Withering love

About 8 years ago I wrote a SciFi story (in Dutch) about murder, deception, death, dying, precognition and love, called Galapaga. It was written for a contest held every year in The Netherlands. It reached the second place and it was published in “Zwarte Sterren” #1. Many, if not all of my stories are love stories.

One of the comments I got from the jury was that I painted an idealized picture of love. Even where the person my protagonist was in love with also was the same she hated, loathed and killed in the end.

Love

In this essay I want to take a look at the different aspects of love, the way I see it.

I have been writing a lot about this in other articles, but never made it a central piece.

My opinion on the general notion of love

If you read my other posts in the past, you have come to understand that I have no real connection with the general notion of love. I think it is very fabricated, limited, pointing in the wrong direction and even hurtful.

The range of love as I see it

Love is in our wiring. We do not need external agents or institutes to be able to feel, develop or express it. First there is the “in love” part:

1. Being focused on this one person
2. Feeling lust and tenderness and dependency of recognition (including desperation on: “why did he/she not reply on my call/mail/sms yet”) by the subject of your feelings
3. Feeling happy when the subject of your love is there
4. Feeling sad when the subject of your love is not there
5. Feeling the want to kiss, cuddle, fuck, make love
6. Acting like a complete idiot because the other is completely sweet and lovely and surrounded by pink clouds and hearts and flowers when you look at him / her.

And all the long term versions like:

1. Compassion
2. Understanding
3. Tenderness
4. Comfort (in being together)

And the more general:

1. Friendship
2. Respect
3. Trust
4. Reliance
5. Leniency
6. Forgiveness

I personally think that we share these emotions with most mammals, as our brains and wiring is not that different or unique as some people think.

Lust

When we move one step lower on the ladder of our brain, we enter the world of fucking. Of the body and bodily sensations. It is the part that ensures we pro-create. Without our lust we can be the dreamy romantic creatures writing gorgeous poems without ever sucking dick, licking pussy or fucking each other senseless.

Without lust our species would not be here at all, as we would not feel the urge to fuck and we would not ejaculate our semen into the vagina’s to in-fertilize the eggs to grow the fetus in the womb to deliver as a child to have babies that will grow up as our offspring.

In short: lust is wonderful. Lust is super. Lust is part of what we are. To be horny and to want to fuck should be sung about more. Good and wel done porn should be considered art. Beautiful fucking recorded on film should be shown in musea.

Anyone excluding lust as a important- and very human part of our being is an idiot in my book. Anyone condemning lust automatically moves into the same area in my brain where my discontent for soccer hooligans, neo Nazis and exterme religious (“god wrote our holy book and we deny any part of reality”) people reside. If you are like that, I basically do not want to have you close to me.

The high of falling in love

There is one part that is common in all falling in love with a new person:

1. The craving for something you do not have yet

And four parts after falling in love:

1. Getting your love answered – at least by (hopefully) a good fuck
2. Not getting your love answered – because you never took any step or the other does not feel the same for you.
3. Getting refused – because the other simply does not like you
4. Getting disappointed – because the person looked like a shiny god or goddess when you knew nothing but turned out to be a turn-off when you got to know him or her.

Falling in love starts with craving. The craving is connected to the want to fuck and wired to lust. On top of that is our dreaming: our personal story-telling and a lot of other stuff happening in our brain to focus our complete attention on this one subject. We imagine a million different things about this person and ourselves. We live complete lives and experience countless adventures everywhere around the world and in our garden, even before we have ever had personal contact with this person.

Falling in love is one way in how our biological system helps us to stay on this earth as a species with next generations of people.

After you touch the ground

So what happens when you touch the ground?

At a certain moment, your initial “falling in love” is over. The natural high caused by the over-production of specific hormones and other chemical agents to make you fall in love settles down and the pink clouds probably speckled with hearts and the fantasies of vaginae, nipples and/or penises slowly fade away and reality starts to kick in again.

What do you see when the natural high is over?

