It's a trap

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"Love" doesn't seem like a good thing to me anymore.

Do you know what it's like to sit next to someone who you thought had feelings for you and they don't want to be there, they don't want to be with you anymore?

I don't want to go through that again. Imagine if I'd believed someone loved me and married them and then I'm stick with this person sitting next to me, going through the motions, but he doesn't love me and he doesn't really want to be there? I'm just thinking about this because I know someone who hot married yesterday.

Not sure I'll ever trust anyone again.

"Love" just seems blank and empty to me now. Like people pretend it, but don't really feel anything and I don't want to be caught up in that. I want to be free.

Emotional attachment could be a good or bad thing

I find it helpful to think of love as like a domesticated plant variety. Sure, it's possible for some scattered seeds to take root out in the wild sometimes, but by and large the best results come from when they are carefully cultivated, protected, and nurtured - ie: when there is commitment, not just feelings.

Feelings without commitment usually just leads to harvesting the object of desire without putting enough back in to perpetuate it, so the desired gets used up and the harvester moves on.

While you can't always control your feelings, you can choose what feelings to pursue. If there's no evidence of commitment to go along with the feelings, then the feelings can indeed become a trap, and you'll probably be better off holding out for something more to be offered than just feelings alone.

As an additional note, there are two main guiding principles I keep posted on my wall these days:

"Value is created from Commitment"

and

"The purpose of Leadership should be to Organize, not dominate"


Originally I found them necessary to keep in mind for employment purposes as my income depends on being able to navigate complex entrepreneurial things where a lot of predatorial behavior goes on, but I've found them to be useful in evaluating relationship and community potential of all types and haven't continued having problems of getting involved with the wrong people since adhering to them.

(Though it still can be an emotionally difficult process because just having practical understanding of things doesn't necessarily lessen the frustration of wanting them to be different - that's where the Serenity prayer often has to come into play)

However, I haven't yet figured out any corollary principles of how to find good people to get involved with versus just avoiding the bad. That's the stage of life wisdom I'm working on trying to acquire now.

Ideally, we’d fall in love with somebody who is our best friend.

I’m not sure if you’ve had a close friend like that, especially as you were growing up. It’s someone that you can be totally open with and talk about anything, who loves you no matter what, and who truly gets you.

I think this is important because maybe if some of that initial passion wears off a bit you’ll still have this beautiful, timeless relationship with this person which isn’t going to fade due to minor irritations, annoyances, and fights.

Loving and respecting someone from this place can rekindle that initial passion and make it burn the brighter.

I once had a close friend whom I didn't "like" when I was like 12 years old---but "liked" when I was about 15. She was one year younger than me, and she would brag about how "developed" she was.

She moved away when I was 15. She gave me her number. I lost it. I tried to get her contact info through the phone book. No dice.

I went to see Little Women at the cinema. I've realised I'm a Jo. That's where this came from.

I saw "Little Women."

Very nice movie about very accomplished women.

Love is special if you find the right person and one of the things you can do to sabotage a future relationship is judge the new person in your life based on what some idiot did to you before.