Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Love. Ugh.

Page: 1 2 3(4)5

15:43 / 04.04.05

Hey, I'm totally with the goldfish on this one. And I have little enough shame to offer an example of my own, even though I'm well aware I'm laying myself bare to Barbelith's special brand of ridicule. Anywayyys...

I've discovered that I manipulate loved ones with a really clever trick of injecting guilt in such a way that I don't even look passive-aggressive, only taken for granted. I've also realized that where I used to think of myself as a really good and constructive relationship problem hasher outer, I actually don't listen too well a lot of the time and though my ostensible goal is to compromise, I am subtly "winning."

Neither realization was very upbeat, obviously, but I'm grateful for them, certainly more self-aware, and on the peachy side of things think I'm becoming a better person since knowing those things. It's not as though my SO pointed them out to me, only that in my efforts to communicate and be honest and partake in all those horrendously banal (apparently - if this thread is any indication) activities that I consider aspects of love, I've been forced out of hiding just as secret goldfish described.

Commence pooping on me.

16:06 / 04.04.05

Maybe being in love with someone unobtainable means that you're not cognitively dissonant enough?

Okay, let me elaborate upon the context within which I mentioned cognitive dissonance earlier. Often, within Barbelith variants of the 'unobtainable love object' situation, we're dealing with two key factors:

A) (S)he loves me as I love him/her.

and

B) (S)he is with someone else.

Ostensibly, these two factors are dissonant, and must be reconciled. Not infrequently, this involves the construction of a situational context in which the love object would return the Barbelover's ardour were it not for specific, often rather baroque, reasons not of the love object's choosing. This latter part is important, as to acknowledge that the love object has willingly chosen another may not allow the preservation of A).

So... by a slightly convoluted route, we arrive at White Knight Syndrome, wherein the love object truly does become an object of limited free-will, held prisoner and must be rescued. Masochistic pleasure and Barbesadistic piss-taking await.

16:25 / 04.04.05

I said you *don't* hide when you're in love.

I think it depends on whether you're in love with someone with whom you actually communicate every now and again - and I mean talking out loud rather than inferred, coded or frankly bug-fuck "could his choice of books be a secret signal to me?" pseudo-communication.

One-sided love is not just a convenient curtain behind which to hide from risk, but also a warmly masochistic bath in which to luxuriate and fantasise.

17:00 / 04.04.05

As well as more than serviceable material if you're planning on writing anything - it gets a bad press sometimes, it really does.

18:51 / 04.04.05

As well as more than serviceable material if you're planning on writing anything

Anything other than a non-stereotypical Barbelith thread...

Tryphena Absent

19:37 / 04.04.05

I don't think the mistake here is that love can lend you self-awareness, indeed I think it can put you in touch with sides of yourself that you have found difficult to reach before. But it doesn't necessarily do so, it's not love itself that does these things, in my experience it's your loving relationship, the exchange that is possible when you love someone. There are all sorts of people in this country, possibly watching television and curled on the sofa with the person they love right now who may be concealing themselves from their partner. They could be lying or restraining a part of themself that they miss horribly, they may have parted company with other people that they loved or sacrificed something vital for their relationship that they are regretting as they watch that TV. For some people that isn't hidden, for some it is but it's entirely dependent on what's going on between those two people. All those people who get divorced who loved their husbands and wives, were they gaining self-awareness or hiding? There's no rule here, there's just the thing that's going on with each individual and each couple.

19:59 / 04.04.05

True enough. I suppose I was making an unstated classification of the one thing as love and the other as Not Love, which - who am I to say. (Hello other unsavory habit!)

Tryphena Absent

21:47 / 04.04.05

Which leads us smack-bam in to trying to define love. Bleurgh, not something I want to try. I find that I have to assume that you can love someone and try to hide yourself for a variety of reasons- though fear would probably come at the top of the list. It doesn't seem right to me but the wrong is in the communication and not the original emotion. Just because there's a constant insecurity doesn't mean you don't love a person.

I don't know- love is something I try not to idealise, I think it's one of those areas where perfectionism can really screw things up.

21:52 / 04.04.05

I think that would make a very interesting thread, actually!