There are several options:

1. A complete idiot – and you start to wonder how you could have fallen in love with this “thing” at all
2. Someone repulsive – leaving his or her (stinking) underwear all over your place, farting and smelly, lying and cheating on you, supporting beleif systems which are disgusting to you and/or who are not funny nor surrounded by pink clouds at all
3. Someone you can respect but do not lust for – as he or she is smart and/or funny, but does not turn you on anymore when you kiss and fuck
4. Someone lovely you want to continue fucking – as you like his or her smell, body, sense of humor and so on
5. Someone you continue to love and feel in love with – as you basically have no reason not to

The pretend love, the mindfuck and hostage situations

Many people like to have option #5: someone you continue to love and feel in love with. In most cases we end up in the region of the first 3: a complete idiot you do not respect at all, someone repulsive you rather not fuck ever again or someone you respect but do not lust for.

The question is: what do you do when you discover this is the situation? Let’s review the options:

1. Say goodbye – and very likely never see each oter again
2. Stay friends – if you feel there is enough to stay friends for
3. Maintain a relationship – when you feel that is the best way to go

If you are in the category of #1 – being with a complete idiot (in your eyes) or #2 – being with someone repulsive (in your eyes) and you do not choose option #1 – to say goodbye, you are in a personal and heavy mindfuck and your life will become a pretend story of pretend love, pretend care, pretend tenderness and pretend acceptance. You and your partner are in a hostage situation: instead of finding someone else you can become happy with, you stay together in something that has no real outlook on personal bliss. You and your partner are on your way to a slow and sure killing of your soul. I think the most common reason for people to stay in this hostage situation are these:

1. Pity – the other person is “hurt” and “in pain” and begs you for some understanding. In reality, the other does not take responsibility over his or her own life and takes you hostage in the process.
2. The “other people” – which can be your parents, your friends, the town folks and even the institutes and sects you are part of (religious and otherwise).
3. Related to #2 is “your reputation” – when you continue to fuck around people will see you as suspect. So it might be better to settle down with someone you might start to feel murderous tendencies for or who might trigger suicidal tendencies within yourself than to say “goodbye and thank you”
4. The peer pressure to get settled – because everyone else around you is doing it

If you stay friends or maintain a relationship, make sure it is with people from the 3rd category: someone you can respect but do not feel lust for. Staying friends with people who disgust you or who are plain stupid (in your eyes) is masochistic behavior. You might as well cut yourself with knifes and drink petrol to induce heavy vomiting reactions instead.

Long term love “is hard work”

There are bullshit stories about how “a long term relationship and long term love is a lot of work”. I do not believe that is true. I think it is a crime against our human nature to make other people believe this nonsense.

Long term love is easy. It is easy when you love and trust the other person and this person is lovely and funny (in your opinion) and super and sexy and attractive. It is even easier when you have a good understanding on your own and self-created bullshit.

There is some truth in the saying though. Let’s review the things that make long term love “hard work”:

1. Your own issues with trust and trusting someone else – based on past experiences with other people, you might find it hard to trust in people.
2. Your own issues in dealing with your own insecurities – because maybe nobody ever told you that it is OK to feel low or uncertain or afraid of something or someone
3. Your own issues with your own sexuality and sensuality – maybe you have had bad experiences in the past – maybe even including being raped – or your personal thoughts were not appreciated or labelled as perverted
4. Your own fear to be discarded or abandoned – as this is always been a factor of fear in your life
5. The feeling of need to “keep control” – Over whatever, including your own emotions, the emotions of your partner and your and your partner’s way of dealing with things.

Many relationships (including past relationships of mine) break on one or more of these factors – either at your side, or at the side of your partner, or because one fear from your side triggers another in your partner and results in a feedback-loop of increasing mutual fear  and insecurity that eventually leads to a cascading series of crisis.

Actually, Item #5 – the feeling of need to “keep control” is – I think, and in my personal experience – the key factor.

My need to keep control

Dear reader,

As this is (as usual) a very academic piece of writing, let me open one of the stinking vaults of my soul. Stinking as in: fermenting garbage that has no purpose anymore, but is still in my house as I – for whatever reason – did not get rid of it yet.

My need to keep control stretches over the following fields:

1. Making sure she likes me – by invoking a reaction – using little tricks like farting with my mouth on a part of her bare skin to divert her mind when I feel insecure if she likes me. When she responds as I am used to, she still likes me
2. Making sure I have a reason to be in her life – by giving advice and helping her – in places where I can show my usefulness due to my “superior mind”.
3. Making sure that she enjoys having sex with me – by giving her what she likes and learning and knowing how to trigger  specific reactions by stimulating specific parts of her body and skin
4. Hiding my own insecurities by creating diversions – this one is less and less used. I used to play the clown, but found that simply being honest about it is simpler and more sustainable
5. Avoiding the subjects dealing with trust – as I have both a highly morale value system and also feel I am on the bottom of that same system

I think I am not unique in this. I also believe people who do NOT do similar things and are completely clean of any pretense are extremely rare. I know some people who pretend to not doing this, but show in their general actions to do exactly that what they say NOT to do.

