Indeed.
One of my favourite artists over the last few months has been Lewis Capaldi. Amazing artist.
His song “Forget Me” is such an honest expression of how the dependency on the malice of others for our own validation works. We don’t even want to be with them, but we don’t want to be forgotten.
He sings “I’ll take all the vitriol, but not the thought of you moving on”.
This is very much the course we travel. It’s not that something isn’t suss the whole time, but to “address squarely” anything, it more than a “good idea” that gets the job done.
Yeah I was also drawn to that part of the quote, the process from noticing/admitting that something is off - to daring to question and investigate fully - to the realisation of what is going on - to living that fact (actualisation). How that process can span 3 years, it’s kinda helpful to bear this in mind.
Hi @Shashank. Are you saying this is still an open question to you? It was for me when first involved with the AF method, hence why I wanted to know for sure. My mind is made up now on this, it falls short in so many ways.
I still find it fascinating we can experience unrequited love as well, love without the reciprocation seems so cruel.
Yes, indeed very interesting.
The premise that love is the antidote of malice, makes this very interesting indeed.
What better way to ‘be’ malice, than to imagine the ‘other’ as the cure?
To be tortured because she/he doesn’t want me. To hate oneself for not being good enough, to hate them for not following through on “love”.
Lot’s of hate in that equation.
One can sustain that game indefinitely.
Oh nopes @son_of_bob … I have seen for a fact from personal experience that one way or the other, love inevitably leads to suffering…this statement was a question on its validity - that if love really works, then why does it lead to suffering ?
From yet another angle that even Peter mentioned - Two recent examples from my relatives circle - I had a grandpa-granny couple…grandpa dies at 92…within a month or two, granny also expired
Then there was a 65-70ish aunt who dies…and within about 6 months or so, her hubby(aka my uncle) also dies(he was probably around 70)
Its as if entire meaning for existing goes away…and thats quite a sucky thing.
I’m finding that the reason why love is so hard to tackle is because(as Andrew was pointing out above) love is deeply tied with security…and security is about survival…The link is like : love is about a bond and a bond in turn is about belonging to a group and a group is about survival
If I fill up my time with more n more of feeling good, delight etc, its much easier to experientially give up love…until then no amount of intellectual seeing this n that issue with love has worked for me…pretty sure now that its only the experiential replacement of love with delight etc that will do the trick…because love is not unlike being a hard core junkie … inspite of knowing the issues with the drug, one continues with it !
I was watching Gabor Mate tonight. Very very compassionate man. Extremely into the effects of how infant psychology is formed.
The bond is far more than reproductive, obviously. As your examples show; many decades after the possibility of reproduction has expired, the bond is maintained.
Primarily, I see the bond as being fundamentally about safety. If one can form that bond, which isn’t actually that common of an ability, it will last. It’s extremely powerful.
However, the majority cannot form that bond. As evidenced by divorce statistics, the prevalence of “heart break” pop songs, and the overflowing dating apps.
It incorrect to say that love never works. If we mean a life long pair-bonding between a couple.
It just doesn’t work like that for the vast majority.
To put a finer point on it; if one is an adult and one isn’t pair-bonded (as your two examples), it’s impossible that it will happen.
It’s not as rare as enlightenment, but pair-bonding to the extent of dying when the other dies is unlikely.
We otherwise are encouraged to hope for it. Not unlike a lottery ticket.
Thanks, I thought that might be the case just wanted to double check.
Yes, their whole being tied into another’s. I can’t ever imagine being like that. I know my wife is aware I am not like that and it probably frustrates her. There is an unwillingness to let the other consume me, to give myself completely to a lover, I think I always held back. Too unable to trust.
I guess it is the same with love for family and friends, the bonds of the group and tribe. It ties into so many areas it seems, such as validation and self-worth. For me, I noticed it becomes part of that narrative, story-telling approach to my existence. Past loves, current love…future loves. It is messy that is for sure.
I can relate. There is an addictive quality to many of the other types of highs. That is how I found myself better able to hone in on the felicity because it has a less addictive aspect to it. Many of the other hedonistic pursuits of mine, indulging feeling horny, creative and learning flow highs, sugar…they all bring out that junkie like behaviour in me. It seems now that I am out of the grips of depression and anxiety I find myself now having to break these habits.
Just commuting yesterday, every woman who gave me the slightest bit of positive attention I could almost see the potential of wanting to fall in love with them. Still wanting them and more women despite being in a relationship. One love is not even enough lol.
Yes, I mean my parents stayed together til my father’s death and loved each other very much. I got to see that as an example, yes they had issues but no regrets. Weird to see actually, I could never imagine a woman loving or caring about me as much as my mum seemed to love and care for my dad. I am such a cynic lol.
My mum has definitely deteriorated since my dad died and often wishes she died with him.
What a strange world we live in hey.
