Love? Why!
It drives us nuts, and we end up solo
We would lose each other in each other’s arms, but it turned out differently. Now I am tired of trying to hold onto something that was not there in the first place. Just a desire. Holding onto an image, an ideal to become, or maybe because it was just fun and all I wanted was that.
In the end, we searched for a relief someway or another. From the sorrows of life or from the pain we felt.
Exes
The thing I wanted I got, the emotional roller coaster. It was not boring. It is highly enticing. Well, the stress that came with it was worse than expected. I have dated on and off and I always went for what caused problems or caused themselves to spice things up a bit. I knew deep down that this is not sustainable. Still, I kept going on. A fool who I thought I would be able to manage. Managing the layers of problems some of these people have. People with temper issues, people who are self-centred all the way to their core. To quote: ‘I am a girl who feels loved by gifts.’ Or relieving their insecurities on me and seeing me as a safeguard for their life.
How did this happen? Well, I was available. It was like it was almost written on my forehead: ‘take me, I am your divine. Easy catch, but not easy to hold.’
This is what I have learned about these previous relationships. Relationships that are one-sided and manipulative in nature. Of course, the other person wanted to have some.
Due to the lack of passion or compassion. One should always proof or keep track of where the person stands in a relationship with the other person. Just to keep the relationship alive. Just to keep an image alive. Just to prove that you care for them, just to prove that you “love” them.
Doubt
In the end, we do not have any clue what the heck we are doing. Or not exactly, at least. I discovered that it is your heart that needs to be in the right place. It is the vision for life we have that needs to be solidified.
I knew a guy who can be considered an “alpha”; he was a box champion, soldier, personal lifeguard and adrenalin junky. He said: ‘Where others run away, there I step in. It attracts me’. He also said to me that he has a hard time finding a romantic partner (note that he is not ugly, poor or something like that at all). From my viewpoint, he is struggling with himself, and what he should do in life. This is a red flag when you would like to have a long-term relationship. Wishy-washy behavior.
Sustainable
If you go for a long-term relationship. Think through, short out the lifestyle that is durable and doable for you. Find a partner who is there to commit the same crimes you commit or is they’re in for it. Find out if you have doubts about certain things if you are belittling things that you found irritating of your significant other. When you know what irritates or bothers you in the other. If this thing, has a huge NO-NO for you, then quite. Do not move on. It will keep growing until it explodes. You are doing no good to yourself and the other person. Keep the distance or everything will end up in a big drama. This is not the type of firework you are in for.
In big things, you should be able to come to an agreement. Like where to live, having kids or not, and in what we would like to invest or share time in.
One-night stands and fuck buddies are for fun. It‘s for the moment and should stay like that. There are people whose life is about that; fun. A hedonistic approach, nothing bad about that.
Future
After a while, I started to consider my future more and more. It is all fun and well, but what about something that lasts? What about people who are not there just for the moment, but are there to mutually help each other?
Excerpt from The Atlantic magazine: Eli Finkel, a psychologist and marriage scholar at Northwestern University, has argued that since the 1960s, the dominant family culture has been the “self-expressive marriage.” “Americans,” he has written, “now look to marriage increasingly for self-discovery, self-esteem and personal growth.” Marriage, according to the sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, “is no longer primarily about childbearing and childrearing. Now marriage is primarily about adult fulfillment.”
In this, I can see a healthy society. Where one is mutually there for the other person. I mean more in an intellectual way, rather than the practical aspect. Today, we are not rebuilding society after the war. Today, there’s more to life than survival by having enough food (for most). Today, we are either building our future or partying to find relief. Today, we are hedonistic or stoic, or maybe somewhere in between.
The feminist philosopher Beauvoir talked about ethical love where she calls for ‘equilibrium’ and ‘reciprocity’. Here she states that equilibrium is self-giving without self-loss: lover and beloved ‘simply walk side by side, mutually helping each other a little’.
Furthermore, in Beauvoir’s view, each human being wants that his existence is justified. In the sense that your life is valued by others. We can further amplify by putting Sternberg’s triangular theory of love behind it, where he talks about passion, commitment and (physical) intimacy. Let’s leave that for now and talk about the vision one has for life and how others are fitting in this picture. Where we share values, goals and all kinds of experiences.
If we in all our seriousness consider our life, we should be able to tell this, or just leave it and live in the moment and share the fun with your partner in crime.
Fun
I had a lot of fun, but was considering my future more and more and realized that if I would continue this way, I would end up nowhere. With only experiences, stories and people to talk about, but nothing left behind. More and more I considered the value I add to society now and for the future. Sharing experiences together is good, but sharing a vision together is even better. Building something together is the best. Maybe for some, this is self-explanatory, but I encountered more the opposite than I would like.
Having a vision, having a goal. Being a dancer, being a pilot, being a designer or whatever role you want to play. Enlarge your social circle with those people. This is also the reason why a lot, if not the most, relationships start at the workplace.
Our way
If both partners conceive love as a joint project, if both respect and think ‘simultaneously of the other and self’, Beauvoir argued, they could succeed at ‘finding the appropriate mean’ between narcissism and devotion. It will not deliver delight. But neither does it settle for the mutilation by subordination in place for ‘an inter-human relation’ love in a world full of princesses, gold diggers, narcists and all others who take your time and resources one way or the other is not doing good. It is sabotaging yourself and the other of their and your dreams/desires.
To be franker, Alain Badiou, one of the most famous philosophers of our time, states that love is in a way a dependency. This, even more, proves my point above. That love comes from two sides. Something that is not supported by modern individualism. The sole motivation for the (post)-modern human is to satisfy one’s wishes and interests. Which is after all the dominant idea of the developed world. Real love makes things possible that without love was impossible. According to Alain.
Love should not be like a transaction, where one only sees what the person gets from the relationship. Or to put it differently. The two should be stronger, then the sum of its parts. The transaction mindset is skewed towards me, the individualistic me, the atomic me, instead of us and the world as it is now.
‘All that is true is rare and difficult’ — Alain Badiou
I rest my case, for now.
