Is love worth all the trouble?

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My life has been too turbulent, I finally want some peace

I kept hoping for many years that I'll just find that magic someone whom I'll instantly connect with, a soul similar to mine. However that hasn't happened yet. It might happen in the future, I'm still fairly youngish but for now I'm not actively looking nor do I particularly care.

Is love an illusion, you mean? I think that's a complicated question. Sometimes infatuation creates the illusion of love. But real love can exist.

Personally, I don't bother with dating. For the time being, it isn't worth the effort to me.

I find myself seeking the non-boring direction but less for societal acceptance and more by being a psychological minority seeking spiritual growth and fulfillment. Part of me wants to get out and go somewhere exotic, part of me wants to see the night life (which is great for me in doses), so far we have a lot of friends moving to such a place and it looks like it'll turn a page in my life that seems like its been stuck for a while.

I agree that doing something in a deeper sense with your life just because society tells you to really doesn't make nearly the sense as does following its less invasive rules - ultimately you are who you are and you have to obey that identity and come to grips with it. Myself right now though, I just find myself in a very novel situation where I have a decent career, my life is completely up in the air, and I know my next move will mean a lot - I think moving down to the party center is either a necessary growth move or a necessary mistake. Also with women I do realize that I'm built rather narrow when it comes to emotional needs and fulfillment from another person, part of that makes me more independent and self-reliant (I have to be), part of me also has been entertaining more the idea of falling in love in a foreign language or going for a girl who's funky, alternative, my mirror image, but - of origins very alien to my own.

Well, that's enough babble. I think realistically people should not have a problem with the boring life if, at heart, its what they want. On the other hand though regrets are a big issue as well - hopefully by the time a person hits 50 or 60 they've gained enough compassion for themselves to know what was or wasn't their fault, to not hold the past over themselves constantly, that's a much harder thing to do in your teens or twenties when you don't know your potential, your limits, are told that its not ok to admit to having limits, from which point you've got a representation of yourself breaking your own jaw every time you slip up - it takes a lot of self-knowledge, growth, and wisdom to defuse that side of ones self as middle age sets in; the first side was there to spur you into adulthood and strengthen your resolve to test all of your limits, once you've found your limits and know how much energy you have to spend - it entirely stops being practical.

I do agree with your post, but in my previous post I used "boring" solely in terms of relationships.
I'm not aiming for many spontaneous activities, or having over 20 friends, or lots of travelling, or a busy job: I'd hate that.
My post was written as a direct reply to Snazzlestick's post about relationships not being worth the trouble.

I'd be happy with an easy-going life, really. With not too many activities.
But that doesn't mean I'd never want to get into a relationship, just because it means taking a risk.
The risk of getting hurt, or the risk of getting stressed, and what else.

I do want a relationship, just not one that sucks me dry (energy-wise...).
And I do think I want to take that risk, rather than pushing potential lovers away as some sort of defence.


Your post reminds me of a song, by the way.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K101lypWO0U[/youtube]

"If you don't have a date
Celebrate
Go out and sit on the lawn
And do nothing
Because it's just what you must do
And nobody does it anymore

No I don't believe in the wasting of time,
I don't believe that I'm wasting mine"

Great song, mostly because of the lyrics.

I think that's a nice attitude to have.
At first I thought you'd rather push someone away if they would reach out to you, but I might have misinterpreted.
Not actively looking for a relationship, and being okay with not having one. Sounds good to me.

I care in waves, lol.
For the biggest part my mind is occupied with other things.
Actually, even when it's not I'm generally not bothered, really.
But every now and then, I'd really like to have a relationship. A PROPER one.
The magical one you're talking about, I guess.

There are many times I loved someone, and it was unrequited. But I consider it worth it. You don't always get what you want. I've found that the best music I wrote, the best lessons I learned, the most I got done, was from re-directed energy from such a situation. And there were times that it was requited also.

You could argue that the energy would be better put to use for career, etc. in the first place, but honestly it was so distracting at the time I couldn't think of much else.

Yes and no. For many people, they have a good 40-60 years ahead of them. Now, if you made a list of what a person would want to work on, want to achieve and want to fulfill their lives, and then mapped it out over those 40-60 years, you'd run out of things and still have a few decades available.

So is it "worth" it in the sense of the relationship itself? Not really. The (or any) relationship is to help fulfill your life. If you are already leading a rich and fulfilling life, there's little more a relationship can bring to the table. However, if you have time to sit and ponder, and also feel lonely and miserable, you will look for things to try and enrich your life.

This is why I suggest, if you're life is empty, find something to fill it. It is not necessarily a relationship as your life will simply be empty with a meaningless relationship.

If you can find meaning and purpose within your life, which includes being simply "entertained" then a relationship is the next logical step. But to focus on the relationship in hope it'll complete you... is dishonest to yourself and the relationship.

If you are not happy with yourself, then you will not be happy in a relationship. You will take the other for granted, grow apart and resent the other. The only hope in this kind of a relationship is finding someone willing to be be subservient and work on pleasing you (e.g. guys who date women who are 1/2 to 2/3rds their age).

Find meaning in your own life and a relationship will be much easier to find, and support.

but as for me - right now i have some very deep, serious issues with trust - but i also would not mind a person to come home to at night, to share my bed with, and to discuss the day and problems, as well to make plans with. that would bring me out of my cold, mainly emotionless shell(or that would help with it).

