The obsessive part of love only lasts for three or six months, so it’s not important in the long term. Think about it as an extra motivation to pay the initial costs of establishing the relationship. It would be evolutionarily maladaptive to become forever obsessed with your significant other, unable to focus on tasks of daily survival.
This is the part of love that most people get wrong: basicly anyone who gets their important life lessons from Hollywood movies. Hollywood describes the obsessive part as the “true love”. People following this definition get into the predictable cycle of forming a new relationship, enjoying it intensely for a few months, noticing their obsession disappearing, interpreting it as an evidence that this actually wasn’t the “true love”, breaking apart and starting a new relationship… which again follows the same schedule; and some people can do this for decades. -- If this is what you noticed and want to avoid, you have a good point, but you are taking it too far.
(Some people express it cynically by saying that the main difference between eternal love and casual fling is that the casual fling lasts longer.)
I don’t think about love as a blind precommitment forever, but rather like this: I found a person who cooperates with me in a Prisonners’ Dilemma, so the game theory is telling me to keep cooperating… if the other person keeps playing by the rules, possibly forever, because that’s the winning strategy. Of course there is some imperfection in humans, and some noise in human communication, so I’m ready to forgive some minor problems. But that’s still because I am profitting in the long term. -- If I would realize that my significant other abuses me, I would get out of the relationship. The important part of love is finding a person who is able and willing to reciprocate love. (Many beautiful people aren’t.) Also, being that kind of person. (It’s a learnt ability.)
As a data point, living with my girlfriend makes almost every day of my life better. Just eating breakfast with someone else is better than eating alone: if I multiply it with the expected remaining days of my life, that’s a huge stack of utilons; I would be stupid to give it up. And that’s just the fucking breakfast. On a boring ordinary day. Which happens automatically, without me having to do anything special; even on days when I am tired or busy. -- For me the conclusion is obvious. But it took years of learning and experimenting.
It is a real thing. You can find more detailed explanation on Married Man Sex Life blog, but essentially there are three things people can mean when talking about “love”, and each of them is driven by a different set of chemicals.
a) obsession b) closeness c) sexual desire
The obsessive love is A + C, or sometimes just A. The mature love is B + C, with a smaller intensity of A returning shortly once in a while, usually when you break your stereotype in a good way, e.g. go together on an exotic vacation, or go dancing.
You probably already have the experience of B without C. It’s what you feel towards good friends (the ones you feel safe with), family members, or perhaps your pet. And what you will later feel towards your children. The feeling increases if you touch someone in a non-sexual way (e.g. hug, or dance with), or if you look deeply in their eyes (assuming you already feel safe with them).
Now imagine this, in a high intensity (but only when you think about the given person, usually when you are with them, not obsessively all the time), with the sexual undertone. (The sexual undertone doesn’t have to be there all the time; however its long-term absence is a frequent failure mode.)
To protect this mutual feeling: Act in a safe way; don’t ever hurt the other person physically or verbally. Express your love verbally (no need to be dramatic, just make frequent casual nice remarks) and non-verbally (short but frequent affectionate touches and hugs). In nice circumstances, look each other in the eyes. Be sexual once in a while, but not all the time (send a message that both modes are great with you). -- Read this book about individual differences, because I described what works in my relationship.
Typical mistakes: Acting safe doesn’t mean you should stop joking and teasing. Actually, you shouldn’t; you just need to calibrate and stop immediately when it becomes inconvenient for the other person. Just because you feel safe with the other person, don’t make them your psychologist. It’s okay to share some of your problems, but don’t put the whole burden on a single person, just because the person is there and it’s convenient for you. (Specifically for men in heterosexual relationships: make your partner feel safe and loved even when she is not in a mood for sex; but don’t let too many days in a row pass asexually, because her mind can switch to “I love him, but I’m no longer in love with him” and suddenly you are friend-zoned and/or waiting for a divorce. Sex is part of the package, even if it doesn’t include penetration.)
There is a role of deciding here—you have to decide to act in a way that allows this feeling to develop, and to refrain from acting in a way that would destroy it. But the feeling is emotional, chemical, you feel it, not just tell yourself that you have it. Maybe for people coming from healthy loving families the decision component is invisible, because that’s how they behave naturally. If you were less lucky, you have to pay attention. It’s probably good do understand it explicitly, anyway, to prevent a random screwup. Also, this is how your partner should behave, too… if they don’t, tell them… if they don’t bother to listen, unfortunately I have a bad news for you. The good news is there are other people out there. Sometimes people need time to learn, but usually that also includes a change of partner.
This description/advice is awesome, and I mostly agree, but I think it presents an overly uniform impression of what love is like. I’ve been in Mature Adult Love multiple times, and the feelings involved have been different every time. I wouldn’t necessarily reject your division into obsession, closeness, and sexual desire, but I think maybe there are different kinds (or components) of closeness, such as affection, understanding, appreciation, loyalty, etc., and any friendship or relationship will have these in differing degrees. For instance, for a lot of people, family love seems to involve a lot of loyalty but not as much understanding.
This classification is (aims to be) “hardware”-oriented; the three groups should be supported by different sets of hormones. (I am not a biologist, I merely copy the info from other sources; mostly the Married Man Sex Life blog. The author is a nurse, so I trust his expertise.) I can imagine that the same “hardware” foundation could be used to implement multiple different “software” emotional flavors in the brain.
Actually, I believe there might be even some cultural variations; if nothing else, the mere belief that some two emotions should go together, or that some emotion should be felt in some situation, would create a cultural difference.
I think your classification is missing something. I’ve had close trusted friends I had sexual desire for (whether I acted on it or not) without wanting to date them. B, as lucidian suggests, probably contains more sub-components.
Because of this, I can’t understand the rest of your post. Thanks for the advice; it’s good, but not new.
Does a normal good relationship happen like so?: “You develop obsession and (possibly later) desire, then closeness, then the obsession fades.” (I’m not sure many people agree that Mature Adult Love takes less than six months to develop!) What is it like when the obsession fades?
Everyone says “three to six months” (with a few outliers saying one, two, or three years), and I’m starting to think this is evidence they trust what everyone else says over their own experience, rather than separate observations matching, because reported experiences differ wildly. In particular, many people think of love as intense friendship plus sex, while many others have a completely distinct romance drive.
I’ve had close trusted friends I had sexual desire for (whether I acted on it or not) without wanting to date them.
Happens to me, too. Yes, there is some important component missing that I haven’t described. (Trying to think about specific examples: Sometimes the sexual attraction was there but not high enough; I would rather have sex with the person than not, but I believed I could do much better. In a polygamous society they would probably be a great secondary partner. Sometimes the life goals were so incompatible, I couldn’t imagine living together; or there was a great understanding in some issues, but also a vast lack of understanding in others.)
But still, this is almost a subset of what I tried to describe. Sometimes I even thought that if it would be possible to split people into components and arrange them differently, I already had enough material to build a perfect partner for me.
What is it like when the obsession fades?
You start noticing that other things exist, too. You are able to enjoy a good book, even if the person is in the same room. You realize there are things you liked to do before you met this person, then you completely forgot about those things, and now you miss them.
If you don’t understand what is happening, and especially if the other person is still in the obsession phase, you may feel guilty for not loving them enough, or gradually become angry that they are “suffocating” you, because they want to take all your attention, but you now also want to focus on your hobbies. (An irrational person with lack of introspection may even blame the other person that they made them abandon their hobbies; but it’s more likely that during the obsession phase they gave up their hobbies voluntarily, and now they are just editing the past to fit into a better narrative.) The other person probably feels ignored, not loved, and may suspect you found someone else instead of them.
If the other person is already out of the obsession phase, and you get out later, it simply means you can both enjoy your hobbies again. Though, if you are not familiar with the process (and your model of love is based on Hollywood movies), you may have doubts about whether everything is okay, even if technically there is no problem at the moment.
I’m not sure many people agree that Mature Adult Love takes less than six months to develop!
It could depend on how much “practice” from the previous relationships you have. Or maybe it’s faster if you already knew each other before you fell in love. Or maybe that’s the gap that you have to overcome using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don’t feel emotionally compelled to.
The obsession phase also depends on how much opportunity you have to be together. Generally, obstacles (that seem surmountable) make the obsession last longer. There may also be individual differences.
many people think of love as intense friendship plus sex, while many others have a completely distinct romance drive.
This very likely could be a typical mind fallacy, but I believe the “distinct romance drive” is just rationalizing the obsession (often using a supernatural explanation).
Again, this is a model that works for me, and I am not sure how much it applies to other people. I try to be helpful, because years ago I didn’t understand this model, and I probably suffered pointlessly because of it. But I don’t insist that everyone is the same as me.
Thanks! That doesn’t match my experience at all, so it’s nice to learn about.
maybe that’s the gap that you have to overcome using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don’t feel emotionally compelled to
Crushing fear of being abusive, and guilt about having hurt them in the past, works really well for this.
Something feels to me really wrong about that last sentence. Not that it hypothetically couldn’t be technically true, but it’s certainly not a way I would recommend to anyone. Associating love and closeness with fear and guilt… that’s how I model a strongly religious person or a victim in an abusive relationship… and it’s a state of mind I definitely do not endorse. (I try keeping an open mind that there may be some specific situation where it isn’t as bad as it seems to me, but I give it a low probability.) For me, feeling safe is an opposite of fear, so an idea of a “crushing fear and guilt” as a way towards love makes as much sense as stabbing oneself with a knife as a way to achieve health (yes, there may be a very specific situation where...).
Considering this and your previous comments, I update towards belief that you simply don’t have an experience with the emotion, and the verbal explanations just don’t click because there is nothing to connect the words with. (Alternatively, you may have the experience with the emotion in some other context, but something in your mind prevents you from even imagining it in the context of a sexual relation.) Which sounds like a horrible thing, so I’d recommend trying… uhm… a) speaking about this topic with a psychologist; b) finding a couple with a good long-term relationship and either ask them or just spend a lot of time around them to learn by copying; c) speaking about this with someone you trust, e.g. on the next LW meetup, but personally, not online, because an online debate does not transfer emotions well.
(I apologize if this offended you, of course there is a chance that I am completely wrong, but the value of information is possibly very big here.)
Wait, you mean actually feel safe, as in you can relax just as much as when you’re alone with a good book, not just be aware that the person is allied to you? How does that jive with “using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don’t feel emotionally compelled to”?
I was abused as a child. You seem to be very distressed about this, so let me make it clear that my life is pretty good and I don’t have any awful traumas or anything. But all sources of advice about how to move on and go on about one’s life insist on this: abuse screws up attachment. If I ever (ever, not “before I’ve healed enough”) drop my CONSTANT VIGILANCE!, I will hurt people who love me for the power trip (this is confirmed by experience), and I will be abused again by someone who notices I’m an easy victim (this isn’t; Shiny Boyfriend is astoundingly ethical).
There’s probably a better way to keep those bad tendencies in check than through fear and guilt, which is why I brought it up. But your version of love seems incompatible with having bad tendencies in the first place.
you mean actually feel safe, as in you can relax just as much as when you’re alone with a good book
Yes. Well, almost; nothing is perfect. There are some sensitive topics and situations, but the longer we are together, the less sensitive they become, because our expectations of “if a person does X, they will probably also do a bad thing Y” are repeatedly proven wrong.
How does that jive with “using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don’t feel emotionally compelled to”?
Two things. First, sometimes my emotions are irrational, but I am aware of it, and I decide not to act on the emotion. As an example, some people get angry at work because of some problem at work, then they come home but the frustration is high in them, and then they start screaming at their family members because of some trivial mistake they made. (Often the mistake is something real, but the emotion and the reaction are hugely disproportional.) I try to be aware of this, try to be fair, and rather to err on the side of calmness. Sometimes I make a note of the topic I wanted to discuss, and I mention it later when the strong emotions are gone and we are able to discuss it calmly. This all happens rarely (once in a few months), and is less frequent the longer we are together. But even if it’s rare, if I had reacted otherwise, it would certainly have bad long-term consequences.
Second, sometimes I decide to do something small and nice even if my feelings at given moment are neutral. It’s like the rule that when you start smiling, even if you don’t feel happy, the act of smiling makes you a bit more happy—I’m just doing it to other person and starting a small positive feedback loop of nice feelings. For example, thinking for 10 seconds about “is there something nice (and true) I could say about the other person now?” Another example, if I am happy or satisfied with something the other person did, my natural reaction would be to enjoy it quietly; but instead I take the extra step of saying “thank you”. Even when it’s something trivial. I don’t comment the trivial things all the time, but in random moments. (Maybe this part is just compensating for my character flaws; other people may do this automatically without thinking about it.) The important thing is that this part doesn’t cause me any stress at all. I’m not doing this from a sense of duty, but as a rational strategic decision. I just have to keep reminding myself, because I keep forgetting.
I was abused as a child. You seem to be very distressed about this, so let me make it clear that my life is pretty good and I don’t have any awful traumas or anything.
That’s what I expected, but didn’t want to say it directly without better evidence and without knowing how you would react. That’s very good you can admit it; some people didn’t get even this far. And it’s good to hear that you succeeded to have a good life. -- Without pushing you, I just want to say that it possibly could be even better. Maybe you missed some skills, and you manage to live successfully without them; but learning them anyway could give you more options and get even more happiness.
all sources of advice about how to move on and go on about one’s life insist on this: abuse screws up attachment.
I agree with this, but it doesn’t have to be like this forever, and certainly not with the same intensity. Using the materialist framework: your brain synapses keep changing all the time, and there exists a finite amount of change that would solve your problem. Yeah, I know that without specific numbers, we can’t estimate how much time would it take; and even if we knew which synapses need to be changed, that’s easier said than done. On the other hand, most people are not strategic, so just by acting strategically, your chances should be better than usual. I’m not able to make an estimate, but I believe that if there is 50% chance of success, and it would take 10 or 20 years, it’s probably still worth trying.
Switching from the role of an abused person to the role of abusive person, that’s probably what most former victims do. I mean, it’s the shortest inferential step: you keep the model of the relations, you only change your role in the system. That’s hundred times more easier than following a new model, especially if you haven’t experienced it, so you would have to invent it yourself. If we assume that people do the best thing their models allow, being an abuser is the best thing in the model that only contains two roles. (This is why I recommended “finding a couple with a good long-term relationship and either ask them or just spend a lot of time around them to learn by copying”. To build a better model, on the intuition level.) Also, if you learn a new thing, it is completely natural to screw up a few times.
But your version of love seems incompatible with having bad tendencies in the first place.
Everyone has some bad tendencies. I may seem like a nice person, because that’s how I present myself here, but there are people around me who have been hurt by my dark side. I’m not saying it’s the same degree, just that it is a scale, not a set of distinct categories. And an important part of becoming a good person is to try hard. Some people don’t. You already do.
Okay. I’m not telling you to try something that seems dangerous to you. Just… keep observing and learning, even if you don’t try it immediately. (Perhaps try loving-kindness meditation—just the exercise, without the religious theory.) Good luck!
The obsessive part of love only lasts for three or six months, so it’s not important in the long term.
There seem to be huge variations. For example I didn’t fully loose infatuation until the breakup (after 14 years). But on the other hand it wasn’t very ‘obsessive’ from/in the beginning either.
(And like all learnt hard-to-quantify abilities, be sure not to fool yourself about how much of it you have.)
