broken love
Nov. 29th, 2007 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamingsword"We don't love people's faults, but their faults make us able to love them. We love the people we can reach, those differently broken than ourselves, that seem beautiful to us."
Doug asked me to elaborate last week, but there's still some bits that aren't finished with my idea of the impulse toward love. People mostly ask questions that make sense to them, but y'all're some strange race to me so I get to ask questions about things other people already think are obvious and come up with cracked insights and look like a smarter person than I really am. :) I'm okay with that.
Today's question: Why do people want to fall in love with the people they fall for?
People say they want to love someone who is 'good'. The idea that any two 'good' people can give up enough of themselves and their desires to subsume their personality into a workable relationship is a creepy and popular one. That this is not seen as an alternative form of suicide by ego-death disturbs me. That this view is promoted as healthy in popular culture explains to me many things which are wrong with the world and how it fails to work. But the impulse is there, so maybe they've got the right feeling in the wrong context.
If you get down to it, the definitions of 'good' as pertains to relationships that most people fall back on are 'right for me', 'someone I can stay with', and 'someone I can talk to'. These imply that love IS person-specific, that the criteria are going to have something to do with issue-compatibility and communication styles, and with the difference in natures that causes people to want to communicate (which I have already discussed here). We want the people we love to be like us, and unlike us. It's an important dichotomy, and we'll get back to it.
Then there's the concept that people are so inherently afraid of being by themselves that they latch onto anything that draws them and seek to possess and control anyone who doesn't immediately run away. It contains in itself the nihilism that rationality is not possible in the face of fear and the disclaiming of responsibility for what the self wants as though no degree of choice is present. This is the view that people who have commitment phobias seem to ascribe to most frequently (in my experience), and if that's their context for relationships I can't fucking blame them for the dread and paranoia.
Taking the verifiable data out of the junk above we have our raw data. People are drawn to one another, even commitment-phobics. People may not mind being in love but dread fitting their lives and selves together, and generally screw up the doing of it enough to justify their own dread. There is a fear of being unloved, found unlovable, judged unfit - but here's the weird part: I've never heard anyone saying they fear never finding anyone to love. And they know the faults of their loves and not only don't mind, but seem to find reassurance in them.
Flawless beings could love us perfectly, unconditionally, but nobody defines "good" as flawless. So if the reasons for wanting to love someone aren't that we think they are perfect enough to love us with despite our flaws, then it makes more sense that we would find the kind of broken love we seem to be looking for in people as messed up as we are, whom we can love safely because of their flaws. We seek to love them because they are our equals, and we are okay with being loved by them because we don't have to worry that they will grow out of the flaws we have in common that help us identify with them, or the flaws they struggle to live with for which they are exotic and admirable.
In other news, I have a stomach flu.
Doug asked me to elaborate last week, but there's still some bits that aren't finished with my idea of the impulse toward love. People mostly ask questions that make sense to them, but y'all're some strange race to me so I get to ask questions about things other people already think are obvious and come up with cracked insights and look like a smarter person than I really am. :) I'm okay with that.
Today's question: Why do people want to fall in love with the people they fall for?
People say they want to love someone who is 'good'. The idea that any two 'good' people can give up enough of themselves and their desires to subsume their personality into a workable relationship is a creepy and popular one. That this is not seen as an alternative form of suicide by ego-death disturbs me. That this view is promoted as healthy in popular culture explains to me many things which are wrong with the world and how it fails to work. But the impulse is there, so maybe they've got the right feeling in the wrong context.
If you get down to it, the definitions of 'good' as pertains to relationships that most people fall back on are 'right for me', 'someone I can stay with', and 'someone I can talk to'. These imply that love IS person-specific, that the criteria are going to have something to do with issue-compatibility and communication styles, and with the difference in natures that causes people to want to communicate (which I have already discussed here). We want the people we love to be like us, and unlike us. It's an important dichotomy, and we'll get back to it.
Then there's the concept that people are so inherently afraid of being by themselves that they latch onto anything that draws them and seek to possess and control anyone who doesn't immediately run away. It contains in itself the nihilism that rationality is not possible in the face of fear and the disclaiming of responsibility for what the self wants as though no degree of choice is present. This is the view that people who have commitment phobias seem to ascribe to most frequently (in my experience), and if that's their context for relationships I can't fucking blame them for the dread and paranoia.
Taking the verifiable data out of the junk above we have our raw data. People are drawn to one another, even commitment-phobics. People may not mind being in love but dread fitting their lives and selves together, and generally screw up the doing of it enough to justify their own dread. There is a fear of being unloved, found unlovable, judged unfit - but here's the weird part: I've never heard anyone saying they fear never finding anyone to love. And they know the faults of their loves and not only don't mind, but seem to find reassurance in them.
Flawless beings could love us perfectly, unconditionally, but nobody defines "good" as flawless. So if the reasons for wanting to love someone aren't that we think they are perfect enough to love us with despite our flaws, then it makes more sense that we would find the kind of broken love we seem to be looking for in people as messed up as we are, whom we can love safely because of their flaws. We seek to love them because they are our equals, and we are okay with being loved by them because we don't have to worry that they will grow out of the flaws we have in common that help us identify with them, or the flaws they struggle to live with for which they are exotic and admirable.
In other news, I have a stomach flu.
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Uh-oh.
Date: 2007-12-06 05:28 am (UTC)Still, you are correct in many ways, and I may well have simply misunderstood. I missed a lot of maxims that are considered 'common sense' due to my upbringing. Much that has to do with the posturing and conformity of modern society is about putting up walls about what is ok and what is not, and denying others access to our true selves. We've been taught that privacy is a necessity, not as an occasional thing, but as a way of life. "No one should be allowed to see you, ever." It's an odd Victorian thing, only instead of hiding ankles, we hide ourselves.
*shrugs* It all comes back to guilt, which is where religions start really fucking with shit. The moment you define something as wrong, people think they need to hide it. Most of the worst crimes come not from doing wrong, but from what you have to do to hide them. *grins* Ever see "A Simple Plan"? In a world where everyone has a different idea of what's wrong, hiding has become second nature. And that is tragedy. Because it's not just from lovers, but anyone we love... friends, relatives, and mentors. We hide parts of ourselves away and deny communication. For me, it is most tragic with lovers, because it is there we come closest to partnership.
Good luck figuring things out, and I hope that my thought process has not in any way interrupted or crowded yours. I am perfectly willing to remain silent to hear what you have to say. I'm just excited to have someone to talk to about all of this, though perhaps my enthusiasm was a bit overzealous. I hope you will forgive me, and also that you will feel free to tell me when you do not feel like debating, but are rather simply thinking. Don't hide that irritation, should it exist. You'll be letting the terrorists win.
To end with, a quote from a cheesy but pertinent poem (though this part is nearly doggerel): I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end.I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. -William Blake