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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 01:01 am (UTC)(Of course I mean "get well soon.")
no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 01:06 am (UTC)In all honesty I can't argue with anything you've said here because it makes a kind of sense. I have fallen in love several times in my life, because I found someone who felt the same way I did about a great many things, and I thought that those common traits were enough of a bond to stay with them. But it never was.
I now know that until you are COMPLETELY happy with yourself and who you see yourself as, you can never hope to be with anyone else.
That being said, I do love you, in my own special way. I hope you feel better soon.
Hugs
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2007-12-05 04:35 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 02:48 am (UTC)If they can't, they aren't compatible.
Overall, this is more than I want to discuss right now,working things out for myself.
Hope you get better soon!
Drive-by on the way to the gym
Date: 2007-11-30 02:55 am (UTC)Someone isn't a Buddhist *g*
Solemnly, there are reasons beyond the limitations of corporeal reality & finite resources that make ego-reduction have worth in certain contexts. One of those definitely lies in the realm of intra-sentient relations, whether it is tolerating freaky dolphin-people talk*, or learning how to deal with other people when they do not always conform to your expectations or needs besides intersecting the freedom to swing one's fist with the freedom of their nose.
That being said, dominant views of love, like so much else, is totally fucked-up & full of stereotypes about both people's needs & what they should do to address them (& which parties are supposed to attempt to see which needs addressed). There is perhaps a baby somewhere in this bathwater, and where there is more "encouraging introspection about one's desire/needs and behave accordingly" & less "maybe you just haven't sacrificed enough" might be its feeble wake.
*Strictly a hypothetical, as I am down with our aquatic cousins- besides, can we prove that those sharks weren't asking for it? :-D
Re: Drive-by on the way to the gym
From:Throwing down the gauntlet.
Date: 2007-11-30 11:38 am (UTC)Conformity is a major theme of current society. We subsume ourselves for the required cults: school, the military, churches, jobs, and love. Maybe it's a fine distinction, but I feel that singling out love for this one is a weak opening argument. It's easy to point at a symptom and define it as the problem.
I know that I am an atypical practitioner... but I have never wanted to love someone who was good. I never really wanted to love anyone. I do, and it is sometimes incredibly wonderful, and sometimes incredibly frustrating.
It is so easy to lose track of one's argument this way. Simply put, there are many wrong reasons to seek love. You have listed some of the more prevalent ones, but do not make the mistake of assuming that what you have seen is all there is. Because much love is fucked up does not mean all love is fucked up.
Finally... It is often said that true conversation can only happen between equals, and in many ways this is true. True exchange is much easier when there is the perception of equality, no matter how false that perception may be.
Argh. There is so much I want to say, but this comment is already beastly long. I'm going to link you to some of my earlier arguments on love. I would love to discuss this with you, if this particular post does not send bore you to tears or send you screaming into the mists.
http://bardkrisp.livejournal.com/137248.html
Re: Throwing down the gauntlet.
From:Uh-oh.
From:no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 05:54 pm (UTC)