This should be seen as an opportunity, and in no way tedious, though some will give up for it is easier to kiss the lover than become one. The lower regions crawl with these souls, caves of shallow treasures, meeting in places to testify by way of extension, when love is only satisfied by a considerable (incalculable) effort.
Just eating breakfast with someone else is better than eating alone
When talking about such considerations, it’s better to taboo/unpack “love” (which is generally useful for poorly defined concepts). In this case, you seem to be talking about the benefits of share housing with a well-chosen housemate.
The obsessive part of love only lasts for three or six months, so it’s not important in the long term. Think about it as an extra motivation to pay the initial costs of establishing the relationship. It would be evolutionarily maladaptive to become forever obsessed with your significant other, unable to focus on tasks of daily survival.
This is the part of love that most people get wrong: basicly anyone who gets their important life lessons from Hollywood movies. Hollywood describes the obsessive part as the “true love”. People following this definition get into the predictable cycle of forming a new relationship, enjoying it intensely for a few months, noticing their obsession disappearing, interpreting it as an evidence that this actually wasn’t the “true love”, breaking apart and starting a new relationship… which again follows the same schedule; and some people can do this for decades. -- If this is what you noticed and want to avoid, you have a good point, but you are taking it too far.
(Some people express it cynically by saying that the main difference between eternal love and casual fling is that the casual fling lasts longer.)
I don’t think about love as a blind precommitment forever, but rather like this: I found a person who cooperates with me in a Prisonners’ Dilemma, so the game theory is telling me to keep cooperating… if the other person keeps playing by the rules, possibly forever, because that’s the winning strategy. Of course there is some imperfection in humans, and some noise in human communication, so I’m ready to forgive some minor problems. But that’s still because I am profitting in the long term. -- If I would realize that my significant other abuses me, I would get out of the relationship. The important part of love is finding a person who is able and willing to reciprocate love. (Many beautiful people aren’t.) Also, being that kind of person. (It’s a learnt ability.)
As a data point, living with my girlfriend makes almost every day of my life better. Just eating breakfast with someone else is better than eating alone: if I multiply it with the expected remaining days of my life, that’s a huge stack of utilons; I would be stupid to give it up. And that’s just the fucking breakfast. On a boring ordinary day. Which happens automatically, without me having to do anything special; even on days when I am tired or busy. -- For me the conclusion is obvious. But it took years of learning and experimenting.
I’ve never been in Mature Adult Love. Is it a real thing, or just having no particular feelings but deciding you like the company? What is it like?
It is a real thing. You can find more detailed explanation on Married Man Sex Life blog, but essentially there are three things people can mean when talking about “love”, and each of them is driven by a different set of chemicals.
a) obsession
b) closeness
c) sexual desire
The obsessive love is A + C, or sometimes just A. The mature love is B + C, with a smaller intensity of A returning shortly once in a while, usually when you break your stereotype in a good way, e.g. go together on an exotic vacation, or go dancing.
You probably already have the experience of B without C. It’s what you feel towards good friends (the ones you feel safe with), family members, or perhaps your pet. And what you will later feel towards your children. The feeling increases if you touch someone in a non-sexual way (e.g. hug, or dance with), or if you look deeply in their eyes (assuming you already feel safe with them).
Now imagine this, in a high intensity (but only when you think about the given person, usually when you are with them, not obsessively all the time), with the sexual undertone. (The sexual undertone doesn’t have to be there all the time; however its long-term absence is a frequent failure mode.)
To protect this mutual feeling: Act in a safe way; don’t ever hurt the other person physically or verbally. Express your love verbally (no need to be dramatic, just make frequent casual nice remarks) and non-verbally (short but frequent affectionate touches and hugs). In nice circumstances, look each other in the eyes. Be sexual once in a while, but not all the time (send a message that both modes are great with you). -- Read this book about individual differences, because I described what works in my relationship.
