So...Love

Ah, but DB my dear, love shouldn't be about trying to fulfill someone else's expectations of you. We've had that already, all of us. It's about fulfilling you own expectations of yourself, and being appreciated and accepted in a special, unique and highly personal way by someone else. Remember what the flight attendants tell you before takeoff. If the oxygen masks pop out, put it on yourself before you start running around helping others with theirs. Once you can appreciate and love yourself, you'll have a lot more strength. (*hug*)

 

Isn't that something Justice Elena Kagan said during her confirmation hearing?

For me, it's about acknowledging my imperfection, and moving forward. Not trying to remove imperfection, because, not to be glib, none of us is, or ever will be, perfect. But to contemplate how to live past my imperfection, how to help heal the world despite my imperfection.

Your analogy speaks to so many of us.

I apologize for abridging your post so much here... I just didn't want to turn a post into a book.

I think, as a lot of us have been exploring in another thread (titled something like "Learning To Feel"), we all have to come to know ourselves, to love ourselves. Until we do that, we'll always worry about fulfilling others' expectations.

Sure, we're all imperfect, but that doesn't invalidate our feelings, our selves. We have to be ourselves, we have to be, eventually, open to others about ourselves, about our expectations. What happens next is not our fault. We own our pain; others own theirs. We do not fail--we just keep trying.

In BiAnnika's words, I ramble.
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Oops. I see ChoirBoy got there before me. More concisely, as usual. I echo his words.

 

My great grandmother was a Jewess from Bavaria. She's my mother's grandmother on her father's side...can I be an honorary Jew...please...so much more fun than being a WASP.

I am at a loss for words at some of the most wonderous descriptions of love I think I've ever heard...and I a student of English literature...there are days when I am the cloud, the flower, or the song...I long to sing and dance and not care...to embrace the other and find myself unburdned...I strive for this in my religious journey, but is somewhat alien my day to day life...especially now with the worldly concerns of divorce...I cannot conjure up a lover or truly seek one out until the affairs of my marriage are tied up.

All of you are a blessing to me.(&&&)

 

I don't know any perfect people...but I imagine that conditional love is a recipe for certain disaster for them as well. It (conditional love) is a silly model, and I believe it serves no one...it is just what many of us are taught...and what some of us teach ourselves, I suppose, in an attempt to control. In that sense, conditional love is about fear...fear that you'll lose control, so you use your love to control, since it is so reinforcing.

But love isn't about control...it's about sharing. And love and fear are opposites...one is not part of the other. Fear is the absence of love...the absence of sharing; the absence of compassion. Hence conditional love is misnamed, and isn't love at all...it's the threat of withheld love.

Agh! Rambling again...but maybe useful rambling...always useful to articulate difficult distinctions (not that the distinction between love and fear should be difficult).

 

God, I'm falling in love with you all! I've never had conversations at this level with anyone in my life. I do feel like a starving child...

 

I have too many thoughts. Thanks GW for starting this post. Really all I want is to feel that when I'm with the person I love, we really see each other. Because I can't censor what i do or say day to day, and not all of it is particularly good, I need someone who accepts my humanity and knows that I am doing the best I can. Not many people in this world get me, and that makes those who do all the more special.

As for vulnerability, years of trying to make relationships work when they were not right has led me to internalize my vulnerability and guard it behind the mask of being an asshole. Vulnerability is the scariest thing in the world, because it can open one up to feeling more isolated. We never know until we try, but it takes a very special set of circumstances and someone who loves us to care for our vulnerabilities.

 

Ok, I need a real break from trying to push my brain through a sieve...so finally, here is the other Osho quote I've been promising all day:

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"The joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of being alone, because then only do you have something to share. Otherwise, two beggars meeting each other, clinging to each other, cannot be blissful. They will create misery for each other because each will be hoping, and hoping in vain, that "The other is going to fulfill me." The other is hoping the same. They cannot fulfill each other. They are both blind; they cannot help each other.

I have heard about a hunter who got lost in the jungle. For three days he could not find anybody to ask for the way out, and he was becoming more and more panicky--three days of no food and three days of constant fear of wild animals. For three days he was not able to sleep; he was sitting awake on some tree, afraid he may be attacked. There were snakes, there were lions, there were wild animals.

On the fourth day early in the morning, he saw a man sitting under a tree. You can imagine his joy. He rushed, he hugged the man, and he said, "What joy!" And the other man hugged him, and both were immensely happy. Then they asked each other, "Why are you so ecstatic?"

The first said, "I was lost and I was waiting to meet somebody." And the other said, "I am also lost and I am waiting to meet somebody. But if we are both lost then the ecstasy is just foolish. So now we will be lost together!"

That's what happens: you are lonely, the other is lonely--now you meet. First the honeymoon: that ecstasy that you have met the other, now you will not be lonely anymore. But within three days, or if you are intelligent enough, then within three hours... it depends on how intelligent you are. If you are stupid, then it will take a longer time because one does not learn; otherwise the intelligent person can immediately see after three minutes: "What are we trying to do? It is not going to happen. The other is as lonely as I am. Now we will be living together--two lonelinesses together. Two wounds together cannot help each other to be healed."

