What is love?
[So I embark on my first LJ entry. If anyone happens to read this, please note. They will be few and they will be far between. And I usually write in one sitting. As long as the grammar and the structure are more or less accurate, that’s close enough for me. After all, it’s the idea that counts...]
I have a regularly scheduled lunch appointment with three of my colleagues from work. I’ve been doing this for the past year and a half or so with more or less the same group of people. In essence, we take about two hours, once a week, to sit down and discuss life in general. Most recently we’ve been discussing politics and religion. Politics, for obvious reasons, and religion because several of the folks who just joined us at work have very strong opinions, either for or against certain religions: so the fodder for recent discussion has been abundant.
The other day, however, and I’m not sure what instigated this train of thought, one of my colleagues proposed the question, “What is love?” First off though, I will briefly describe my colleagues and myself, for the purpose of this conversation. There is “Married”, 23, he who asked the question, “Engaged”, 27, who just moved here with his fiancée, and “Relationships”, 23, who, well, is always in a relationship, and I, (“Single”, 31). That’s pretty self explanatory.
We, well actually they, though I listened intently, discussed this topic for quite a bit. Although it is very hard to condense all their ideas into one, unifying, general statement, the gist of the conversation, I argue, can be found in the following: “There is no such thing as a true soul-mate. Loving someone is being attracted to a person you will be able to ‘tolerate’ in the best times and in the worst of times for the rest of your life.” Maybe by choosing the word ‘tolerate’ I am being harsh, maybe I just misheard, but that seems to me to be what they more or less meant, and they seemed all be in universal agreement over that general idea.
Now I find this disturbing on many levels, the first of which is that I’m single, and they all are in pretty stable, long-term, and from what I can gather, rather happy relationships. And not that it needs repeating, I’m not. So maybe the logic behind that thesis is why they are. Like they got some sort of memo that I missed. Or I just have absolutely no skill in what it takes to have a modern relationship. Either way, that would make me be “lacking” in this department: that is always disturbing self-realization, to me at least. So assuming that their thesis is true, and that because they have acknowledged it, that’s why they’re in their happy relationships, and I’m not: that would mean that everything I have ever done in a relationship is completely wrong. That’s even more disturbing.
Regardless, I still refuse to accept this thesis, because I want to believe, to hope, that it is not possible for me to be that completely and utterly wrong about something as important as love. So I will deconstruct it into its two parts, and disagree with each of them in turn.
First, that there is no such thing as a soul-mate. I don’t how folks define a “soul-mate”. I prefer to think of her as a “compatible match”. That would be someone who represents (most) of the ideals I think are important and with whom I can agree on (most) of the values I consider relevant. There are friggin’ five billion people in the world, there must be a least a couple of women who are “compatible matches” with me. Now, I yield the complicated thing is that not only to they have to be “compatible matches” but they also have to be “available” and at a “similar point in her personal growth” so that something could possible happen. And it would help if they were attracted to me, and I to them. So that definitely makes her a little harder to find. But mathematically, there must be several options for me out there.
I like to think, and quite possibly I’m deluding myself in the affirmative, that the reason I am still single is because I have not found someone with whom I can truly communicate honestly. (Maybe she would be my “soul-mate”.) The reason, I argue, is that society conditions folks to be unable and unwilling to truly and honestly communicate. Specifically, people refuse to tell other folks the truth if it might hurt their feelings. In addition, folks are unable to tell other folks the truth because the fear the “negative perceptions” whatever content the comment they make might have on their reputations when word gets around to “the others”. Even worse, people will almost never tell the truth if by telling the truth they will receive a negative consequence; i.e., people only tell the truth if it is “profitable” for them. And lastly, even when folks are told the truth, they still choose to hear whatever they want to hear. So some people feel, why bother to tell the truth if the person listening isn’t really going to listen? Either way, regardless of what folks think they do, or say they do, I argue that the reality on modern times is that folks just don’t (or don’t know how) to communicate honestly and truly. In fact, what society does is that it tells folks that as long as they give off an “appearance” or a “perception” of communication, well, that’s good enough. And most people buy into this, because it gives them free range to communicate whenever they choose so. This is even more perverse because it subliminally promotes two other ideas that society uses to subvert the modern individual: superficiality and inconsistency. That is, you don’t have to communicate; you just have to “look” like you are communicating. Taking it a step further, you don’t have to communicate consistently; you just have to “look” like you communicate most of the time. (But I’ll leave those two points for some future essay.)