Typical mistakes: Acting safe doesn’t mean you should stop joking and teasing. Actually, you shouldn’t; you just need to calibrate and stop immediately when it becomes inconvenient for the other person. Just because you feel safe with the other person, don’t make them your psychologist. It’s okay to share some of your problems, but don’t put the whole burden on a single person, just because the person is there and it’s convenient for you. (Specifically for men in heterosexual relationships: make your partner feel safe and loved even when she is not in a mood for sex; but don’t let too many days in a row pass asexually, because her mind can switch to “I love him, but I’m no longer in love with him” and suddenly you are friend-zoned and/or waiting for a divorce. Sex is part of the package, even if it doesn’t include penetration.)
There is a role of deciding here—you have to decide to act in a way that allows this feeling to develop, and to refrain from acting in a way that would destroy it. But the feeling is emotional, chemical, you feel it, not just tell yourself that you have it. Maybe for people coming from healthy loving families the decision component is invisible, because that’s how they behave naturally. If you were less lucky, you have to pay attention. It’s probably good do understand it explicitly, anyway, to prevent a random screwup. Also, this is how your partner should behave, too… if they don’t, tell them… if they don’t bother to listen, unfortunately I have a bad news for you. The good news is there are other people out there. Sometimes people need time to learn, but usually that also includes a change of partner.
This description/advice is awesome, and I mostly agree, but I think it presents an overly uniform impression of what love is like. I’ve been in Mature Adult Love multiple times, and the feelings involved have been different every time. I wouldn’t necessarily reject your division into obsession, closeness, and sexual desire, but I think maybe there are different kinds (or components) of closeness, such as affection, understanding, appreciation, loyalty, etc., and any friendship or relationship will have these in differing degrees. For instance, for a lot of people, family love seems to involve a lot of loyalty but not as much understanding.
Yes, I agree completely.
This classification is (aims to be) “hardware”-oriented; the three groups should be supported by different sets of hormones. (I am not a biologist, I merely copy the info from other sources; mostly the Married Man Sex Life blog. The author is a nurse, so I trust his expertise.) I can imagine that the same “hardware” foundation could be used to implement multiple different “software” emotional flavors in the brain.
Actually, I believe there might be even some cultural variations; if nothing else, the mere belief that some two emotions should go together, or that some emotion should be felt in some situation, would create a cultural difference.
I think your classification is missing something. I’ve had close trusted friends I had sexual desire for (whether I acted on it or not) without wanting to date them. B, as lucidian suggests, probably contains more sub-components.
Because of this, I can’t understand the rest of your post. Thanks for the advice; it’s good, but not new.
Does a normal good relationship happen like so?: “You develop obsession and (possibly later) desire, then closeness, then the obsession fades.” (I’m not sure many people agree that Mature Adult Love takes less than six months to develop!) What is it like when the obsession fades?
Everyone says “three to six months” (with a few outliers saying one, two, or three years), and I’m starting to think this is evidence they trust what everyone else says over their own experience, rather than separate observations matching, because reported experiences differ wildly. In particular, many people think of love as intense friendship plus sex, while many others have a completely distinct romance drive.
What I described is what works for me, so I’m not going to generalize.
Happens to me, too. Yes, there is some important component missing that I haven’t described. (Trying to think about specific examples: Sometimes the sexual attraction was there but not high enough; I would rather have sex with the person than not, but I believed I could do much better. In a polygamous society they would probably be a great secondary partner. Sometimes the life goals were so incompatible, I couldn’t imagine living together; or there was a great understanding in some issues, but also a vast lack of understanding in others.)
But still, this is almost a subset of what I tried to describe. Sometimes I even thought that if it would be possible to split people into components and arrange them differently, I already had enough material to build a perfect partner for me.
You start noticing that other things exist, too. You are able to enjoy a good book, even if the person is in the same room. You realize there are things you liked to do before you met this person, then you completely forgot about those things, and now you miss them.