We are part of each other--no man is an island. We belong to an invisible but infinite continent. Boundless is our existence. But those experiences happen only to people who are self-actualizing, who are in such tremendous love with themselves that they can close their eyes and be alone and be utterly blissful. That's what meditation is all about.

Meditation means being ecstatic in your aloneness. But when you become ecstatic in your aloneness, soon the ecstasy is so much that you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing you. And when it starts overflowing you it becomes love.

Meditation allows love to happen. And the people who have not known meditation will never know love. They may pretend that they love but they cannot. They will only pretend--because they don't have anything to give, they are not overflowing. Love is a sharing. But before you can share, you have to have it! Meditation should be the first thing.

Meditation is the center, love is the circumference of it. Meditation is the flame, love is the radiation of it. Meditation is the flower, love is the fragrance of it."

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I felt this principle in play when I first started dating as a teen. I wanted somebody so much, but I felt bitter and isolated, because I was different from others; so I had little to offer. It was only after accepting myself that I learned to love being alone...and *then* I was open to love...and omg has there been a steady stream of it.

The point is that to find love, work on yourself, and everything else will follow. Like Dragonbait says above, it is when you *aren't* seeking love...because you don't need to, because you're ecstatic just to be alone...that love comes. Even then, don't snap it up...you can tell you're not ready for it if you're snapping it up. Feel it. Bask in it. Share and return it. That's when you really *have* love!

---------- Post added 30th Jan 2014 at 04:01 PM ----------

I have a Zen tarot card especially for you on this topic, if you're interested! *smile*

 

Arthur

Your post has such profound depth and true relevance to how I also feel about love. Love is a rare thing and it is not what Hollywood makes it. Love is a complex formula of respect, admiration, dedication, care, interest, sacrifice, understanding and a heap other ingridients.

I have been *in love* before but being *in love* wears off quickly and its the emotions that stick which determines if the relationship will last. Sadly in my case I have not yet encountered such circumstances. But...!

I love a few people in my life. And its not the Hollywood kinda love nor the "sex me now" kinda love. Its the "letting go and letting be" kinda love. Like this one good friend of mine I have a crush on. I am well past the stage of that silly feeling. What is left is profound admiration and respect and interest and care for him.

The guy I am chatting with at the moment seems nice and I think to myself I could maybe love him once I get to know him better (become good friends) but I am unfortunately jusy not feeling that real spark.

I'm a hopeless romantic. So many times I wish I bump into an awesome guy that takes real true interest in me and me in him so that we can adore eachother and care for eachother and then with all those elements combined LOVE eachother till the end of days.

 

CB has been used the most, but I have had one friend when I showed him a link called me Mr Banana.

 

Several weeks ago, as we were approaching the Thanksgiving & Christmas holidays, I was getting hyperstressed at work and spent some time talking to my best friend. She asked me simple question that shocked me it was so difficult to answer: are you in love with your wife, or have you ever been in love with her?

At first the answer seemed so simple, of course I love my wife, and our children for that matter, without question. But then she asked me again, but are you IN love? To that I could not answer because I realized that I really do not know what it is to be IN love with someone. I have cared for several people, male and female, very deeply throughout my life, and few (exclusively men) I have felt a sexual attraction for as well. But as yet I cannot say I have ever felt myself to be IN love with someone.

As I've read this thread, I cone to a sense of why I have not been in love. And it is a symptom of my larger problem in that I have not loved myself enough to be honest about who I am... not necessarily to others, but foremost to myself. If I cannot love myself then there is a great impediment in being able to share the most intimate emotional connection needed to be in love with someone else. For me, love is all about being grounded in yourself so that you can freely,lovingly, willingly give that most intimate part of your being to another person without co.editions or expectations, knowing that they can easily reject or abuse that gift. But their rejection or abuse ISS a reflection on them, not the love that was offered to them.

someday I hope to find the peace within myself to be able to be in love with someone.

 

Eloquently said, GayDad. To acknowledge the work you need to do so openly and honestly and well, you are well on your way. To find that peace within myself, I had to make space for it first. For me, that was the hardest part.

Wishing you well on this road we're all traveling together.

/Ed.

 

I was driving yesterday and "Can't Hurry Love" by the Supremes came on the radio. It threw me back to my lonely adolescence, and I knew I had to post it on this thread. Back then it was the Phil Collins version I knew, and it helped me so much...it seems like Phil knew *exactly* how I felt. It didn't take away the pain of loneliness, but somehow it was genuinely reassuring.

I wonder how many of you writing with concerns about finding love now that you've realized your sexuality can find solace in this song now?