So, am I off base to think that there exists someone out there, to whom I can be attracted physically, and who could possibly be attracted to me physically, who is “available” and with whom I can communicate as I described above and who, in turn, will communicate with me in the same way? I think that there has to be. There must be. If I didn’t believe so, I might as well give up all hope on humanity, and that would be rude.
Now, regardless if an ideal soul-mate for me exists or not, I argue that for any relationship to work, you need to be able to have truly, honest (and consistent) communication. Unfortunately, that seems to be harder for other folks to do that I would expect. Even when I look at my friends who are in what I consider the most “positive” relationships, relationships I wish to someday emulate, I know there are things that he can’t tell her and that she doesn’t want to hear, and there are things that she can’t tell him and that he doesn’t want to hear. Buy why? Why is it so difficult to be honest?
Suppose there’s no such “honest” person for me? Should I instead find someone with whom I can “more or less” communicate “more or less” honestly “more or less” all of the time? Or another way to think of it is: do I find someone with whom I can communicate at a “tolerable” level for the rest of my life? I mean, what I would consider “tolerable” communication most other folks in the universe would consider “bearing the deepest parts of their soul in the most painful way”. As it stands right now, I am unwilling to make that concession. You can either be completely honest or not. There is no “tolerable” middle ground. And I refuse to believe that in order to be in a relationship, I cannot be completely honest, and furthermore, I must allow the person with whom I am in a relationship not necessarily to have to be completely honest with me, either. I fail to see how that could conceivably work out in the long term.
Which brings me to my second disagreement with that thesis statement; that love is when you find someone you can “tolerate” both in the best of times and in the worst of times. I translate this as meaning, that if you don’t want to be alone, you have to make certain allowances. (That’s probably not quite what my lunch-mates had in mind, and it definitely does NOT describe their specific situations, I don't think, but that in my opinion is the underlying theme of the statement.) What happens is that too many people are too afraid of being alone, that they make for certain allowances on particular values or ideas in their mate without regarding how those can cause the relationship to implode in the long term, or even worse, they know that those allowances will cause future heartbreak, but they get into the relationship anyway. Ultimately that’s what happens, she knows that he has X bad trait (is possessive, for example); then ten years and two kids later, she leaves him because she is fed up with the fact that he doesn’t let her have any male friends and any time she does anything work-related with any male, he accuses her of cheating and other such unpleasantries. Now, if she would have simply held out for someone who was “less possessive” then this could have been avoided. Now I admit, holding out is not the best strategy, look where it has gotten me, but if your only choices are something that is not quite compatible (with potentially bad ramifications) or holding out, why is it that folks in general tend to overwhelmingly pick potentially bad ramifications? This doesn’t make sense. Folk’s self worth has nothing to do with whether they are in a relationship or not; so why do folks repeatedly jump into hideously bad relationships that they know in advance will be painful either physically or emotionally, instead of being alone for a little longer?
But that’s not the point I originally wanted to make. What I wanted to write was that there are certain values or ideas in which there cannot, or should not, be any allowances. Like, in my case, truly honest communication. Regardless how ideal a woman I meet is, if she is incapable of truly honest communication, then I know I cannot be in a relationship with her. Maybe love is understanding all the heartaches she would cause and then knowingly still wanting to be in a relationship with her anyway. If so, they I definitely am as completely wrong in my perception about love as I hoped I wasn’t when I started this little diatribe.
I have a short list, almost all intangibles, of things that I need (truly honest communication) and of things that I avoid (superficiality, inconsistency) in potential mates. [I also confess that a certain level of mutual physical attraction would be nice.] What bugs the hell out of me is that although almost everyone would agree that those three things are important, and that they value them highly, almost no one seems to actually follow through consistently on these. Almost as if, the communicative, consistent, un-superficial, cute (available) woman, who also happens to think I’m cute, doesn’t exist. So, I guess, it sucks to be me, and that is, well, unfortunate.
But that’s no way to end my first entry. So, in conclusion, I disagree with the thesis “There is no such thing as a true soul-mate. Loving someone is being attracted to a person you will be able to ‘tolerate’ in the best times and in the worst of times for the rest of your life,” because, if it is true, then the likelihood of my finding happiness in a way that will allow me to be at peace with the world is almost null. And life has been good enough to me so far that I am still in a position to refuse to accept this. Even if I am completely wrong. I don't care.