If you don’t understand what is happening, and especially if the other person is still in the obsession phase, you may feel guilty for not loving them enough, or gradually become angry that they are “suffocating” you, because they want to take all your attention, but you now also want to focus on your hobbies. (An irrational person with lack of introspection may even blame the other person that they made them abandon their hobbies; but it’s more likely that during the obsession phase they gave up their hobbies voluntarily, and now they are just editing the past to fit into a better narrative.) The other person probably feels ignored, not loved, and may suspect you found someone else instead of them.
If the other person is already out of the obsession phase, and you get out later, it simply means you can both enjoy your hobbies again. Though, if you are not familiar with the process (and your model of love is based on Hollywood movies), you may have doubts about whether everything is okay, even if technically there is no problem at the moment.
It could depend on how much “practice” from the previous relationships you have. Or maybe it’s faster if you already knew each other before you fell in love. Or maybe that’s the gap that you have to overcome using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don’t feel emotionally compelled to.
The obsession phase also depends on how much opportunity you have to be together. Generally, obstacles (that seem surmountable) make the obsession last longer. There may also be individual differences.
This very likely could be a typical mind fallacy, but I believe the “distinct romance drive” is just rationalizing the obsession (often using a supernatural explanation).
Again, this is a model that works for me, and I am not sure how much it applies to other people. I try to be helpful, because years ago I didn’t understand this model, and I probably suffered pointlessly because of it. But I don’t insist that everyone is the same as me.
Thanks! That doesn’t match my experience at all, so it’s nice to learn about.
Crushing fear of being abusive, and guilt about having hurt them in the past, works really well for this.
Something feels to me really wrong about that last sentence. Not that it hypothetically couldn’t be technically true, but it’s certainly not a way I would recommend to anyone. Associating love and closeness with fear and guilt… that’s how I model a strongly religious person or a victim in an abusive relationship… and it’s a state of mind I definitely do not endorse. (I try keeping an open mind that there may be some specific situation where it isn’t as bad as it seems to me, but I give it a low probability.) For me, feeling safe is an opposite of fear, so an idea of a “crushing fear and guilt” as a way towards love makes as much sense as stabbing oneself with a knife as a way to achieve health (yes, there may be a very specific situation where...).
Considering this and your previous comments, I update towards belief that you simply don’t have an experience with the emotion, and the verbal explanations just don’t click because there is nothing to connect the words with. (Alternatively, you may have the experience with the emotion in some other context, but something in your mind prevents you from even imagining it in the context of a sexual relation.) Which sounds like a horrible thing, so I’d recommend trying… uhm… a) speaking about this topic with a psychologist; b) finding a couple with a good long-term relationship and either ask them or just spend a lot of time around them to learn by copying; c) speaking about this with someone you trust, e.g. on the next LW meetup, but personally, not online, because an online debate does not transfer emotions well.
(I apologize if this offended you, of course there is a chance that I am completely wrong, but the value of information is possibly very big here.)
Wait, you mean actually feel safe, as in you can relax just as much as when you’re alone with a good book, not just be aware that the person is allied to you? How does that jive with “using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don’t feel emotionally compelled to”?
I was abused as a child. You seem to be very distressed about this, so let me make it clear that my life is pretty good and I don’t have any awful traumas or anything. But all sources of advice about how to move on and go on about one’s life insist on this: abuse screws up attachment. If I ever (ever, not “before I’ve healed enough”) drop my CONSTANT VIGILANCE!, I will hurt people who love me for the power trip (this is confirmed by experience), and I will be abused again by someone who notices I’m an easy victim (this isn’t; Shiny Boyfriend is astoundingly ethical).
There’s probably a better way to keep those bad tendencies in check than through fear and guilt, which is why I brought it up. But your version of love seems incompatible with having bad tendencies in the first place.
Yes. Well, almost; nothing is perfect. There are some sensitive topics and situations, but the longer we are together, the less sensitive they become, because our expectations of “if a person does X, they will probably also do a bad thing Y” are repeatedly proven wrong.
