On the impossibility of controlling the influence one exerts on the Other. The Other is precisely that — the Other. One cannot get inside their head. From this it follows that we can never know with certainty how others see us, perceive us, or experience us. One can try to please others or produce a desired impression — and achieve the opposite effect. One can exert every effort to minimize one’s influence — and still end up living in the other person’s head for years.

This does not cancel out responsibility for one’s decisions, words, and actions, but it in no way allows one to predict the influence exerted.

“Other people can, without knowing it, serve for years as a source of light in the lives of others, while their own lives follow different, hidden paths. And just as easily a person can become a demon, a cancerous growth for someone they barely remember, or perhaps never even knew personally.”
Iris Murdoch, "The Sea, the Sea"

In this light, relationships appear to be a dubious enterprise with high risks and no guarantees (which, to be honest, they are), yet one that demands investment from the participants. Rather, they resemble an anti-deal, because no one can promise what influence the other will have on them, given their inability to foresee the course of events or their own reactions. In this context, the lover’s questions “Do you love me?” or “How much do you love me?” sound less like signs of madness and more like quite natural attempts to clarify the feelings they evoke in the other — feelings over which they have no control.

“Once I used to ask myself, ‘Do you love me?’ One time I asked him and understood so much more. He answered like a good old journalist: what I feel for you is my business, and what you feel for me is yours. Mind your own business.”
Keathie Acker, McKenzie Wark, "I Want You Very Much. Correspondence 1995–1996"

It may seem obvious to want to put an end to relationships of any kind. Here, however, disappointment awaits us, because a human being is condemned not only to freedom but also to Being-with-others. These others are always there; they contrast with us, place us in situations of choice and uncertainty (unpleasant people, I agree). They are sometimes present as background, sometimes as figures in our experience. Strictly speaking, without them we are more of an abstraction and can be seen and understood precisely in the context of interaction and mutual disclosure.

(Space for a joke: “Could I have another therapist, please?”)

I do not rule out the possibility that what you have read may give rise to a feeling of hopelessness. And that feeling is valid. Yet what has been written here, like the experience of others itself, does not cancel our freedom to choose how we relate not only to the above, but to relationships as such.

It is clear that none of us can control what another person feels toward us (love spells aside — no one can resist those), nor how we influence them through our presence. And vice versa. We are always present in the context of the moment, touching one another and thereby co-creating what arises between and within each of us. Sometimes this is a meeting, sometimes a passing by. Each of us is in this as best we can, know how, or choose. To the dismay of modern man, there are no algorithms or rules here — only life as it is. And we-in-this-world-with-others.