One often hears this kind of argument, but I really have great trouble understanding it. It sounds quite paradoxical to me. If you don't need a relationship, then why bother with it in the first place. As a luxury item, like the fast and expensive car you don't really need? But a relationship can and very often does bring lots of stress and pain, so it sort of contradicts its own purpose as an enjoyable luxury item.

I guess so, yeah, like a luxury item. Something you can derive enjoyment from, but not something you absolutely critically need. And yes, a relationship can bring stress and pain, but everything has a downside, including possessing an enjoyable luxury item like a fast and expensive car. Fast, expensive cars tend to eat gas and require expensive maintenance. Most luxury items also incur their huge costs up front, at time of purchase. Relationships can have their costs more gradually and/or later on.

Without getting too philosophical...

The core of the human nature is to strive against oneself and the world at large. People seek out challenges and try to make themselves better in terms of how they tackle those challenges, or try to change the world to reflect their own inner self. We have dams, pioneers, explorers, parents wanting a better life for their children, immigrants, job seekers, artists, etc.

And it's in this, we get the saying "it is not the destination, but the journey". Some people are content with sitting on their duff and with an artificial sense of happiness (e.g. drug users). But for many, a try challenge met and overcome, or making a mark on the world achieves an, albeit temporary, sense of accomplishment.

So, let's assume we are content with our own inner workings. Rest assured, we are not content for long.

Personally, a nice car, a couple of homes, good physical and mental health, time and money to enjoy life only goes so far. Being able to share the experiences of life is the next step.

To paraphrase Sun Tzu, you may know yourself, but you will only win half your battles. You need to know your enemies to win the other half. Hence, to be complete requires not only a mastery of other, but of self.

Oh, and gotta have a cat.

I haven't found "love" per se... I've found deep emotional, psychological, and physiological connections to people - and this one time, they happened all at once. Was it worth it, though?

Mmm... yeah. Yeah, it was pretty worth it.

And I would go through all the pain, drama and trauma to do it again. But that's just me.

I find this all a bit shocking, to be honest. For it would mean that all this romantic crap that pervades our society of needing a relationship in order to achieve true happiness and mental and spiritual stability, blah, blah, blah, is not only not true, but is in addition not true in a decadent, shallow, and morally corrupt way. As though Paris Hilton were saying, "I absolutely need this Gucci handbag in order to be happy and fulfilled. Look at how this diamond buckle complements my personality..." Love seems to me to be more and more just a gold-foil wrapper around our sexual drives, with some nice and fuzzy emotional tummy-feelings thrown in as a present. Another illusion shattered. When I rejected the possibility of ever finding true love, I had secretly hoped to throw away something transcendentally beautiful and important. But it now appears I've just thrown another pebble to smash some of the glass in this house of mirrors we call life.

But very wise. Absolutely loved the rest of that post, Merle. But for me, gotta have a dog.


I can imagine it being very shocking at first glance, yes. But I don't know if I would necessarily go so far to say that the notion of "needing a relationship" is "decadent, shallow, and morally corrupt". That would kinda be to dismiss all the good stuff about a romantic relationship because of all the bad that it can be. Now, I'm not really one to vilify AS or NT or any particular neurology, but on one extreme, the NT extreme, life is all about love and relationships between people, so it's not really too much of a stretch to see how the notion of "needing a relationship" came to be. At the opposite extreme, life would all be about using other people and also getting used by others... a rather predatory kind of life, always being in danger, totally independent with no opportunity to relax. The trick then becomes how to find the middle balance between these extremes. It's this balance that is the implicit destination for many people in the saying "it's not the destination, but the journey". However it's not necessarily important that you achieve said balance (which might even be impossible), but rather that you constantly strive for it.

Thanks for your explanation! My choice of words was a bit too harsh, I admit. But it's just that the more I think about these things, the sadder I get. It's probably just a typical Jungian crisis: an idealized view of the world shattered by the ugliness of reality. I had always imagined love to be this, like I said earlier, this transcendentally beautiful and important, almost ecstatic experience (if done right), which, due to some tragic misfortune, I simply could not have. But now it seems more and more like love is just as muddled and confused as anything else in human life. And in the absence of a belief in God, this leaves my "Weltanschauung" with little that seems really worthwhile, other than keeping one's physical frame alive and well for as long as possible. But to what end, ultimately?

Love is muddled and confused like everything else in life, that's why people sing songs and write poems as testament to love's two-sided nature. Oh what painful bliss love can be...

Well, I don't believe in God either, so when it comes down to trying to find an ultimate goal in life, we both have to come up with our own goals, based on our knowledge and experiences so far. For me personally, my goal is to seek truth, a.k.a. the balance in everything, and in the process become a stronger and wiser human being, helping to lift up others who still struggle through no fault of their own. But such a search is extremely difficult and exhausting, which may be one reason why most people don't bother doing it. At the same time, however, it is a search that is practically impossible to complete in my lifetime, making it a lifelong goal so that I don't have to worry about what comes next. I try to have as few needs as possible, but it's inevitable for an occasional need to arise during that search, as I'm still a human being with finite energy. The one person who will continue to fight the good fight when I am tired, the one who is willing to let me cover for him or her (I'm bi) when he or she absolutely needs it (as opposed to asking for help for frivolous reasons)... that's the one person I will love. Independence, and yet loving dependence. Balance.

I hope you feel better... reality can be rather gritty, but it doesn't have to be all gloom and doom. Good things arise from the strangest of places, it seems.