Windmills
Watch out, philosophical mutterings ahead!
I hear the line, “I’ve spent too much time seeking shelter”, and I think about that idea of seeking shelter, which leads me to thinking about love and safety, and I end up mulling over how two people can have, on the surface, the same approach to something, and yet the meaning is so different based on what’s going through their head. (fear not, internets, there is no specific “other” here)
There are people who fear love and the potential pain that can come from love, and there are people who do not fear intimacy. In that category, there are (as I see it) two general perspectives. Some people love with the confidence that they will not be hurt, and some expect to be hurt, but (for many possible reasons) decide not to fear, anyway.
That’s such a small difference, you know? Outwardly, someone can behave the same way, with these two perspectives, and yet, it’s such a big internal difference.
It can be hard to both give yourself to a friendship or a relationship without reservation, and yet be in a place where you can handle the occasional upset. If you don’t allow for that possibility, you find yourself devastated, and become brittle. It’s hard to survive when every slap in the face is also a knife in the chest.
Yet if you concentrate on that potential for suffering, if you expect to have your faith damaged by every person you encounter, you fear it. When it happens, the feeling of, “What else should I have expected?” can wall you off from everyone else, leaving you bereft of great experiences, great friendship, and the best things in our lives.
Moreso, if a person sees that time as wasted if they are hurt at the end of a relationship, it leaves you feeling like nothing good ever happens, even if you spend 90% of your life laughing and loving. Better to remember that your experiences are both shared and solely yours – Whether you cherish a good evening or toss it away because that date turned out to be a dick later on is entirely up to you, the “experiencer”.
… Does everyone else feel like they tinker inside their own head like it was a workshop? Y’know, get a cup of coffee, turn on the radio and see how your latest projects are coming along.
Having hope and trust in the face of human frailty and corruption is difficult – doing so realistically, with neither irrational expectations nor unhealthy blindness is (nearly) impossible.
I come back to thinking about this place over and over and over again. It feels like a tiny sliver of space; I think I’ll be thinking, talking, writing, and creating about it for the rest of my life.
You’re absolutely right. I see this all around me. So many people think that if a love relationship doesn’t lead to a lifetime commitment that it was a complete waste of time and write off the whole thing as a bad experience, no matter how many good times they shared with the other person. What? That’s like having a toy that you really like playing with and then, when it breaks, denying that you ever liked playing with it at all.
At this point I’ve been involved in several relationships that I knew would never become a permanent commitment. When they came to an end it hurt just as badly as any other relationship, but I still don’t feel like the time was poorly spent and it doesn’t keep me from being open to love and trust when I happen upon it.
I dated a girl who knew she was going off to grad school, and the awareness that our relationship would be cut short almost threatened to ruin the relationship we were actually IN.
Ultimately, years later, we became great friends (Hi dear!), and while it may not have become a wedding, it’s still really great.
That just couldn’t happen if we’d rejected that whole time as only being worth its end result. And, even more telling, which part is the end result, when we broke up, or now? Or never?
You’ve taught me quite a bit in this arena. Let me elaborate. :)
In the past, I’ve been more prone to one of two extremes, both of which are expressed by Sergei Lukyanenko in his book Nightwatch: “Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it’s only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.” Meaning, I’ve either been of the mindset that if I love someone and they return that love, it’s never going to end and I can’t possibly conceive of living without them. OR…I’ve been so cynical about opening up to anyone because of being hurt by someone who lied to me that I refused any possibility of having a relationship with anyone because as This Mortal Coil tells me, “It’ll End In Tears.”
However.
Your philosophy on this subject has helped me. Since leaving the cult in my mid-twenties, I’ve been a huge proponent of facing my fears instead of cowering to them, and yet, I realized that I wasn’t facing them in terms of love relationships. I have accepted that not every relationship will last forever, even if I expect that it will, and that I cannot allow a relationship coming to an end to ruin my life.
I also think that relationships where partners are unevenly matched are inevitably going to reach a conclusion simply because they’ve learned (or in some cases, taken) everything they can from one another. I know that this was the case for my two marriages. I know that during both of those relationships, being unevenly matched made for a great burden of conflict with growing frequency between us, that eventually brought about the demise of each. And after the relationships ended, I felt wronged for a variety of reasons (being lied to and played the fool were both huge factors in the second, obviously) but I got hung up on feeling like I had wasted my time on them both. In retrospect, probably I did give both men far more chances than they ever deserved, but I have also recognized that I hadn’t yet reached a place personally where I was going to choose an equal partner, either. So let’s say I broke up with each respective partner sooner…probably I would have, at the time, chosen just as poorly and ended up with a higher quantity of piss-poor relationships. Would I have learned? Probably, but it might have taken me longer to reach the point I have today. At least now, I understand how these things play out to the end, when uneven partners try to force things to work. That’s a lesson hard-earned, but I am better off for it now.
