rsvp42 said:
--Your desire for sex, or lack thereof, is your deal, so I won't belabor that line of discussion.
Hardly unreasonable. I can't expect everyone to have the same libido. Not that I don't enjoy the occasional casual encounter, but I get far more mileage out of a certain wonderful plant that is experiencing a
baffling prohibition in my country. By the way, I'm going to delve a little bit more into my own personal experiences, but keep in mind that my generalizations are based on far more than my own negative rides.
--If anything, we can agree that this is quite definitely a subjective topic and anything said should be taken with a grain of opinionated salt. I think that love is possible and not simply a delusion. Are there many people who have a skewed idea of love? Are they deluded? Perhaps, but I don't think it means love itself is a lie, just that many people aren't letting themselves see it for what it is.
To call it delusion would be a bit of a stretch. I certainly believe in the concept of love as an emotion, however, my skepticism lies with just how rewarding it actually is, and how unlikely you are to develop a healthy,
mutual attachment to someone else.
Are there many people who have a skewed idea of love? Are they deluded? Perhaps, but I don't think it means love itself is a lie, just that many people aren't letting themselves see it for what it is. I think real love is something humble, not something filled with rollercoasters of emotion and constantly inventive romance.
Oh, certainly. I wouldn't, however, consider that phenomenon to be quite so harmless, however. The mainstream definition of love can lead to very dangerous expectations in people who don't know better (i.e. everybody who has never been in an involving relationship). It's sort of like the Gold Rush, way back when, where people set themselves up to be utterly destroyed when the exaggerations fall short. In fact, I've been there. My first relationship was founded on my incredibly naive notion that the only secret was to be empathic and caring, and you'd be solid. Got cheated on. Second relationship, tried the same thing. Cheated on again. I didn't end up hating women like most guys in my situation did, but I've lost both of my legs to that minefield, and I see no reason to go dragging my junk across the same field again, despite having several healthy relationships afterward that didn't get terribly serious. After all, the only consistent factor in all of my failed relationships: me.
Maybe "love" isn't a good word for it anymore, but whatever it is, it's there. We develop connections with our significant others and it's not always on the surface, but it's especially noticeable when the connection is severed. Perhaps the greatest evidence is a guy who's been dumped. He's not bent out of shape over happenstance, he's lost something real.
And that's why I'm out. Grew up with Avoidant Personality Disorder, which is characterized by crippling shyness and being utterly terrified of rejection, to the point of completely isolating myself from the rest of the world. Even though I've gained a hell of a lot of confidence since then, I'm still not quite as emotionally durable as the average male, which means that when I get cheated on and left for somebody else, my first reaction is to get completely hammered and go veering around town in my pickup, looking for something big to smash into.
Obviously that's an extreme example, but I find it shocking that people would allow someone else to have that much control over them. People, by and large, are fickle, petty, and are quickly bored... not exactly traits that inspire faith in the idea of trusting them. I know the rebuttal is going to be "you're generalizing, there's genuinely good people out there, don't lump them in with the bad ones just because you met a few", but to be perfectly honest, I can see myself having to repeat this incredibly painful process over and over again, just to find that one person. It's like eating turd after turd in hopes of finding a brownie; even when you do find it, you've eaten a ton of shit and you still have an awful taste in your mouth that keeps you from fully enjoying the dessert.
Furthermore, I'm not sure that developing an attachment to anybody is necessarily wonderful or cause for celebration. With my personality type, I'm sort of like a plug, to everybody else's power strip. While everyone else is capable of providing an evenly-distributed amount of electricity (attention and affection), I sort of tend to just plug directly into one person and experience them as a tour-de-force, since I want to understand people, not just know them. For myself, and everybody like me, this leads to extreme levels of vulnerability, and often leaves us with absolutely no direction when we get cut loose.
--I feel for you with your relationship troubles in the past. I can only speculate as to why you've been "unimpressed" with relationship stuff. I suppose personality plays a part, but you may have had unrealistic expectations. I'm not laying any fault on you, but sometimes we can't help what we expect from something.
That's exactly what my problem was, and it's why I'm so quick to point out the bullshit factors to others. I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade, I just want to tell people to watch for trip wires, because I think that love can pretty honestly be compared to a restaurant playground full of Claymore anti-personnel mines; I really don't mind if you want to run in and have fun and play on it, but I feel obligated to tell you to watch for trip wires, and that there's no need to feel pressured into going to cavort about in the explosive-filled plastic tunnels that smell vaguely of urine. I suppose the metaphor would be complete if that particular playground was advertised on television and pretty much played off as the mines being firecrackers in nearly every form of entertainment.
For instance, I'm moving soon and I have high expectations for the new city and how I might change, but I may be disappointed if I'm expecting too much. I can't really help what I expect, but I can't up and blame the city if it's not just the way I envisioned.
I wouldn't even try to argue with that. However, if you started a thread about tips for settling in to your soon-to-be residence in Tchernobyl, I'd be just as quick to point out all the inherent negatives and risks. That may be a bad analogy, though, because I'd probably end up asking you to take me along. That place is just so damned
cool.
Same idea. Obviously only you can choose what's right for you. But in my experience, choosing not to open up and to rely entirely on myself has actually caused more problems.
Naturally, your mileage may vary. My own friends take advantage of me all the time, and people I've helped through incredibly difficult times forget I exist when I don't pester them. Plus, about half of my relationships have boiled down to "he's got money and affection, he'll be great to suck the life out of until I find someone I'm more attracted to". You could say it's left a lasting impression.
In the past it's caused me to shut out women and end relationships prematurely. Your results may vary, and our goals are different, but I'm in a place where I need to actually be more vulnerable, oddly enough.
Eh, well, I wouldn't discount the joys of autonomy and independence. Some people see walling yourself off from intimacy to be either unhealthy, cowardly or both, but I just see it as not touching the stove with my bare hands three times in a row.
--You're getting a bit hyperbolic with your examples of what love is. Sure, there are "co-dependent nightmares" and "weak, helpless wenches" out there, but those situations aren't really what people are talking about when it comes to genuine love. We all get the concept of "settling" but falling in love, for all it's flaws in comparison to Hollywood love, is something else.
Well, the hyperbolic statements were meant to represent the Hollywood definitions, so naturally, they're going to be exaggerated out the arse and back. While I'm sure that actual, real-world love
can be wonderful, I've seen the false promise of it lure in a lot of people that ended up terribly as a result, far more often than I've seen anything remotely successful. Lots of kids I went to highschool with are getting married straight-away, and I'm seeing more and more of their relationships crumble as they come to terms with just how unrealistic they were being, and it leaves them in a very dark place. That alone is something that I feel I should be warning people about.
