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Thoughts on love and related subjects
Sep. 4th, 2001 01:05 pmBeware, I am now bored enough to wax philosophical about human relationships from the lab!
I've had to do a lot of thinking lately and any time I seriously ponder my life the subject of love comes up. It sounds harsh and like I am pigeonholing, but I've concluded that I have two types of friends. There are the friends that are fun people who I hang out with and do stuff with, and then there are the friends that I love. With people in the first group, I'll happily spend a lot of time with them, but as soon as they do something that bugs me, I pull away. I'll drift back after enough time has passed, but I don't find it to be worth the effort of sitting down and discussing what went wrong, or even attempting to avoid similar events in the future. They are great people, but in the end I can live without their presence. This also means that when I am down or struggling, their presence does very little to lift my spirits. We're talking about people I socialize with, not people I share my life with.
Then there's the friends I love. These are the people I want around when something wonderful or terrible happens. These are the people I share my ideas and feelings with. It matters to me that these people understand what is important to me, and even if they don't value the same things personally, value the role that those things have in MY life. (ie: I like to write, and my friends don't all like to write, but it matters that they be aware that it is important for me to be writing, and so recognize the goodness of me creating something new.) At the same time, I try to understand what role their various hobbies and projects have for them. (ie: i'm not much into asian culture at all but Greyhame is so when the holidays came around last year, I got him a sake set. I'd never use it but it has meaning to him.) These are the people who energize me, who have the ability to seriously change how I am feeling at a moment with their mere presence. I want for these people to see me at my best, and I can stand to have them seeing me at my worst. When things go wrong in my relationships with them, it affects me very deeply and I will do whatever it takes (within the realm of my capabilities) to repair that. When they are hurting, I can give of myself to help them and usually not feel strained by it, whereas with other people any minor favor they ask of me feels like a huge sacrifice on my part. (It's not a perfect system of course: when Wyndam moved here from California I most certainly felt strained, but that's NOT an ordinary kind of situation. Similarly I don't fault him for feeling strained by my depression; again, not an ordinary situation.)
So of course I've asked myself the question; what is the difference between these people? I realize that if I come up with an answer I will be a millionaire. People have been trying to figure out why we love who we love since we put a name to the emotion. I'm not interested in figuring out why anyone else loves the people they love, I'm only interested in how it works in myself. What I can say is that for whatever reason, the people I love appear to me as more intense, more alive, more complete than other people I encounter. I may have my cause and effect backwards though. Maybe they appear more alive BECAUSE I love them and not the other way around.
The other thing that I've been thinking about is that for a long time, I had my priorities all screwy. I spent a lot of time with my "hang out" friends and not as much time with the ones I love because it was easier to see the ones I just hang out with (though there is overlap, some of the people I was hanging out with are people that are very important to me but you get the point). It's not a bad thing to see these other people lots. They are nifty people, that's why I hang out with them duh! Yet I was missing that intensity of being with people I really connected with and I did this as my mental state was slowly deteriorating, the time I need that intensity the most. The only major exception to this was Wyndam. The burden of providing me with the inspiration I needed to keep going was falling on one person, and the longer I kept things that way, the longer I believed that I had no other options.
This Thursday I've got to havea very tough talk with my therapist who I have only just begun to trust. It's a scary prospect. She might tell me I'm totally wrong. She might try to have me committed. She will certainly ask me a lot of tough questions. After that's over I'm going to go to Wyndam's place which is good because I will be able to calm down and recover from that experience while simultaneously training my characters jewelcraft and marinating steak. But I'm really glad that I'm not JUST going to be hanging out with Wyndam that night.
I've had to do a lot of thinking lately and any time I seriously ponder my life the subject of love comes up. It sounds harsh and like I am pigeonholing, but I've concluded that I have two types of friends. There are the friends that are fun people who I hang out with and do stuff with, and then there are the friends that I love. With people in the first group, I'll happily spend a lot of time with them, but as soon as they do something that bugs me, I pull away. I'll drift back after enough time has passed, but I don't find it to be worth the effort of sitting down and discussing what went wrong, or even attempting to avoid similar events in the future. They are great people, but in the end I can live without their presence. This also means that when I am down or struggling, their presence does very little to lift my spirits. We're talking about people I socialize with, not people I share my life with.
Then there's the friends I love. These are the people I want around when something wonderful or terrible happens. These are the people I share my ideas and feelings with. It matters to me that these people understand what is important to me, and even if they don't value the same things personally, value the role that those things have in MY life. (ie: I like to write, and my friends don't all like to write, but it matters that they be aware that it is important for me to be writing, and so recognize the goodness of me creating something new.) At the same time, I try to understand what role their various hobbies and projects have for them. (ie: i'm not much into asian culture at all but Greyhame is so when the holidays came around last year, I got him a sake set. I'd never use it but it has meaning to him.) These are the people who energize me, who have the ability to seriously change how I am feeling at a moment with their mere presence. I want for these people to see me at my best, and I can stand to have them seeing me at my worst. When things go wrong in my relationships with them, it affects me very deeply and I will do whatever it takes (within the realm of my capabilities) to repair that. When they are hurting, I can give of myself to help them and usually not feel strained by it, whereas with other people any minor favor they ask of me feels like a huge sacrifice on my part. (It's not a perfect system of course: when Wyndam moved here from California I most certainly felt strained, but that's NOT an ordinary kind of situation. Similarly I don't fault him for feeling strained by my depression; again, not an ordinary situation.)
So of course I've asked myself the question; what is the difference between these people? I realize that if I come up with an answer I will be a millionaire. People have been trying to figure out why we love who we love since we put a name to the emotion. I'm not interested in figuring out why anyone else loves the people they love, I'm only interested in how it works in myself. What I can say is that for whatever reason, the people I love appear to me as more intense, more alive, more complete than other people I encounter. I may have my cause and effect backwards though. Maybe they appear more alive BECAUSE I love them and not the other way around.
The other thing that I've been thinking about is that for a long time, I had my priorities all screwy. I spent a lot of time with my "hang out" friends and not as much time with the ones I love because it was easier to see the ones I just hang out with (though there is overlap, some of the people I was hanging out with are people that are very important to me but you get the point). It's not a bad thing to see these other people lots. They are nifty people, that's why I hang out with them duh! Yet I was missing that intensity of being with people I really connected with and I did this as my mental state was slowly deteriorating, the time I need that intensity the most. The only major exception to this was Wyndam. The burden of providing me with the inspiration I needed to keep going was falling on one person, and the longer I kept things that way, the longer I believed that I had no other options.
This Thursday I've got to havea very tough talk with my therapist who I have only just begun to trust. It's a scary prospect. She might tell me I'm totally wrong. She might try to have me committed. She will certainly ask me a lot of tough questions. After that's over I'm going to go to Wyndam's place which is good because I will be able to calm down and recover from that experience while simultaneously training my characters jewelcraft and marinating steak. But I'm really glad that I'm not JUST going to be hanging out with Wyndam that night.
