The problem with driving decisions based on emotion is that our emotional status is often quite erratic and mutable (not to mention, affected by many more variables than our partners' behavior), but we tend to forget that and proceed to project our current emotional state both backwards and forwards. You screw yourself up royally if you deny or obscure your emotions, but you solve that by accepting them from moment to moment as a *factor* in the situation, not enshrining them and then bowing down to worship, or worse, expecting others to do so as well.
It seems pretty wise to expect a natural ebb and flow of passion, connection, good humor, engagement, etc in a marriage. I'm inclined to agree with Smiley that the root fail in many cases seems to reside in viewing problems or natural wave troughs as the death knell of the relationship. There's a reason we have seasons.
Originally Posted By: Dia
At the risk of continuing a threadjack (and at the risk of dating myself), I felt a little like that deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Tommy. I'd been told for so long that I couldn't/shouldn't/didn't or was a bad person for feeling hurt, anger or resentment that I couldn't even use those words in session at first. It was weird.
It was past the semantics of just not using the words. I really didn't know what that feeling was that I was talking about and I'd have to ask her. I'd relate an event, she'd ask me how I felt and I'd give her a description. And she'd say, "So you felt angry?" And I'd deny it. But she was right.
<shrug>
/end threadjack
No wonder we relate.
I wonder how short the step is between "*I* can't/shouldn't be having these dark emotions of my own volition" to "YOU must be MAKING me feel that way, so I need to get away from you."
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
The problem with driving decisions based on emotion is that our emotional status is often quite erratic and mutable (not to mention, affected by many more variables than our partners' behavior), but we tend to forget that and proceed to project our current emotional state both backwards and forwards. You screw yourself up royally if you deny or obscure your emotions, but you solve that by accepting them from moment to moment as a *factor* in the situation, not enshrining them and then bowing down to worship, or worse, expecting others to do so as well.
This long discourse has been quite interesting to me; it's kind of curious how, lurking behind so many of the posts up-thread is this ghostly desire not to let go of the romantic sense of "love." Yet time and time again the Walkaway is lambasted here for following his/her "feelings;" what's the ultimate WAS-speak insult? "I love you but I'm not in love with you." Pshaw! "In love???" That's just feelings b.s.! Yet in nearly the same breath, Well, hey now, we can't analyze this stuff -- it's feelings!
One wonders what the true beliefs about love, in-love, and marriage are from time-to-time.....
Maybe, DB'ing mojo to the contrary notwithstanding, at the end of the day NO ONE wants to give up the fairy tale.
Anyway, some responses:
@alive 9/28 21:44 You don't know and find that intolerable now that you have a decent handle
Au contraire mon ami. I find it eminently tolerable. Enjoyable even.
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@JonF 9/29 08:55 Divorce statistics aside, I still hold that modern thinking revolves around "What makes me feel good." You are arguing divorce statistics, and I'm simply searching for a root cause as to WHY the divorce statistics are what they are - beyond the obvious reason that all human beings are flawed.
And I maintain my original response – “when wasn’t that case?” 1928: “In The Marriage Crisis, Ernest Groves argued that divorce was rising because [of] a new pleasure-seeking code.”
Sodom and Gomorrah were S&G because... why? They were full of people NOT interested in “what makes me feel good?”
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and really tease this idea out: If you’re really searching for a root cause, why aren’t you examining ALL root causes?
What if marriage just plain sucks? What if it is, in fact, unnatural in some sense, as proponents of “open marriage” claim.
What if it was a fine idea when – as Woody Allen said – people were afraid of being eaten by dinosaurs at the age of 25, but now when we live to 100 is sort of....archaic?
As Katherine Hepburn said, “Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”
Aren’t THOSE also potential root causes?
Or how about this – instead of asking why people divorce, why not ask why they marry? Instead of wondering why the divorce rate is so high, why not wonder why the MARRIAGE rate is so high?
Or go from the purely engineering standpoint. Maybe the failure rate of the social product known as “marriage” is 50%.
Some people are “A” marriage students, some people are “B” marriage students, and some people fail. Why assume that as inherently “human” an institution as marriage would somehow be magically insulated from the fact that it is inhabited by humans and lots and lots of humans are just plain stupid?
Or maybe, in some cosmic sense, marriage requires divorce – yin to yang.
Nancy Cott did a study of divorce in 18th-century Massachusetts back in the 1970s. According to the Puritans, marriage was a civil contract – not a sacrament – and therefore could be dissolved like any other contract. And contracts have failure rates.
Why did people divorce in the 1600s and 1700s? Some no-brainers: cruelty, abandonment, adultery. And some surprisingly modern reasons -- the petitioners, more often women than men, loved their husbands, they just weren't "in love" with them anymore.
In 1783 Mrs. Sarah Backus of Suffolk filed for divorce on the grounds that though she “would be content by the most penurious industry to gain a support for herself and Child [IOW, she’d get a job to support herself and her kids if that's what it took instead of alimony], but every Idea of comfort is banished from her Breast when she reflects, that by Law her Person is subjected to be controlled by a man possessing no one tender sentiment” (IOW, her husband didn’t speak her LL).
Tuas res tibi habeto – “take your things for yourself” – was the Roman incantation of divorce, which could be undertaken for adultery, failure to procreate (woman's fault), and losing that loving feeling. And lo and behold, by the time of Cicero there were financial penalties involved (you had to pay support) and lawyers got involved.
So can’t it just be the case that human institutions are inherently flawed? The churches thought so -- that's why they took over marriage. By investing it with sacramental obligation, they hoped to stem the tide of divorces.
Why does “searching for a root cause” inherently have to exonerate the institution as a potential causal factor?
I'll keep my opining off of your forum
Well no one’s asked you to do that, but....okay.
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@Coach 9/29 11:33 What happens if I choose to feel in love?
Doesn’t negate the basic proposition. If PDT is right, and it’s a “feeling,” choice is not involved. It is an autonomic impulse. If you are right and you can “choose” it, it’s a decision – and decisions are eminently quantifiable and analyzable.
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@Dia 9/29 11:39 A wise IC once told me that I was doing pretty much everything I could to avoid feeling my feelings, and that included thinking about them intellectually and analyzing them.
IF one is avoiding them, then perhaps. But can’t one do both – feel AND analyze? Don’t we criticize the Fog-bound OP-infatuated WAS for “not thinking” (i.e., not analyze) and instead “feeling”?
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@PuppyDogTails 9/29 11:57 Love is an emotion. To love (or not to) is a decision.
Then does this mean you’re okay with “I love you but I’m not in love with you?” Because Love is the emotion, “in love” is the feeling.
Calderon de la Barca once wrote, “When love is not madness, it is not love. “ So once the madness of “in love” goes away, I guess we don’t have love. Because, you know, it’s a “feeling” and all. And after the feeling is gone, well, I guess love is gone.
I think that's bullshit predicated on the notion that once you've lost that lovin' feelin', it don't resprout. See above ruminations on the waxing and the waning and the fore-and-aft emotional projection.
BTW, I think you said something at some point about finding me in the alt, and I can't find you. Kettricken Farseer, as always, a friend of Kalni Sunshine.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
I gotta go with Kett on this one. I am proof that love can re-sprout where it was withering before. what is that lyric?
Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed
Its the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance Its the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance Its the one who won't be taken, the one who can't seem to give And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live
When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong Just remember that in the winter, far beneath the bitter snow Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose.
@Kett, @Lotus -- ah, but that's the point isn't it? