😘🥰💖Is Love From Another Unsustainable? We grow, we change, we age, we die. (no shade please...)

2»

Comments

  • @sillysassy +1

    In general I enjoy reading this thread!

  • Think of two people setting out for a jog together.

    To stay together, they must : have the same average speed, slow down equally as they get tired, and struggle equally up steep hills and along rough tracks. Or they must be desiring enough to stay together, that they follow the other's preference when necessary.

    The trick is to recognise when one is sacrificing oneself too much for another.

  • @geoff1000 This is such an interesting idea. The staying together (I am looking at this not in the sense of marriage necessarily right now but even picturing cuddle connections and friendships)
    Setting out on a jog, similar speed, similar desires, but also leaving room for differences like "I'm going to get a coffee after" and the other person saying "I'm headed for steak but maybe I'll catch you on the same path tomorrow." or "i've decided I'm going to sprint the first half and then come back and jog the second half with you." The idea being ****"I want to stay connected to you even if we change a little bit from who we are right now."****

    The bigger question I have been pondering is why we've always felt that we need to change a person/change our preferences or only hang with people who like what we like or do what we do. Enjoying people "right where they are" is a beautiful thing. It leaves room for both of us to grow or change and not have the fear that it might mean they will find themselves out of a friendship by doing so. The freedom people feel to be able to express their true desires knowing that someone will still appreciate them is amazing.

    Awwwww @Kabocha I like reading it too!!! I'm glad you are enjoying!!

  • I think we mostly like long-term arrangements in any form. If people know how I like my tea, I don't have to explain it every time ; and if I go to the bar to order what meal they have chosen from the menu, I know the answers to all the questions, or can pick the right option if that has run out.
    Some people have said the second cuddle is better, because all the technical issues are worked out.

    Change can be difficult, if people change differently ; the lucky couples are those who change together.

  • I know I am getting to this after so much of the conversation has turned to gifs, but I am so glad I decided to click on this thread. This article and the conversation that followed is amazing. I don't know if I've ever read anything that has better described the past few years of my life. I will be honest enough to say that my own codependency was largely responsible for the situation I found myself in, but my wife's predisposition to want external approval, while never being able to find that within herself, just created a perfect storm...and last year it almost killed me. I know I fed into it for years, trying every way that I could to make her feel loved, valuable, and beautiful...all the while I was neglecting myself and giving until I had nothing left to give, because I so craved the day when it would be enough, when my compliments and encouragements would be enough to snap her out of it. That day never came.

    I finally broke last year. I couldn't do it anymore. We tried for several months and with the help of a very good counsellor to make it work, but at the time she just went deeper and deeper into an alcohol addiction to try to numb everything she was feeling. A couple more rough nights, and I was just done. We've now been separated for almost 4 months.

    I'm still incredibly sad about it, because I do love her, and I always will. But, I have learned so many lessons through this process about loving myself and about finding not only my identity, but also my worth and value from the inside. I know I'm not over my issues...this is something I will probably struggle with for a long time. I've already found myself seeking out friendships where I have something to offer to the other person—to help them through some struggle they are having. But I am getting better about setting boundaries, maintaining space for myself, and realizing when I've moved into that old familiar territory and I need to find a way to get myself clear, without causing unnecessary pain to another person who shouldn't have to suffer because of my own process of growth.

    Man, I'm glad I read this article. @sillysassy thanks so much for sharing!

  • Bad memories can't be erased, but they can be contained with reasoning and good memories ; like the bomb squad putting a suspect package into a steel safe, so that if it explodes, no-one is hurt.

  • The biggest change is when a couple has children. because then the whole dynamic changes completely. You go from being a couple to being a mother and father. From focussing on one other person, your focus is now divided. Many questions arise which may have never been discussed such as how to bring up a child, who takes care of the child, who will be the breadwinner. Rarely can these roles be shared equally. Does having children bring a couple together? I'd venture to say it has more of a dividing effect than it does a bonding effect. I guess what I've talked about is number 3 in this top 10 list.
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-most-common-reasons-people-divorce_b_8086312

  • A married man is someone who has in his wallet, photos of children where the money used to be.