"You Can't Hurry Love"

I need love, love
To ease my mind
I need to find, find someone to call mine
But mama said

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
It's a game of give and take

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
You got to trust, give it time
No matter how long it takes

But how many heartaches
Must I stand before I find a love
To let me live again
Right now the only thing
That keeps me hangin' on
When I feel my strength, yeah
It's almost gone
I remember mama said:

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
It's a game of give and take

How long must I wait
How much more can I take
Before loneliness will cause my heart
Heart to break?

No I can't bear to live my life alone
I grow impatient for a love to call my own
But when I feel that I, I can't go on
These precious words keeps me hangin' on
I remember mama said:

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
It's a game of give and take

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said trust, give it time
No matter how long it takes

No, love, love don't come easy
But I keep on waiting
Anticipating for that soft voice
To talk to me at night
For some tender arms
To hold me tight
I keep waiting
I keep on waiting
But it ain't easy
It ain't easy
But mama said:

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said to trust, give it time
No matter how long it takes

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
It's a game of give and take
[repeat and fade]

---------- Post added 1st Feb 2014 at 10:59 PM ----------

It even jives with that notion of goallessness that we were talking about earlier...you can't rush it...it has to come of its own accord. Wow.

 

Talking about being vulnerable, I will say that reading the above conversations has moved me to tears (I have just woken up and logged into EC and will have wonderful Joni Mitchell and Snow Patrol music in my head all day!!). What amazingly deep, intelligent, questioning, open words from all of you.
Do you think that as older (more lately) 'out' people we are blessed with a wonderful wisdom from our experiences of being trapped and then liberated? Do you think that growing up in a world where we were seen as 'not normal', where we have had to question our deep shame and then at last confront and celebrate our authentic selves gives us insights that many straight people never get the opportunity to have. In a sense they are now more trapped than we were in our closets?
I surely don't know what love it - but Great Whale you sure did a good job at getting close to its wonderful nuances and power!
Thank you!! Now I am going to have a lovely Sunday with some special friends humming Joni Mitchell...

 

Electra,

Yes to every question you asked. Heterosexual privilege and white privilege are rarely acknowledged by those that benefit from them. Thus you'll see comments on GLBT news articles that say something like, "I've got nothing against the gays, but why do they to keep shoving their sexuality in our faces every chance they get?" Yes, it's bigotry, and prejudice. But more, it's about privilege. Have they ever wondered how gays, forced into the closet over shame, self-loathing, or the judgement of others, feel upon seeing an opposite-sex couple walking hand in hand, nuzzling in the school corridors, or kissing on the street? They just don't have a clue.

But we, the other, the different, the minority, we've been shaped by the fire, and many of us have emerged fundamentally changed. I know I have. We have had to unlearn an entire society's sense of how and whom to love, and to forge our own identity in the context of our new "normal." And that ain't just a walk in the park!

 

I love the thought of being 'shaped by the fire'!

 

I have tremendous respect for Rene Descartes, Mr. Whale, but the poor man got it *so* wrong when he spoke of only humans having souls. I have never believed this...it just never made sense to me. Many things, plant, animal, and otherwise, clearly have souls. And worse, nor do I believe that all humans have souls...though I try not to make judgments about who does and who does not.

But this notion of communion does not require sex...it's the other way around...*good* sex involves communion. Again, I'll suspend judgment of the guy with the banana tree...seems kinda creepy to me...but I will totally embrace his *love* of the tree, if he asserts it.

I was in Sedona, AZ a couple years ago...one of the most amazing and soulful places I've ever been (right up there with most of Scotland). There are energy vortexes there that you can feel. I planted myself on one of them to meditate. It was so grounding. I was completely in love; the beauty, the feel of the air, the feel *in* the air, and the point of contact between me in the ground, feeling the energy pulling me *into* the ground...like being embraced by a lover...or a mother; in no way sexual, but with a communion that felt almost total.

It sounds cliché...but have you ever hugged a tree? Do it sometime...with a tree you love, you'll find that the tree hugs back.

But yes...I like your reminder about unlearning the fallacies of romantic love...this silly notion that we are made in pairs, and that once we love another, we may never love any other. How many widows and widowers deny themselves love and happiness, because they've bought too deeply into the truth that they'll never love another in the same way as their departed. It's a truth only because no two loves are exactly alike...but that in no way means that they cannot find a love that is just as good in different ways. My issue, of course, is that I say, why must you wait for your partner to be deceased in order to feel more love? Feel it for a tree, for a pet, feel it for Sedona or the Isle of Skye or the River Spey...and yes, feel it for other humans.

The sickness is not just that we restrict our love to other humans...the paucity in our sense of communion is that we restrict our love to *at most one* other human. Sigh.

 

Today we took the kids ice skating and stopped at the mall on our way home. First stop was an educational toy store, and while looking for ideas for science fair projects I see a display for a book about unrelated animal species caring for each other. You've maybe seen some pics on the internet of the golden retriever and cheetah? Anyway, the sign on top of the display read "love means never having to say you're different"

I just stood there and stared for a minute....