07:37 / 05.04.05

I've discovered that I manipulate loved ones with a really clever trick of injecting guilt in such a way that I don't even look passive-aggressive, only taken for granted.

We used to go out, didn't we?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

07:56 / 05.04.05

'Nesh, is "bug-fuck" a technical term or an esoteric buzz-phrase?

09:43 / 05.04.05

I thought "batshit" was more correct. It's in the DSM-IV, between "barking" and "bonkers".

10:30 / 05.04.05

'Nesh, is "bug-fuck" a technical term or an esoteric buzz-phrase?

*gets out ICD10*

Here it is. F29.0 Bug-fuck disorder, unspecified.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:00 / 05.04.05

That's to say - there are some things I find too personal to talk about. I would hope that you would respect that.

I think that's fair, kind of up to the point where you start telling us what love is and what it does. Just as, if I were to say that Othello was clearly and definitely based on the life of Christopher Moro, and then refused outright to provide any supporting evidence, despite claiming that I had it to hand, I might expect people to stop taking my contention very seriously. We used to get this a lot with people claiming to have evidence that they and they alone were the psychic saviours of the world from the lizards, but that we hadn't earned the right to the evidence...

Ibis' example seems to me to be a good example of how living with somebody and having a relationship with somebody can provide one with new perspectives on one's own behaviour - it's that understanding of others and how one impacts upon them, coupled with a desire to make that impact as honest and positive as possible that might help to define some form of agapeic love, but whether you have to be in love, or indeed in a relationship, I don't know. Much of what self-awareness I have was developed during relationships where I wasn't in love with the other party, because that gave me no excuse to distract myself from examining the relationship by the temptations of romantic love...

13:41 / 05.04.05

I think that's fair, kind of up to the point where you start telling us what love is and what it does.

I suppose I've laid claim to telling you some of what love does, so, ok...

I once volunteered for a charity which ran residential holidays for people with disabilities. Discovered that being willing to help was only the startpoint of what you needed to do to build up trust between carers and participants. Egs, one resident with cerebral palsy would soil himself rather than alert anyone he needed the loo, for fear of being a burden.

I fell for a boy who seemed to *know* this intrinsically. He was a favourite among the residents, because they all knew he saw them as an equal, rather than, I don't know, some of the other misconceived notions those of us committed to charity work might unwittingly adopt.

I found this place in myself where cherishing someone was an end in itself - not being soppily self- obsessed - but it was good enough of itself, and it didn't matter if he didn't love me back. Also, although I was committed at an intellectual level to the idea that good works were more important than the satisfaction of any one person, it wasn't until then that I felt that from within.

19:53 / 30.04.05

And if the Prince thing seems like too big a first step, simply fall on one knee before her and WITHOUT MAKING EYE CONTACT clasp both hands together above your head and beg her for a handkerchief or a lace doily or even a pub napkin for you (and getting these words out right is really important) "to bear into battle as a favor from my lady."

You know, I actually did that once in college. She gave me a teabag.

Did end up in boogaloo mode with her eventually. Really eventually. About three years later. Then she went off to do social work in Hawaii and I found Barbelith.

21:47 / 01.05.05

I’m currently reading “How to break your addiction to a person” by Howard M. Halpern and since about half the threads on Barbelith are about unrequited love I’ve decided to share this little gem with you:

“When you are ruled by Attachment Hunger, your state of mind is, in many ways, a re-experiencing of the state you were in as an infant or toddler. The qualities of this experience are those of a needy, vulnerable being with limited perspective, undeveloped judgement, little capacity for rational thought, and no willpower.”

Nice one.

21:50 / 01.05.05

If something of a reheating of classic Freud.

23:09 / 01.05.05

But mice, that doesn't exactly explain how to grow beyond that.