Two things. First, sometimes my emotions are irrational, but I am aware of it, and I decide not to act on the emotion. As an example, some people get angry at work because of some problem at work, then they come home but the frustration is high in them, and then they start screaming at their family members because of some trivial mistake they made. (Often the mistake is something real, but the emotion and the reaction are hugely disproportional.) I try to be aware of this, try to be fair, and rather to err on the side of calmness. Sometimes I make a note of the topic I wanted to discuss, and I mention it later when the strong emotions are gone and we are able to discuss it calmly. This all happens rarely (once in a few months), and is less frequent the longer we are together. But even if it’s rare, if I had reacted otherwise, it would certainly have bad long-term consequences.
Second, sometimes I decide to do something small and nice even if my feelings at given moment are neutral. It’s like the rule that when you start smiling, even if you don’t feel happy, the act of smiling makes you a bit more happy—I’m just doing it to other person and starting a small positive feedback loop of nice feelings. For example, thinking for 10 seconds about “is there something nice (and true) I could say about the other person now?” Another example, if I am happy or satisfied with something the other person did, my natural reaction would be to enjoy it quietly; but instead I take the extra step of saying “thank you”. Even when it’s something trivial. I don’t comment the trivial things all the time, but in random moments. (Maybe this part is just compensating for my character flaws; other people may do this automatically without thinking about it.) The important thing is that this part doesn’t cause me any stress at all. I’m not doing this from a sense of duty, but as a rational strategic decision. I just have to keep reminding myself, because I keep forgetting.
That’s what I expected, but didn’t want to say it directly without better evidence and without knowing how you would react. That’s very good you can admit it; some people didn’t get even this far. And it’s good to hear that you succeeded to have a good life. -- Without pushing you, I just want to say that it possibly could be even better. Maybe you missed some skills, and you manage to live successfully without them; but learning them anyway could give you more options and get even more happiness.
I agree with this, but it doesn’t have to be like this forever, and certainly not with the same intensity. Using the materialist framework: your brain synapses keep changing all the time, and there exists a finite amount of change that would solve your problem. Yeah, I know that without specific numbers, we can’t estimate how much time would it take; and even if we knew which synapses need to be changed, that’s easier said than done. On the other hand, most people are not strategic, so just by acting strategically, your chances should be better than usual. I’m not able to make an estimate, but I believe that if there is 50% chance of success, and it would take 10 or 20 years, it’s probably still worth trying.
Switching from the role of an abused person to the role of abusive person, that’s probably what most former victims do. I mean, it’s the shortest inferential step: you keep the model of the relations, you only change your role in the system. That’s hundred times more easier than following a new model, especially if you haven’t experienced it, so you would have to invent it yourself. If we assume that people do the best thing their models allow, being an abuser is the best thing in the model that only contains two roles. (This is why I recommended “finding a couple with a good long-term relationship and either ask them or just spend a lot of time around them to learn by copying”. To build a better model, on the intuition level.) Also, if you learn a new thing, it is completely natural to screw up a few times.
Everyone has some bad tendencies. I may seem like a nice person, because that’s how I present myself here, but there are people around me who have been hurt by my dark side. I’m not saying it’s the same degree, just that it is a scale, not a set of distinct categories. And an important part of becoming a good person is to try hard. Some people don’t. You already do.
Okay. I’m not telling you to try something that seems dangerous to you. Just… keep observing and learning, even if you don’t try it immediately. (Perhaps try loving-kindness meditation—just the exercise, without the religious theory.) Good luck!
There seem to be huge variations. For example I didn’t fully loose infatuation until the breakup (after 14 years). But on the other hand it wasn’t very ‘obsessive’ from/in the beginning either.
(And like all learnt hard-to-quantify abilities, be sure not to fool yourself about how much of it you have.)
–– Vivec
When talking about such considerations, it’s better to taboo/unpack “love” (which is generally useful for poorly defined concepts). In this case, you seem to be talking about the benefits of share housing with a well-chosen housemate.