    Having children makes no difference to your life, unless you are one of those people who sleeps.

  • This article contains a lot of lessons I have learned over the last couple years. I think anyone who likes this article will get a big kick out of transformational comedian and speaker Kyle Cease, who talks about connecting with yourself and your heart.

    I'm also divorced and polyamorous and have unpacked a lot of assumptions and programming around relationships.

    Because I'm familiar with these messages, I find myself nitpicking and quibbling with some of the points.

    "The actual purpose of relationships is to learn about who we are. It is not to make us happy or feel good." Any advice of the form, "The purpose of X isn't to make you happy or feel good" sounds stern and pointless to me. You wouldn't tell someone who loves their job that jobs don't exist to make them feel good. I wouldn't tell someone who hates their job that jobs don't exist to make them feel good, either. This is just saying to suck it up and show some grit. Maybe they should change jobs, or make changes to their job, or change their attitude towards their job, so that they do feel good. Same with relationships, or houses, or kids. In my experience, people often stay in bad relationships too long and don't lack for grit. I think we should surround ourselves with people and things that do make us happy. Alternatively, we could consider that the point of everything is actually to make us happy, it just doesn't always seem to do a great job at it.

    Another point is that once you realize you can get needs like your cuddle needs and emotional intimacy needs met outside of a traditional romantic relationship — for example, with a platonic cuddle friend or other non-exclusive relationship that is neither "forever" nor needs to end when you meet someone new — you realize that your unmet need for "love" was actually a big bundle of unmet needs, like being touched, being held, being seen, having someone to encourage you, to listen to you, and so on. If your parents didn't do a great job modeling loving you the way you want to be loved, other people you come across along the way can help you and help heal you. So, I think telling someone who yearns for "love" and really has lots of unmet emotional and interpersonal needs — like most people probably, in a culture where people are generally either "single" or have promised to only seek physical and emotional intimacy from one person — that they shouldn't enter into relationships based on "needs," for example, or (looking back at the article) that "everything we need to fulfill our needs exists within us"... ok that right there, no. Love does not substitute for all other needs. If you need food, get food. Likewise, if you need touch, or sex, or empathy, you can have that, in abundance. When you drop all the baggage about having the perfect romantic partner, it is much easier to attend to your needs, including needs like attention and affection from others, and you should. Attending to your needs via receiving what you need from other people is an act of self-love.

    The counterpoint is that sometimes what we need is just love, and because we can't supply it to ourselves, we might go on a dating site or eat ice cream. Also, all the acts of love and tenderness we receive won't have a lasting effect if we aren't learning to love ourselves. The heart of the article rings true.

    I like this a lot: "The other person merely acts as a catalyst of this process, temporarily allowing us access to the inherent sense of fullness and abundance within us, which is actually our natural state: capable, lovable, and worthy."

  • Nope. I'm still in love with someone I knew from three months eleven years ago.

  • edited January 2020

    Omgosh!! So many interesting thoughts and ideas are flowing... I love it!!! I really appreciate that everyone has their take. The article was certainly meant to incite in us some deeper thought process and maybe a little exploration of something that we've never looked too closely at.

    @AuthenticMal Thank you for chiming in... Its not late at all!!! Gif's or no. :) Codependency is a tough thing... I can relate to that. The back and forth, need to be needed.... etc. There are a lot of people who struggle with some form of that whether they're aware of it or not. Good for you trying to find some healing and growth and using an outside therapist to help you get there. I love this.... so so so important I think.... also finding my worth and value from the inside. Thank you so much for sharing and welcome to the site and welcome to discovering the NEW YOU!!!

    @UKGuy @geoff1000 you guys... hahhaha so true! Kids change your life...married or NOT and in more ways than just money!!!!

    @frankparker9 Thank you so much for your thought provoking reply! I of course had to check out Kyle... There's a lot out there... I will paperclip it and look at some more of his stuff.... Funny guy! I appreciate you sharing your perspective and I'm so glad people are willing to dare to say they agree or DON'T agree.
    Thank you for this....

    I have unpacked a lot of assumptions and programming around relationships.

    Also, all the acts of love and tenderness we receive won't have a lasting effect if we aren't learning to love ourselves. The heart of the article rings true

    I thought it was so interesting when you said that sometimes what we think we are yearning for is "Love" but its all sorts of a mixed up jumble of things... Great descriptors there!!

    @BigGuyGa I'm in love with all sorts of people!! From my past as well as currently. I'm in love with a lot of humans!!! I don't know that I could say just one... I have even wondered if I can CHOOSE to not have love for them. I know there are so many different types of love... Volitional/choice love, Action love, but that feeling that wells up through no choice of our own... wow. Powerful stuff!!!

  • @sillysassy About my statement - "Hopefully outgrowing each other is a responsible spontaneous effort."

    I just heard Teal Swan suggest a breakup ceremony and I burst out laughing. That might be a little on the extreme side of responsibility. However one of the most responsible breakups I ever had involved continued intimacy and cuddling throughout the breakup process. We also sought counseling to remain friends which we are to this day. That early work on transitioning made all the difference in the world.

  • @PeopleLikeUs hmmmmm I will have to investigate that. I do completely agree that we have a responsibility to each other as humans to be kind and respectful and not use a "breakup" (in any relationship form) as a reason to behave poorly towards one another.... I'm not sure that I would be able to keep investing in someone in the way that you are describing.... specifically as it regards cuddling. So so so interesting. 100% agree on the counseling part of things but I'm not sure how much I would desire that with someone who isn't going to be a part of my social circle anymore. What an interesting idea..... I will have something to think about I think.

    I saw these over in another thread from @MissAdventurous (what a gem she is!) So many lovely things to contemplate.

  • Wow.... Interesting comments over in another thread..... I am THINKING>>>>>>> and THINKING>>>>>>>> :)

  • The forums are in the necromancing mode it seems… zombies are cool!!!

  • @sillysassy only if they’re sassy.

  • edited November 2023

    That’s a very pretty article you posted @sillysassy . I would not have read this had it not been resurrected. I definitely would not have found it as I was reading thru 2016 threads.

    Not just that love is an internal thing set off by a catalyst of sorts but that it’s a natural state of being - kind of like a key to a door once closed. Or like constantly clearing a pathway through the forest to give light a path to come through.

    Something about that resonates with me somewhere.

    The part I diverge from is where they make love out to be something that solely comes from within. It’s like a plant, you know. It gets fed with love from the one that waters it and it gets fed from something else entirely, a form of light that the waterer could never themselves provide even if they tried. But one can shadow the plant - inhibit its growth by shading it from its light source. No matter how much water is given, the plant can never flourish that way. Likewise, it needs the waterer, no matter how much light it gets, it’s still in some way tethered to its physical existence in this way too. There’s a love there that enables the plant to blossom from within but there’s certainly a relationship to behold that centers on some transcending balance too.

    That’s what I’ve taken from this. I really liked @littermate response. In the article I particularly gravitated to this part:

    What many of us do not realize is that when we fall in love, no one actually gives us anything. This intoxicating and blissful feeling we crave is actually our own energy rising as a result of our own internal psycho-emotional process. The other person merely acts as a catalyst of this process, temporarily allowing us access to the inherent sense of fullness and abundance within us, which is actually our natural state: capable, lovable, and worthy.

    I also like @Sideon article on mirror images of ourselves. There’s something about the mirroring effect that’s really profound, not fully captured in the article but hinted at.

  • 💜 🐺 ☕️

  • @sillysassy A brilliant man used to give a definition of love in many of the novels he wrote, and I happen to believe he had the truth by the tail on this one: “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

    Note that this does not limit you to "only one true love" or any such artificial rules. But it does correctly state that happiness derives from other people's happiness. In my words, happiness is contagious, and that's a goodness in the world.

  • Fantastic article and thread @sillysassy, thank you for posting!!

    My two cents is going to be a bit of a treatise, but it more or less boils down to this for the tldr version:
    1. As children we are fed a fantasy about what love is and what our futures in love will be that we are left to discover the truth about on our own.
    2. More than one thing can be equally true about love at the same time harmoniously without disproving each other, love, like many things about the human experience, is incredibly multifaceted.
    And
    3. One of those true things we, and western society in general, seems to ignore the most is that love is not simply a feeling or an experience, it's also an action.

    First, we grow up being fed the idea that love is easy, readily available to everyone and fundamentally inevitable. We're told it's ecstacy and safety, security, rescue from whatever harms us, warm fuzzy feelings and star crossed bliss that always leads to our own "happily ever after".
    We are taught this through our fairy tails, childrens shows, Disney movies, books and the massively edited stories our parents tell us about their own experiences with love, and all this naturally convinces us that what these fairy tales show us is in fact love. It's a fantasy well intentioned parents and adults in general support teaching children that is very similar to the fantasy of Santa. It's supposed to bring an innocent sense of magic and joy to our little worlds, but unlike believing in Santa there is no set point in our development that we necessarily have that illusion shattered as a normal part of our growth into adulthood.
    Part of this is because love itself is difficult to explain clearly, and part is because deep down most of the adults we looked up to for guidance as children still cling to some form of that fantasy within themselves.
    We want to believe that one perfect person for us exists out there that will make love and connection easy, that will make us feel whole and enough, excite and calm us, support and understand us through our darkest moments and that this perfect love will last to the end no matter what happens.
    It's a beautiful dream, but it stunts us in the long run and sets many of us up for a lifetime of disillusioned heartbreak and bitterness when it doesn't happen. The conclusions we come to about love vary from person to person, but most are inevitably colored by this rude awakening, so they are often both cynical and incredibly binary, following the logic that if love isn't like the fairy tails it must be the opposite, which leads to my second point.

    Something the article in question points out is that the feelings we most often identify as love and being in love, feelings of being worthy, loveable, satisfied, enough, etc. is a state of mind of our own creation that we only allow ourselves to feel when we encounter a catalyst in the form of another person who fits a certain number of our predetermined specifications. This is absolutely true of course, we can feel these things and we don't need another person to give us permission to feel these things or to know the truth that we are inherently enough just the way we are, however it's not the whole story because
    human beings are inherently social creatures who need each other.
    In the simplest terms, we're pack animals and as we have evolved and progressed as a species we have always been able to grow the most and live most efficiently as part of a community, which is why time and time again we have come together throughout history to build societies to operate within, and there are many kinds of support we have benefited from in these groups.
    As we have seen, even just within the one concept of love, there are many, many different kinds of love. The Greeks identified at least seven different forms of love, Eros: Romantic Love, Philia: Friendly Love, Agape: Universal Love, Ludus: Flirtatious Love, Storge: Familial Love
    Pragma: Committed Love and Philautia: Self-Love, and that's just one commonly cited culture's perspective on the complex, multifaceted concept that is love, and the vast spectrum of capacity for love on which we find ourselves.
    However, for various reasons, our current society here in the west has severely limited that spectrum to focus most strongly on romantic and committed love. Monogamous dating and marriage are expected of everyone by default, and those relationships are expected to take precedence over every other relationship in each person's life, and from which it is expected that each of us produce a family of our own that is virtually self sustaining with little to no outside support.
    In my opinion, limiting human beings this way, isolating us and attempting to force us to act as if the fantasy that one person can and should solve all of our problems, meet all of our needs and fulfill us as individuals is true when it CLEARLY is not, is utter horseshit.

