So, you don't think that de Botton simply doesn't feel love like you do and is working from his position rather than try to "poison" the minds of the folks like yourself?

I perfectly understand the feelings he describes about others and oneself in the article. It resonates with me - perhaps because, true to what you've written, I am a damaged man, deprived of love in my upbringing. I said I was falling in love with people before, but the truth is, I don't know what loving someone - or being loved - feels like. I like some people, and I do my best to stay around them, often for too long, with too much obvious effort that makes them push me away. My feelings are under a rock which I have to constantly move against itself, and with that, rationalizing things to make them appear like a structure rather than a feeling has been a great help: while imperfect, it's a method I can use to view whatever chaos of human interactions I'm a part of as some sort of a structure, something I can operate within. It's unwieldy, overly technical and prone to overthinking itself, but it's something.

So calm down. Maybe he wasn't talking to you. Maybe he was talking to me.