Osho,
To fall in love is so easy. Why is it so difficult to fall out of love? So many discussions, tears, fights, fears…. I don’t want to hurt the person I’ve been with, because it’s not that there is no feeling. I’m so confused. And the love for you is a different feeling altogether. Can you say something?

Is there something to say? All is finished!

Falling is always easy. You can fall in any ditch. Getting out is difficult. But you will have to get out. Once the love disappears the ditch becomes hell. Then there is quarreling, argument, nagging, and every kind of nastiness from both sides. Nobody wants to hurt; but because he is hurting, she is hurting, unknowingly they go on dumping their hurt feelings on the other.

In the first place, when you start falling in love, when you are still not in the ditch, that is the time to ask me, because I have a totally different kind of love affair which is called rising in love. Then there is no problem. Rising in love is beautiful, and getting out of it is very easy, because that will be falling down. Falling down is easy, keep it for the next step; for the first step, always use rising. The easier step you have done, now you have to do the difficult one.

And it will happen – all these tears and conflicts, but nothing can bring the love back.

A simple thing has to be understood: love – the love that you are talking about – is not in your hands. You have fallen into it. It was not in your power not to fall, so when it comes, it takes you with it. But it is like a breeze, it comes and goes. And it is good that it comes and goes, because if it stays it becomes stale.

A little understanding is needed on both sides, that the love is no longer there. There is no need to hate each other, because nobody has destroyed it – nobody has created it. It had come like a breeze, you enjoyed those moments; be thankful to each other and help each other to come out of the ditch. In a ditch, that is the only way. The man, to be really manly, should give his shoulders for the woman to rise up and get out of the ditch. And the man can find his own gymnastics, how to do it.

But nobody asks me before falling. This is strange! For thirty-five years I have been waiting for somebody to ask me how to fall in love. Nobody asks that, because if you had asked that I would have suggested, “Never fall in love. Try to rise.” And rising in love is a totally different matter.

Rising in love means a learning, a changing, a maturity. Rising in love ultimately helps you to become grown-up. And two grown-up persons don’t quarrel; they try to understand, they try to solve any problem.

Anybody who rises in love never falls from it, because rising is your effort, and the love that is grown through your effort is within your hands. But falling in love is not your effort.