Acknowledging the lying and pretending

Why sum up the things that expose some of my more deeper rotting parts to you, my dear reader?

The reason is simple. I believe – as said – that we all share similar patterns of behavior. So you very likely have similar piles of rotting stuff as I do. And it is crucial for this part of this assay to make this step of understanding. Here comes the bottom line:

If we do not acknowledge to each other that we are hiding and pretending, we are both fooling each other and also denying each other the right to simply be and be ourselves. To expect and long and maybe even demand from the other to NOT have these hidden piles of rotting garbage is to deny the other person the right to open himself or herself up to you.

In other words I state that: denying this rotting garbage as being a mutual – being both inside you and your partner – part of your shared life is to deny access to the deeper love you can share with each other.

As stated before, “to keep control” is the key factor here (at least in my case. In your case it might have a different name, shape and color).

Long term love and letting go of control

If “to keep control” is the key factor, the key solution is to let go of control.

Here is why:

1. If you do not have to pretend anymore, you can release your fears
2. If you can release your fears, your mind will be released / set free as well
3. If your mind is released / set free, it will become easier to actually SEE the other person and acknowledge his or her beauty and specialness in your life
4. If you actually SEE the other person and the beauty and specialness
   1. You do not have to do any effort anymore
   2. You have reached and touched love itself

When you reach love

When you reach love, when you SEE the other person, things are simple. You need no reasons to love. You do not need to “work on love”. You do not need for the other person to hide anything from you anymore.

Let me repeat that last sentence:

You do not need the other person to hide things from you.

We get hurt

We get hurt most by what we suspect the other is doing, based on our fears. And unless you reached your Buddha-state, even YOU still have these suspicions and fears and even you are hiding things out of fear to hurt or lose the other person.

What hurts most in most cases and for most people (including me) is to hear stuff from your partner that will hurt you. Like: “Remember that day I was doing so and so? – I was actually visiting my lawyer to prepare for a divorce”. It is the stuff that:

1. Triggers our (hidden) fears
2. Triggers our (hidden) pains
3. Makes us freak out
4. Hits our insecurities
5. Brings us down
6. Makes us feel worthless or unloved

Why “letting go” works

I am not like Eckart Tolle and the likes, making very abstract notions and using cryptic language like “pain bodies” to make something simple obvious.

Let us look at keeping control first. Keeping control does NOT work for the following reasons:

1. You DO NOT have control over the mind or life of other people
2. You vary likely even do not have control over your own mind
3. Trying to control and working to keep control keeps you from relaxing
4. Not being relaxed = being stressed
5. Being stressed = closing your mind

When you let go:

1. You relax.
2. You accept the reality that you are NOT in control of things outside yourself
3. You accept that things happen as they happen
4. You accept that you can get hurt
5. You accept other people and what they do

There is a deeper layer. By letting go you hopefully also start to understand that:

1. Everyone has their own mind and their own right to make their own decisions, even if these decisions conflict with your preconceptions and expectations
2. To keep things silent or “under control” is to deny the other person’s right to react and take their own control.

Putting your hands in your own shit

To love, means to dare and put your own hands in your own shit. It is easier to NOT do this and it is even easier to point out to the other that his or her toilet is dirty ans should be cleaned (by someone else than you, as you rather do not make your hands dirty). Shit smells. It feels horrid on your hands (for most people that is). It automatically triggers a sensation of disgust in ourselves. This is the main reason why we find it easier to point out the mistakes of others and judge other people before taking responsibility over our own rotting shit.

So another bottom line:

1. If you are afraid to put your own hands in your own shit, to clean your own toilet of your own soul, you have no right to judge others about their wrongdoings.
2. Once you have done this type of work, it will very likely be easier to understand and forgive the reluctance of other people to do the same.

It is here where forgiveness lies.

But what about withering love?