[PS: Cudos for having the patience to put your mind through such verbose, slow dribble.]
I have a regularly scheduled lunch appointment with three of my colleagues from work. I’ve been doing this for the past year and a half or so with more or less the same group of people. In essence, we take about two hours, once a week, to sit down and discuss life in general. Most recently we’ve been discussing politics and religion. Politics, for obvious reasons, and religion because several of the folks who just joined us at work have very strong opinions, either for or against certain religions: so the fodder for recent discussion has been abundant.
The other day, however, and I’m not sure what instigated this train of thought, one of my colleagues proposed the question, “What is love?” First off though, I will briefly describe my colleagues and myself, for the purpose of this conversation. There is “Married”, 23, he who asked the question, “Engaged”, 27, who just moved here with his fiancée, and “Relationships”, 23, who, well, is always in a relationship, and I, (“Single”, 31). That’s pretty self explanatory.
We, well actually they, though I listened intently, discussed this topic for quite a bit. Although it is very hard to condense all their ideas into one, unifying, general statement, the gist of the conversation, I argue, can be found in the following: “There is no such thing as a true soul-mate. Loving someone is being attracted to a person you will be able to ‘tolerate’ in the best times and in the worst of times for the rest of your life.” Maybe by choosing the word ‘tolerate’ I am being harsh, maybe I just misheard, but that seems to me to be what they more or less meant, and they seemed all be in universal agreement over that general idea.
Now I find this disturbing on many levels, the first of which is that I’m single, and they all are in pretty stable, long-term, and from what I can gather, rather happy relationships. And not that it needs repeating, I’m not. So maybe the logic behind that thesis is why they are. Like they got some sort of memo that I missed. Or I just have absolutely no skill in what it takes to have a modern relationship. Either way, that would make me be “lacking” in this department: that is always disturbing self-realization, to me at least. So assuming that their thesis is true, and that because they have acknowledged it, that’s why they’re in their happy relationships, and I’m not: that would mean that everything I have ever done in a relationship is completely wrong. That’s even more disturbing.
Regardless, I still refuse to accept this thesis, because I want to believe, to hope, that it is not possible for me to be that completely and utterly wrong about something as important as love. So I will deconstruct it into its two parts, and disagree with each of them in turn.
First, that there is no such thing as a soul-mate. I don’t how folks define a “soul-mate”. I prefer to think of her as a “compatible match”. That would be someone who represents (most) of the ideals I think are important and with whom I can agree on (most) of the values I consider relevant. There are friggin’ five billion people in the world, there must be a least a couple of women who are “compatible matches” with me. Now, I yield the complicated thing is that not only to they have to be “compatible matches” but they also have to be “available” and at a “similar point in her personal growth” so that something could possible happen. And it would help if they were attracted to me, and I to them. So that definitely makes her a little harder to find. But mathematically, there must be several options for me out there.
I like to think, and quite possibly I’m deluding myself in the affirmative, that the reason I am still single is because I have not found someone with whom I can truly communicate honestly. (Maybe she would be my “soul-mate”.) The reason, I argue, is that society conditions folks to be unable and unwilling to truly and honestly communicate. Specifically, people refuse to tell other folks the truth if it might hurt their feelings. In addition, folks are unable to tell other folks the truth because the fear the “negative perceptions” whatever content the comment they make might have on their reputations when word gets around to “the others”. Even worse, people will almost never tell the truth if by telling the truth they will receive a negative consequence; i.e., people only tell the truth if it is “profitable” for them. And lastly, even when folks are told the truth, they still choose to hear whatever they want to hear. So some people feel, why bother to tell the truth if the person listening isn’t really going to listen? Either way, regardless of what folks think they do, or say they do, I argue that the reality on modern times is that folks just don’t (or don’t know how) to communicate honestly and truly. In fact, what society does is that it tells folks that as long as they give off an “appearance” or a “perception” of communication, well, that’s good enough. And most people buy into this, because it gives them free range to communicate whenever they choose so. This is even more perverse because it subliminally promotes two other ideas that society uses to subvert the modern individual: superficiality and inconsistency. That is, you don’t have to communicate; you just have to “look” like you are communicating. Taking it a step further, you don’t have to communicate consistently; you just have to “look” like you communicate most of the time. (But I’ll leave those two points for some future essay.)
