Whole

Originally men were very different from now; each was formed by two faces, four arms and four legs.

Judging their extraordinary strength as dangerous, Zeus decided to weaken them by cutting each being in half.

In this way, each half searches for and wants the half from which it was detached. Eros is nothing but the force of attraction that aspires to reunite the two halves in the original whole.

The genuine, right, erotic attraction is limited only to one individual (the half from which one has left).

Physical attraction is not the end, but the instrument of Eros’s action.

So, when the original form was cut in two, each half was nostalgic for the other and was looking for it; and thus, throwing their arms around and knotting one another for the desire to be reunited in the same form, they died of hunger and inactivity, since one did not intend to do anything separate from the other.

So when you come across your own half of a time,
here it is indescribably assailed by affection, intimacy and passion, so much so that one does not want to detach oneself from the others even for a moment.

And these are the ones who stay together for life,
without even knowing what they want the other to receive from the other.

And if Hephaestus […] asked: “Perhaps you want to be as close as possible to each other, so as not to leave you neither by day nor by night?

I could weld you together so that of two you become one and live together until the end of life as a single being, and when you are also down there in Hades you will be one in dead”,

There is no doubt that, having heard this, no one would draw back or show that they desire something else,

but he would believe that he had heard precisely what he once craved, that is to join and merge with the beloved to become one.

And the reason is precisely that our original nature was that, and we were whole, and now two broken parts.

Therefore love is the desire and the quest for the whole.

-Platone