Neil Gaiman quote

Just came across this piece today:

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. "
--Neil Gaiman, American English Novelist

The whole prospect surely seems horrifying. What with Ghalib chipping in with "mujhe kyaa buraa thaa marnaa agar ek baar hotaa.."! But people won't stop falling for other people, wanting to fall for other people, not wanting to get up once fallen, wanting to call 'falling' as 'rising'.
I guess in college days, love appears centre-stage in conversation. Heart-to-heart talks with close friends end, if not start and middle, with it. The inexperienced ask questions with innocent eagerness, and the experienced or the femina-educated ones answer with an air of omniscience. The dosage becomes too much if one sees "social circles of individuals shrink down into nothingness" , as a friend puts it, when some close friend gets affianced to someone (who has to be tolearted even if you get an urge to laugh your teeth out every time he opend his mouth to speak!)

Isn't there any way out of this juncture?
Thank God John Donne's there to help:

SELF-LOVE.
by John Donne

HE that cannot choose but love,
And strives against it still,
Never shall my fancy move,
For he loves against his will ;
{Lizzy Bennet on Darcy's first proposal?}

Nor he which is all his own,
And cannot pleasure choose ;
When I am caught he can be gone,
And when he list refuse ;

Nor he that loves none but fair,
For such by all are sought ;
Nor he that can for foul ones care,
For his judgement then is nought ;
{Donne's sooooooo damn intelligent in listing his paradoxes!}

Nor he that hath wit, for he
Will make me his jest or slave ;
Nor a fool when others —
He can neither —

Nor he that still his mistress prays,
For she is thrall'd therefore ;
Nor he that pays, not, for he says
Within, she's worth no more.

Is there then no kind of men
Whom I may freely prove?
I will vent that humour then
In mine own self-love.
{A charming practice, really!}