So, am I off base to think that there exists someone out there, to whom I can be attracted physically, and who could possibly be attracted to me physically, who is “available” and with whom I can communicate as I described above and who, in turn, will communicate with me in the same way? I think that there has to be. There must be. If I didn’t believe so, I might as well give up all hope on humanity, and that would be rude.
Now, regardless if an ideal soul-mate for me exists or not, I argue that for any relationship to work, you need to be able to have truly, honest (and consistent) communication. Unfortunately, that seems to be harder for other folks to do that I would expect. Even when I look at my friends who are in what I consider the most “positive” relationships, relationships I wish to someday emulate, I know there are things that he can’t tell her and that she doesn’t want to hear, and there are things that she can’t tell him and that he doesn’t want to hear. Buy why? Why is it so difficult to be honest?
Suppose there’s no such “honest” person for me? Should I instead find someone with whom I can “more or less” communicate “more or less” honestly “more or less” all of the time? Or another way to think of it is: do I find someone with whom I can communicate at a “tolerable” level for the rest of my life? I mean, what I would consider “tolerable” communication most other folks in the universe would consider “bearing the deepest parts of their soul in the most painful way”. As it stands right now, I am unwilling to make that concession. You can either be completely honest or not. There is no “tolerable” middle ground. And I refuse to believe that in order to be in a relationship, I cannot be completely honest, and furthermore, I must allow the person with whom I am in a relationship not necessarily to have to be completely honest with me, either. I fail to see how that could conceivably work out in the long term.
Which brings me to my second disagreement with that thesis statement; that love is when you find someone you can “tolerate” both in the best of times and in the worst of times. I translate this as meaning, that if you don’t want to be alone, you have to make certain allowances. (That’s probably not quite what my lunch-mates had in mind, and it definitely does NOT describe their specific situations, I don't think, but that in my opinion is the underlying theme of the statement.) What happens is that too many people are too afraid of being alone, that they make for certain allowances on particular values or ideas in their mate without regarding how those can cause the relationship to implode in the long term, or even worse, they know that those allowances will cause future heartbreak, but they get into the relationship anyway. Ultimately that’s what happens, she knows that he has X bad trait (is possessive, for example); then ten years and two kids later, she leaves him because she is fed up with the fact that he doesn’t let her have any male friends and any time she does anything work-related with any male, he accuses her of cheating and other such unpleasantries. Now, if she would have simply held out for someone who was “less possessive” then this could have been avoided. Now I admit, holding out is not the best strategy, look where it has gotten me, but if your only choices are something that is not quite compatible (with potentially bad ramifications) or holding out, why is it that folks in general tend to overwhelmingly pick potentially bad ramifications? This doesn’t make sense. Folk’s self worth has nothing to do with whether they are in a relationship or not; so why do folks repeatedly jump into hideously bad relationships that they know in advance will be painful either physically or emotionally, instead of being alone for a little longer?
But that’s not the point I originally wanted to make. What I wanted to write was that there are certain values or ideas in which there cannot, or should not, be any allowances. Like, in my case, truly honest communication. Regardless how ideal a woman I meet is, if she is incapable of truly honest communication, then I know I cannot be in a relationship with her. Maybe love is understanding all the heartaches she would cause and then knowingly still wanting to be in a relationship with her anyway. If so, they I definitely am as completely wrong in my perception about love as I hoped I wasn’t when I started this little diatribe.
I have a short list, almost all intangibles, of things that I need (truly honest communication) and of things that I avoid (superficiality, inconsistency) in potential mates. [I also confess that a certain level of mutual physical attraction would be nice.] What bugs the hell out of me is that although almost everyone would agree that those three things are important, and that they value them highly, almost no one seems to actually follow through consistently on these. Almost as if, the communicative, consistent, un-superficial, cute (available) woman, who also happens to think I’m cute, doesn’t exist. So, I guess, it sucks to be me, and that is, well, unfortunate.
But that’s no way to end my first entry. So, in conclusion, I disagree with the thesis “There is no such thing as a true soul-mate. Loving someone is being attracted to a person you will be able to ‘tolerate’ in the best times and in the worst of times for the rest of your life,” because, if it is true, then the likelihood of my finding happiness in a way that will allow me to be at peace with the world is almost null. And life has been good enough to me so far that I am still in a position to refuse to accept this. Even if I am completely wrong. I don't care.
[PS: Cudos for having the patience to put your mind through such verbose, slow dribble.]