07:13 / 02.05.05

There is so much *right* stuff here already and here's my cynical take. I feel quite sorry for you because no-one so far I can see, having read only pages 1 and 4.. (sorry) seems to be acknowledging that this girl loves it and is winding you up horribly. She knows you fancy her like crazy and adores the attention, don't we all. her b/f is obviously not up to all that, as he *lost* her in a club etc... maybe sh *lost* him, but she came back to see you after leaving you and you not chasing after her. OMG this so sucks, run, like hell. This isn't love, but it is about attachment and wanting and needing attention from people we're attracted to and not getting it, All the above is correct. What you should do is enter into a deeply liberated state of psycho-emotional awareness and free yourself of these infernal drives, perhaps by retiring to some cave and doing without human contact forever, but then you would be without a magnificent theater in which to act out all your drives. It may be lust, it may not be love, but it's how most of us end up falling in love, i.e. by fulifilling some attachment need. Primitive; sublimely so. The mature thing to do would be to talk to her, expose your fantasies if only to yourself and then realising she isn't game anymore because you called her bluff, move on like you say and find another wonderful chase that might be an easier catch. Alternatively, you could fulfill your desires and find a means of making it easy for the two of you to sleep together, she splits with her b/f, (or better still loses him in a club - permanently) you both fall in love and then break up several years later. Hell you're in your early twenties, you've got aeons of this kind of shit ahead of you.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

08:32 / 02.05.05

Ha, I'd forgotten this thread existed.

I met her boyfriend last night. He's so nice I could be sick on his shoes.

17:39 / 02.05.05

But mice, that doesn't exactly explain how to grow beyond that.

Sorry, I'm only 30 pages in so far.

But there's some great stuff in the third chapter about the distortion of time ("infant time") you sometimes experience when you're in love with someone:

“The infant sucks on Mother’s breast and looks unwaveringly into her eyes. This blissful moment is all there is. What does he know of tomorrow? Of five minutes from now? He has “forgotten” that he was crying just a minute before. This moment, this state of being, is all-time.”

Explains why seeing the person you love once a week and making eye-contact with them for a split second makes the pain and longing experienced during the previous 6 days, 23 hours, 65 minutes and 65.5 seconds appear worthwhile.

It also explains why you might want to call your ex-partner every 5 minutes shortly after a break-up - those 5 minutes may seem like eternity to you.

I’m not in a position to give any advice at the moment (which is why I’m reading the book) - maybe later.

17:58 / 02.05.05

Calling Dr.Edmund Bergler...

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

19:58 / 06.05.05

I got shot down, if anybody even cares.

Feeling suprisingly happy about the whole thing, really.

21:31 / 06.05.05

Oh, at least you tried, anyway. There's always a next time.

21:41 / 06.05.05

Good for you, Boogaloo.

Two things you could have some control over there: whether you took action or languished forever in uncertainty, and what your attitude would be thereafter. You took action and you're maintaining a positive attitude.

Next time the variables you can't control may line up and play nice too.

21:55 / 06.05.05

Congratulations! It's better to try and settle it than pine away in pain...it must be a relief for you!

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:18 / 06.05.05

You *should* feel happy. You did the brave and scary thing. Sure you got shot down, but that happens; it's a damn shame, and it hurts, but you've got it over with now. You can deal with those feelings and move on.

22:20 / 06.05.05

Um, it would be okay not to feel happy.

But you were right to do it.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

22:54 / 06.05.05

It's an end to all the conflicted emo bullshit that's been pinging around my head for the last two months. I feel pretty good.

It took balls of steel and about six pints. Yay me.

00:32 / 07.05.05

Indeed, yay YOU!

18:42 / 07.05.05

And always wear a condom. And be willing to pay for half the dinner. And don't take advantage of her when drunk, even though she might be begging for it. And know where the clitoris is. And don't make fun of her scars. And...

Oh never mind. I'm just having a flashback to all the bad relationships I've ever been in.

Talk to her. If she's as into you, she'll be honest with you too. And maybe she wants to go faster than you, or you'll want to go faster than her. Either way, just keep communicating.

I find that the worst things that ever happened to me came from either not talking honestly about his expectations, or mine.

Go gently. Have fun.

08:01 / 08.05.05

A man who hasn't read the thread.

12:54 / 12.05.05

Ok... if a man stares at you with *that* look, but there's next to no follow through when he actually talks to you in real life and he's already taken... is that a dead end?

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:12 / 12.05.05

he's already taken... is that a dead end?

That depends.

Are you an utter shit?

Page: 1 2 3(4)5