    And finally, in any form, whether romantic, familial, platonic, universal, self or even flirtatious, love is always best shown with actions. Love is a verb, not just a feeling, love pushes us to grow with our loved ones, even if that growth leads apart eventually that is not proof of a failure of love, but of it's progression. To love is to want what's best for others and yourself and to accept that in whatever form it takes. Love is ever changing, it's never static and never demands we force ourselves or others to be static. I say, we should let love change us come what may ☺️

  • @PrettyLuv I really appreciated your comment. I love the word picture of a plant.

    The part I diverge from is where they make love out to be something that solely comes from within. It’s like a plant, you know. It gets fed with love from the one that waters it and it gets fed from something else entirely, a form of light that the waterer could never themselves provide even if they tried. But one can shadow the plant - inhibit its growth by shading it from its light source. No matter how much water is given, the plant can never flourish that way. Likewise, it needs the waterer, no matter how much light it gets, it’s still in some way tethered to its physical existence in this way too. There’s a love there that enables the plant to blossom from within but there’s certainly a relationship to behold that centers on some transcending balance too.

    I think there are people who feel like maybe they are NOTHING without the "waterer" or the "sunlight" they forget the substance that is who they are in and of themselves.

    Gosh what a fabulous metaphor! 💕🦋🍃

  • @Runawaycuddles
    This was a beautiful summary!

    To love is to want what's best for others and yourself and to accept that in whatever form it takes. Love is ever changing, it's never static and never demands we force ourselves or others to be static. I say, we should let love change us come what may

    I also really appreciated the perspective of what a parent/caregiver might have been hoping to instill....

    Part of this is because love itself is difficult to explain clearly, and part is because deep down most of the adults we looked up to for guidance as children still cling to some form of that fantasy within themselves.

    Thank you for the thoughtful and insightful reply....

    I do think we struggle sometimes because of the dream we were given. Your idea that it "stunts us in the long run" really resonated because it isn't easy to think there might be another way to look at things when SO MUCH has indicated that it needs to look a certain way to be afforded the title of "the BEST" kind.

    Now I have meandering thoughts taking me to all sorts of interesting places! Thank you!!!

  • @Jubal FLOWER MOUND, TX!!!! I know that place.

    I do appreciate the sentiment that happiness is contagious. TRULY LOVE THAT!!! 💕💕💕

    I know you were quoting someone else when you said

    Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

    I am a bit hesitant to align with an idea that someone's happiness is dependent upon or a condition essential to another's happiness.... that seems like a lot of pressure. I.e. "if the people around me aren't happy then what am I doing to contribute to that sadness?"

    I don't know if that is what you are trying to convey and of course I am DISTINCTLY AWARE that I was raised in a culture who taught me that I was responsible for making sure everyone around me was taken care of before myself.... so I very well might be just having a strong response that is opposed to that social construct....

    @Jubal Maybe I should have said "Would you be willing to elaborate on your statements?" 😊

    @PassionWolf WELCOME TO THE SITE! And as always.... "May the Cuddle Gods be EVER in your favor!!"

  • @sillysassy

    I think there are people who feel like maybe they are NOTHING without the "waterer" or the "sunlight" they forget the substance that is who they are in and of themselves.

    That’s beautiful the way you put it.

  • edited November 2023

    @sillysassy yes I can elaborate. Not sure that I can give a rigid definition, as love is a subjective condition. But, for example, I love my daughter. Her happiness and well-being is essential to my own happiness - when she's sad and hurts about something, I hurt too. While she is a child, and later a teen, her happiness IS to some degree my responsibility. When she becomes an adult, her happiness is not my responsibility, and if she makes life choices that keep her unhappy and miserable, then I in turn will be less happy. But I can still derive joy and happiness from other relationships, activities, etc.

    In fewer words, her happiness being "essential to" my own is not the same thing as my happiness being "dependent on" hers.

    Does that help, or did I make things as clear as mud?

  • @Jubal thank you for the clarity! I can relate to children in our lives/hearts and that changes the tone a little bit. But yes.... I see where you're going with this. Thank you!

    But I can still derive joy and happiness from other relationships, activities, etc.

    her happiness being "essential to" my own is not the same thing as my happiness being "dependent on" hers.

Sign In or Register to comment.