Romantic Love is a fantasy construct

[syd]

Hi Vineeto,

@Vineeto

I have noticed a tendency when having one experiential success, to swing into overconfidence and exaggerated hope, only to then fall back into the previous pattern. Given that you only quoted “change in your ‘being’” and overlooked the first explanatory part of that same sentence of mine, I found it important to emphasize that one’s ‘being’ does not change when you occasionally “reach down inside of yourself intuitively” to the core of your ‘being’.

Ah, I see. I shall now verbalize that I did acknowledge and appreciate (not to mention promptly begin to put into practice) all of what you wrote in those two paragraphs in particular, which I quoted twice in my log (Just feel good, bro - #4 by syd & Just feel good, bro - #5 by syd). What I mainly took was:

1. Not to repress or push away feelings (with or without intellectualization on top)
2. Feel them as ‘me’ in action (“I” am “my” feelings and “my” feelings are “me”) … else, it would be “me” fighting against “my” feelings
3. Thus, change can happen at a fundamental level such that how I feel at my core is transformed, thus reflecting in the vibes I involuntarily emanate

@Vineeto

Love (Chemistry of Love):
“Love can be distilled into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment; though there are overlaps and subtleties to each, each type is characterised by its own set of hormones; testosterone and oestrogen drive lust; dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin create attraction; and oxytocin and vasopressin mediate attachment (…); the testes and ovaries secrete the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen, driving sexual desire; dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin are all made in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain which controls many vital functions as well as emotion; lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which includes rational behaviour…”. [emphasis added].
[https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/]. (Richard, Abditorium, Love)

What I’m discovering so far is that sexual arousal per se (in response to visual stimulus) doesn’t disrupt feeling good. That bodily arousal (the electrifying feelings generally between diaphragm and sexual center) in conjunction with the corresponding hedonic pleasure, in fact, is rather a brief pleasure to be enjoyed (sometimes cheekily^[1]) for that brief period. It is everything else that happens after that affectively, that’s the problem. I’m still exploring all the components of that ‘everything else’ (including covert forms of hope) but it is easy to pay attention to and decline (as necessary). At the same time, I’m coming to experience the naive feelings (adjacent to that sexual arousal), which provide an alternate way of being as a feeling-being (thus, “experience a change in the way [I] feel, in [my] attitude and general outlook”) when with fellow human beings of certain gender & aesthetic appreciation. What’s cute here is that I can do all this without any need for reciprocral interest whatsoever^[2]—I’m the only person who needs to change, and this is an exuberant freedom. I’m feeling rather cheeky and daring, for it seems to go against all social expectations or buckets or hierarchies to be naive like this.

@Vineeto

Syd: Ha, good ol’ bag of tricks I now thankfully no longer needed.

See what I mean by swinging into overconfidence and exaggerated hope, as if those mechanisms have disappeared forever without a trace from one instance of recognition. But denial and transcendence are part of ‘your’ “tricks” of ‘being’ and often habitual, appearing as the twins of despair and hope, rejection and euphoria. It takes ongoing attentiveness in various situations to suss out how you affectively experience yourself, recognizing them in action, again and again, and decline as quickly as you can.

Understood. I can confidently say that I don’t see myself intellectualizing again in the future. But, yes, pushing feelings away or ignoring is still a minor habit, but I do become aware of them instantly, and switch to ‘fun mode’.

@Vineeto

Sometimes I get the impression that for some people actualism is like an exam where one needs to know the right answers, tick the right boxes, follow the right concepts, in order to ‘level up’ – akin to a religious concept like the Buddha’s “eightfold path” of “right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration”. (see Mahasatipatthana Sutta (d), Richard, List B, No. 13, 8 Jun 1999 ). It is quite amazing how old habits can sneakily reappear in a new outfit.

Actualism is none of this. There are no levels, no badges of honour, no marks to be earned, no conditions at all.

That’s an interesting observation, I’ll say. As of now, I see that it comes down to feeling good come what may … as well as, rememorating my PCEs (which I find to be vital when it comes to going past the addiction inherent in desire). I’m not too bothered about anything else right now. There’s a burning desire to make feeling good—enjoying and appreciating being here—the norm.

@Vineeto

Good. Perhaps you understand now experientially why it is important to keep your feet on the ground, stay down to earth, and avoid feeding one or both of the emotional twins of dramatic high and low feelings but instead get back to feeling good as soon as possible. From there, aim to evince a clear decision to decline “post-arousal mechanisms” or any other harmful mechanisms you encounter/ discover, and thus slowly become more and more autonomous.

I need to think about this ‘get back to feeling good as soon as possibe’ (Claudiu and I were discussing this before I got banned here, haha). Sometimes, being the naive feelings also works. I do find a lot of value in exploring feelings ‘in real-time’. But, ‘down to earth’ - yes it always is.

@Vineeto

Again, for emphasis, facing the particular feelings means you deprive them of additional emotional-psychic energy by neither reacting with fight or flight. You can then see them for what they are – “not worth holding on to”.

“neither reacting with fight or flight” is an interesting way to characterize this tendency to react to feelings keeping them at arms length. Have you come across their other two siblings, by the way?

Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are the four primary, instinctive survival responses your body uses to react to perceived threats or trauma, orchestrated by the autonomic nervous system; they involve aggressively confronting (fight), running from (flight), becoming immobile (freeze), or people-pleasing/appeasing (fawn) the danger to ensure safety, often developing from childhood experiences and becoming ingrained patterns. These aren’t conscious choices but automatic reactions to stress, helping you survive by releasing hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. (from AI summary)

@Vineeto

Now that you know that it works, and how it works, you might want more of it.

I’ve been waking up every day looking forward to see what else I might discover this time around …

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1. cheekily: impudent or irreverent, typically in an endearing or amusing way: ↩︎

2. Further validating what I observed last year: “No compromises needed, or even lifestyle changes needed (much less seek advice to that end from others often in vain).” Just feel good, bro - #7 by syd ↩︎