 I
have learned an enormous amount over the last month from people I have
come to love. I always get a kind of 'high' when I am learning a lot,
and these days I've been walking around with a goofy smile all the
time, and crying, both joyfully and empathetically, more than usual. I
described the chemistry of this in a recent post, and my body these days is awash in love hormones. It's a great feeling.
In some of last year's articles I described my Let-Self-Change journey,
the process of paying attention and appreciation, opening and letting
go, loving, having fun, relaxing, focusing, slowing down,
self-managing, exploring, improvising and being resilient -- that
allows you to learn, discover and self-adapt, to self-evolve in
positive, healthy and evolutionary ways, to come to be who you really are.
In the process of loving and Letting-Myself-Change I have learned some
important new things about love, and about myself. I don't know if they
are useful to anyone else, but I thought I would share them anyway.
These are complex, subtle, paradoxical discoveries, so please think
about them before you judge what I'm saying:
- I have learned that I tend to idealize the people I love, to make them larger-than-life.
I imagine them to be astonishingly emotionally intelligent, sensitive,
strong, perceptive, mature, wise, aware. If I have not met them
physically I imagine them to be extraordinarily beautiful. I suspect
this is because I want them
to be these things. I'm a romantic, an artist, a dreamer, and kind of
immature emotionally, and I do have an exceptional imagination, so
perhaps this tendency is understandable. In any case I can't seem to
change it, to just see and accept people for what they really are,
warts and all. So when they turn out to be different from what I've
imagined I tend to be shocked, disappointed, disillusioned.
This is not fair to them. I wonder if this tendency to idealize those
one loves is common to all artists, and hence perhaps why artists are
so difficult to love. I also wonder if this is why I'm so infatuated
with Second Life -- it enables and encourages me to idealize and
romanticize the people I meet more than in Real Life.
- I have learned that it is who I imagine people to be that I really love,
more than who they really are. This is a kind of corollary of the
above. But I suspect it is rather more universal than the above. I
don't think we can ever hope to even begin to know who other people
really are, so we can only know who we imagine them to be. When I watch
two people in love with each other (even when one of them is me), I get
a strong sense that their love is as much self-love as love-of-other.
They can only really know themselves, so what they perceive the object
of their love to be is largely a projection of what they know, what
they can imagine, who they are or know they could be themselves. You
may be surprised to learn that I think this delusion is very healthy,
for two reasons: (a) It makes it easier for us to love others, and (b)
It makes it easier for us to love and feel better about ourselves.
Delusional or not, these are both good, aren't they? But it's a
double-edged sword: when the person we love lets us down, it becomes
harder for us to love others, and we also become disappointed with
ourselves.
- I have learned that,
despite appearances, women are usually the ones who precipitate both
the beginning and ending of loving relationships. Although our
society encourages men to make the first move, it is almost invariably
women who decide whether a new relationship will be a loving one. The
woman is the one who gives permission for love to begin. That's an
enormous responsibility, but it's probably fortunate, because women
are, I think, usually more sensitive and more connected with their
emotions, so their judgement is likely to be better than the man's. And
because they are more in tune with their emotions, they also seem to
know when love has run its course, when it is no longer healthy and the
relationship should evolve or end. Ask the couples you know who have
divorced, and you're likely to find that regardless of who walked, it
was essentially the woman's decision. And when it seemingly was the
man's, that's often because another woman recognized the relationship
had failed and took him away. There are of course exceptions to this,
but I think it's usually true.
- I have learned that women are often extraordinarily generous and accommodating of men who they love or intend to love.
Most men I know are intoxicated by love, self-preoccupied and selfish,
and rather more demanding than women in loving relationships. It is up
to the woman, usually, to adapt, to accommodate, to Let-Self-Change, to
become more what he wants her to be, to love him more generously, to
give him more room. I suspect this is nature's way of encouraging
stability and allowing love to flourish and endure when the
circumstances are far from perfect. I don't think this is a conscious
willingness to adapt by women; it is just who they are.
- I have learned that most women are more monogamous than most men.
A more precise term would be monoamorous ("loving intimately only one
person"). This seems to be more a practical accommodation by women than
something that is inherent in human nature. Loving relationships are
difficult to manage, and it is women who usually (see discovery #3
above) accept the responsibility to manage them. The more relationships
there are to manage, the more challenging this task becomes. When
lovers lack maturity and experience, more complex relationships can get
messy and their emotional fallout can be devastating. Our society as a
whole frowns on such relationships because of strong cultural
conditioning and religious dogma. Recently I've written about
polyamorous ("the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than
one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and
consent of everyone involved") relationships, as being more natural and
healthy than monoamorous ones. I believe that a community of, say, ten
women and ten men in a consensual polyamorous relationship with each
other would be blissful -- providing an abundance of love instead of
the scarcity, jealousy, possessiveness and loneliness that pervades our
current society and causes so much pain and violence. But if we're to
get there, I think women need to take the lead. I think this is
possible, but will take a lot of effort and practice to make it work.
The principles for such communities are known (polyfidelity, trust and respect, mutual support, communication and negotiation, compersion, empathy and non-possessiveness). I've written a story and a short play and a utopian fantasy
about polyamorous communities to describe how they might work, and the
challenges they present. But I think they would be worth it. I am
increasingly convinced that the reason today's Intentional Communities
are so limited and fragile is because they are unnaturally monoamorous.
And I believe the creation of successful models of Intentional
Community is essential to the future of our species, so there is a lot
at stake. And love underlies it all.
The lessons in this learning for me are pretty obvious. I need to learn
to curb my imagination a bit and see and love people more for who they
are, so I can be more accepting of them, and even more open to love
without illusion or condition. I should recognize that love is
inherently mutually self-delusional, but that that is OK, and that my
attitude to love should be more playful and fun and not so terribly
intense, once I acknowledge that it is abundant, unlimited. I should
respect that women tend to control loving relationships for perfectly
good reasons, and work with them to open them to the astonishing
possibility of polyamorous relationships, and perhaps encourage them to
be a little less accommodating of unreasonable and demanding males, and
a little more selfish about meeting their own desires and realizing
their own, more completely fulfilling, loving relationships.
A lot here. Does it make any sense to you?
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5:42:47 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