What’s interesting is that since facing my fears and accepting that some relationships simply cannot stand the test of time, my relationship with George has me feeling more loved, confident, and at ease than ever, and I don’t worry about “will it last?” I finally feel I am with my equal and that makes a huge difference. I truly feel a sense of family and security with him unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.
You have told me several times, there is a cost to doing social business, and sometimes the price is painful. But you have to endure that in order to experience all of the other wonderful things that go along with it as well. And you are right. I am glad to have learned the painful lessons that I have so that I don’t have to repeat them. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m never going to have pain from relationships again, but at least I’m more aware of things to avoid.
Good stuff. :)
Wow, a “This Mortal Coil” reference! “It’ll End In Tears” is a great album, and for a time, was the soundtrack of a teen-age crush I had. :)
Well…
I’ve of this opinion on the topic
I don’t believe that it’s worth dating or continuing to date someone with whom there is no lengthy (decades) future. I am all for being their friend because friendships come to us in all manner of ways, encompass a broad spectrum of connections, and have wildly variant durations unless they’re one of those “charming” individuals who suck others dry and abandon them when they cease to be of use (fortunately for me it seems like that variety of person trips off my sensors and I pretty much immediately develop a dislike for them). Friendship can even lead to love in any sense of the word.
Honestly I think we’d all be happier if those who had no intention of ever building ANY relationships with others (but instead building the illusions of them and using or emotionally preying upon those who believed they were friends or loved ones) somehow only sought each other and drained themselves dry leaving the rest of us alone.
I don’t think that’s incompatible with my ideas up there – that falls in line with having trust without unhealthy blindness.
I -do- think it is a little hyperbolic to say that anyone who isn’t interested in a decades-long connection is an emotional predator interested in sucking people dry.
I’m not interested in spending any time with someone uninterested in building any kind of relationship whatsoever, but (at least in the past) I’m quite flexible on what those relationships can be. The important part is that someone’s straight about what they want, and if it’s incompatible with the other person, they’re man or woman enough to let it go. Y’know?
I’m not interested, at all, in dating a deceptive person. I consider it a waste of time and life to spend it not being honest; so, that kind of breaks rule one, for me.
I think it’s harder to deal with people who have no idea what they want (either in a partner or in their life). As someone who has a pretty solid idea of what’s important to me in a partner, I don’t really have the tolerance for that that I used to. I don’t think that’s a horrible thing, though – there are plenty of good people who don’t have a handle on that.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear – I’m not trying to imply that anyone not interested in a decades-long connection is a soul-sucking leech. I’m stating that I wouldn’t want a romantic relationship with someone not interested in a decades-long connection but that I’d welcome any friendships regardless of duration and circumstance (provided that the “friend” was in fact a friend and not an emotional predator – I’ve met a few and heard of plenty more, they were almost exclusively female and straight which is lucky for me because that’s not a demographic I’d date or that I have an easy time befriending anyway).
Who honestly WANTS to befriend or date emotional predators?
Plenty of people stay with them (which is a terrible idea) for one misguided reason or another but they, for whatever reason, didn’t notice what manner of malevolent and disgusting creature they were getting involved with in the beginning.
This goes along (mostly) with so much of my life choices and reasonings.
I’m one of those people that learned not to *expect* anything, (whether it’s about a person or a thing/event/etc.) therefor I can never be thrown off from my expectations.
I’m not perfect (Shocking, I know) and since I am human I can (and do) get what I consider reasonable expectations thrown out the window. But I let it go. I call somebody, call the thing that’s being wrong a jerkface, stomp my foot, call them a jerkface, or just take a deep breath.
The people that live their lives as every little slight a personal attack, a stab in the back, etc., are people that I can’t deal with. My brain breaks with the stupid that is their stupid and dies a little. And even though I point it out that it isn’t personal, it wasn’t that bad, it never gets through to them. It’s never going to be right, and there is always a reason that it will be that personal attack against them.
And you know what? I love and support this part 110%. “Moreso, if a person sees that time as wasted if they are hurt at the end of a relationship, it leaves you feeling like nothing good ever happens, even if you spend 90% of your life laughing and loving. Better to remember that your experiences are both shared and solely yours – Whether you cherish a good evening or toss it away because that date turned out to be a dick later on is entirely up to you, the “experiencer”.”
How can people only focus on the negative in this kind of a situation?! Yes, it hurts to lose somebody you love, but love isn’t a one shot thing. It’s not a switch you turn off and on. You can’t turn from love to hate within a day. I can understand some anger, some resentment for a bit, but hate? It hurtses my heart!
I had this all planned out in my head days ago, and I know I’ve missed parts. I’m sure we’ll bring it up again though.
LOVES!