I can understand this one very well…Maybe I could just stare the hell out of them with an “intensity of purpose” until I see the diabolical “Pure Evil” side of them and thereby dropping “her”…if nothing else, the stare itself may incite the diabolical 
I can understand this…I guess without a partner, one’s reason for existing drops and with that drops vitality and will to live…which must be affecting one’s immune system etc…thereby leading to a drop in health
On a similar note, just a year or so back, my mother said that my father advised her that if he were to die sooner than her, she would be left quite alone and if it gets way too much to bear living, then just OD on sleeping pills and be done with it…damn Human Condition is bizzare
Always love to give my two cents when love comes up. In my first real pair bonding, long term, romantic relationship (which I am still in) , I have experienced this draining of vitality and purpose and a simultaneous merging with my partner. I think I had a pretty bad case of it, where I basically put other aspects of my life on auto pilot and neurotically focused all my resources on the maintenence of the relationship. The price I am paying for love is a gradual but complete upheavel of my life. I am now trying to find myself again. Tending to the neglected aspects of my life. Creating enjoyment in other places so that I am not so dependent on my relationship and partner. It’s funny, I see the phrase “ending of separation” here a lot, but in my experience a certain degree of emotional detachment is required to not lose yourself in the relationship. To assert your own needs and stand your ground. Or perhaps I have not understood the actualism meaning of this phrase. I would definitely like to go the felicity/EE route eventually, but I realized that without having a healthy relationship (which for me means a healthy self) first, even basic feeling good seems out of reach.
I would recommend better words to focus on would be - standing on your own two feet / autonomy. Because emotional detachment will likely end up in some form of coldness/not caring/passive aggressive situation.
To focus on autonomy / standing on my own two feet means that I will not accept the crippling effect of love but it does not mean I need to start blocking intimacy either.
Perhaps the word choice is not correct, but I think we’re on the same page. It feels quite healthy to be communicating more clearly and it does feel like a movement towards autonomy. As opposed to blocking intimacy, I find I can get even more intimate because of less fear.
That’s key of right track — more intimacy not less!
Also: more caring not less! The usual way is to withdraw from the other, care less, and thereby restore your autonomy in a sense… but being uncaring is no fun and also spoils intimacy. Love is better than that but it has its own problems. Even better than love is caring more and actually caring and actually being intimate — at some point you see that love actually prevents this.
Can you clarify what it means to care more and more in this way? As a feeling being, me caring more involves devoting more mental resources to the relationship, and not only does that drain me, it worsens the relationship. Maybe this is specific to me, but I go about it in a very neurotic way. I stated emotional detachment before, but I think a more appropriate word is emotional separation. Not being enmeshed or codependent. Having other sources of fulfillment. The less emotionally invested you are in something, the more objectively you see it and the more appropriately you can care for it.
The issues aren’t caused specifically by thinking about the relationship, thinking about the relationship in a neurotic way is more of a downstream effect of already being neurotic/hung up about the relationship.
So trying to feel better via ‘not thinking about it’ is just avoidance.
It’s much better to get to the source of the feeling itself - what do you feel you need from them? What is scary about them / about the relationship? And then from a more peaceful place you can think about them or not think about them, it doesn’t matter either way, because it’s not neurotic to begin with.
I personally have had a similar history with trying to figure out how to not be so worked up about someone and found myself ‘distancing’ from them, and found out after months and years that that distancing caused as many or more problems as the initial neurotic tendencies did.
As a result, I’ve been going the opposite direction recently, basically leaning in / allowing those neurotic tendencies to exist, fully being them (actually thanks to your observations about leaning into feelings!), and as a result have found a lot more intimacy and closeness, both with them and with myself.
Of course this has meant confronting / being many many uncomfortable things, but that’s exactly the task of the actualist, so everything is going just great!
Interesting to see that approach of leaning in working for you. I tried it too, but if love is a drug then me leaning is me OD’ing on it. And basically becoming codependent, hyper neurotic and unable to function. Feeling good became so out of reach for me that analyzing anything in those states was fruitless. It’s like, thinking about stopping the drug hit, analyzing it to death, may or may not help. In the end I realized that unless I actively stop making my relationship the centerpiece of my life, nothing is going to change for me. In a way, pushing actualist morality of investigating these feelings onto myself was keeping me chained. An excuse for not breaking the shackles of love and becoming autonomous. Of course this may be idiosyncratic, but more often than not I’ve found “investigation” to be a way of avoiding making a sensible and healthy change in my life. It all depends on how good one is feeling, I guess. I also didn’t say anything about distancing myself. In fact, because other parts of my life are more fulfilling too, I can be braver and more assertive, and thus more intimate, with my partner.
This is really interesting! I guess that is a nice way to cunningly avoid change as an actualist - Just keep going down the same dead end and pay myself off by doing some investigation around it so my conscience is clear lol.
I was thinking about investigation recently and how its rightful place is as a tool which preps the scene for the experiential discovery to be made, but it is not an end in itself, it is not enough in that regard.
What might be useful to bear in mind is that the relationship is not actual, the caring is not directed to the relationship but to the person in front of you, that’s how as a feeling being I can get closer to actual caring. I guess matter of fact consideration is a good start to aim in that direction, then if I am genuinely interested in this person in front of me I can act in a way that is caring.
Actual caring is about not wanting the other person to experience all kinds of feelings of suffering…which includes the good feelings too because the good keeps one from eliminating the bad by constantly presenting itself as the solution to the bad
In a PCE it is clear that all suffering is self-imposed and unnecessary and since one is free from suffering in a PCE, so it makes sense that others can also experience this suffering free way of life…