocated. Not only would you not know if the person had feelings for you but you would not even know if they had a past relationship or experience with somebody else. Going further, if they had a past relationship or experience how would you know if that would affect their feelings about you? All of these factors, and even more possible factors that I did not mention coming from the Dunning Kruger Effect could affect their or your feelings for somebody. Overall, the reason why love is so hard to achieve is because there are so many possible past and future problems that may stop or stunt your trial in the growth of a relationship with somebody.