Work Does Not Replace Love
Dear [Mentat],
Perhaps my happiness is more dependent on having a mate than yours, yes. In my mind, a level three need [referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs triangle] would seem to be such a strong one that if left unfilled, it would cover up the higher level needs. In my own experience, all the achievements at [work] came to matter little in the end, since I was forced to enjoy them alone [without a girlfriend]. The joy resulting from the group respecting me as a foremost authority on certain system components, only went so far. Eventually, the promise of such joy if I continued the fast work pace, became an insufficient motivator to retain and advance that expertise. Studying new code and designs became laborious and boring, and as I referred to it and the whole [work] effort in general, a colossal waste of time. Once I realized that I’d hit my maximal potential for happiness that I could without a woman, and then grew disenchanted with that level, I just stopped caring about work. So yes, my happiness became squarely contingent on being loved by someone desirable. Whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know. It’s just the way it is for me.
No, marriage won’t necessarily enrich a person’s life. In fact, as I was saying to Mom the other day, a bad relationship is clearly worse than no relationship. However, when you have one in which the partners are mutually respectful, helpful, and thoughtful, it’s hard to imagine being the worse for it. In fact, it’s much easier to envision such a situation raising one to higher degrees of excellence in all other pursuits than he could have achieved without a supportive, loving partner. So when we’re analyzing the overall effects of a relationship on the psyche, it’s important that we disallow the admittedly frequent bad stories to overly skew our views about the potential good that comes from quality romance. You hear me talk often of how much I want a relationship. In these statements, I’m referring to these good ones, not the bad.
I’d disagree with your assessment of finding a mate [providing only] a  temporary lift,  particularly when there are no other mental illnesses indicated than chronic loneliness, and the secondary effects of such loneliness – mild to moderate depression, faltering concentration, withdrawal, addiction, and such. A relationship is by no means a fix-all. It will not cure psychosis or many forms of neurosis. Depending on the particular malady [...], a relationship is no more effective a cure than a sugar pill would be to a drug addict. But it does cure many ills nonetheless.
You speak of melancholy [...], and how a person who is chronically melancholy would continue to be so even if he found a relationship. Well, it depends on why he’s down. If he’s sad because he can’t achieve a career goal for example, then you are correct. A relationship would probably not bring him [out of] the dumps for very long, especially if he has other ungratified needs. If, on the other hand, the source of his blues is primarily lacking love, then should a desirable lady appear, her love could be quite therapeutic over the long haul [and indeed, give him a more permanent lift].
Finding a mate is by no means the same class of need as, say, playing a piano or doing missionary work in Africa, or impressing a boss at work, or eating to one’s heart content. It’s more basic and thus has fewer alternatives for gratification, and it’s gratification is more imperative as well. It’s hard to argue that the love need is a symptom of a mental shortcoming therefore. Indeed, it appears to be an integral part of our biological make-up, by virtue of the fact that people who have this desire have more children, and those who don’t have it have fewer. Since parents have a ready conduit (the children themselves) for transmitting their values to subsequent generations, we’d expect the tendency to base happiness on the presence of love to be a more prolific view among people, simply because their parents probably had [...] that view, and taught it to them. Now everyone I know of has parents.  
  And most parents want a relationship. So the odds are that most people want relationships as well; not because they’re weak in character, but because it’s their nature to want it, as fostered by natural selection.
Finally, as mentioned, a relationship won’t cure, say the absence of food, security, or in many cases, esteem, and self-actualization. I think that satisfaction of  any one  of the basic needs probably won’t result in true happiness. The only way to get that would be to achieve simultaneous gratification of all the needs together.
A relationship however, though a big slice in the happiness pie, is still just a slice. It’s by no means the whole pie. So in this way, you are right that a relationship won’t cure depression, particularly if that depression comes from a thwarting of a need that a relationship does not gratify. But we might also infer that a relationship can be the final piece in the happiness pie, when all the other basic needs are met in large degree. In this scenario, where the only thing needed for complete happiness is love, you might be wrong. A relationship could indeed bring total happiness; at least as total as happiness can get in humans.