Let’s define first what I think it envelops:

1. Love – From loving each other (if it was there in the first place) you grow to accepting and maybe even down to tolerating each other. “He is here, but he no longer pisses me off”.
2. Tenderness – from feeling tender about a person to feeling nothing or resentment to feeling bitter
3. Sex – From having (hopefully passionate or good) sex to having occasional sex to having painful sex to (rather) having no sex at all
4. Fun – From (hopefully) having fun to responding (blandly) to the other, to non-responding to ignoring the other
5. Communication – From sharing (almost everything) to sharing, to stating only the necessary to not communicating anymore

All show a declining line from something to close to nothing.

When some of these items are not present in a relationship it does NOT mean that there is no love. People can love each other and even be in love with each other very much and never have sex or never really communicating to and with each other. It is where a relationship starts at a certain point and things are getting worse and worse as time progresses.

Understanding the randomness of meeting your partner

You meet your partner by random circumstances. He or she “is just another person” that happens to interest you at that point in time at that point in your life. You could have met someone else a week later, or someone else might have fancied you enough to make you aware and to say “yes” to.

To think that it was meant to be is to deceive yourself. It could have been someone else just as much as the person you are with.

The reason why this thinking is not part of our culture and why we tend to make it “special” is to avoid the big questions:

1. Why do I actually like this person?
2. Is this person and this relationship what I really want?

There are several reasons for that avoidance:

1. When society is driven by other drives than love, you better not ask these questions, as they will conflict with the real motivations and reasoning. (Marriage in the western world is still about many other things than love.)
2. When society is driven from inequality (“woman is less in value than man”) you simply take what you want and simply do not allow these questions to arise from your partner

Why I believe the opposite: growth is possible

I believe that love can grow and can become more and more beautiful as time progresses.

I do not believe that this is a romantic dream. I am actually living it in every relationship I had. There has always been something that grew and became more beautiful. There also always was a certain point where I or she felt that we reached a dead end. And where we parted.

In only two cases it did not work out at all, due to too big a difference in how we perceived live and it is in these relationships where I found out that:

1. I can not fix other peoples problems – as problem-fixing is part of my wiring and people have their own reasons to do things the way they do
2. It does more damage NOT to talk about things than to DO talk about things – as not talking about things and not clearing up things keeps yourself and the other in a hostage situation (you feel it is wrong, but can not get out and can not negotiate about getting out)

As said: in all my relationships some things grew better and more beautiful as time progressed. Things also went bad. Mostly because I had relationships in the third category: Someone you can respect but do not lust for.

That lust-part had two reasons:

1. My own fucked-up ness
2. My choice in partners

I also lacked the level of connection I need to be able to open myself. In most cases we did not share the same basic interests or belief systems. Most clashes I had ware based on the differences in belief systems and lack if interest in what the other was doing.

Continuous growth in a relationship is possible. It is possible when:

1. You share overlapping belief systems (what is “right” and “wrong”, and so on)
2. You have an overlapping set of sexual preferences (the what, how and when)
3. You share overlapping fields of interests (including movies, books, music, food, places to go and places to be)
4. You share a mutual respect and longing to be together and build your relationship to be a lasting one
5. You share a mutual desire to grow as a person

What about sex?

There is a myth that sex slows down as you grow and that your peak is around 18 when you are a man and 32 when you are a woman. My experience is the opposite. As I grow older (and I reach 40 in 2011) the sex is only getting better and more intense and more satisfying for both.

I mentioned a lot of factors already in the article above. Here is the summary why it continues to be better and better:

1. As trust grows, you open up more to each other
2. As you open up more to each other, touching and fucking become more “real” and more intense
3. As the fucking and touching become more intense, so does the pleasure and the resulting orgasms

Sex at 18 is all hot and sensational as you still are horny like hell due to your hormones. But it is very likely also very shallow and quick. If 5 to 15 minutes is your average, and she does not even comes, or comes once, you are basically just fucking to reach an orgasm.

As you grow fonder of each other, sex is one way to communicate and when you are OK and not to blocked in that sense, your body keeps longing for touch and genital stimulation. In some peoples cases this never stops and continues until their very death at an old age.

Children might be a factor, but then again: why do they stop you from longing?

Closure

In the end it is all up to you.

Decide what you want and where you want to be. And make it a happy one.

Thanks for reading.

Peter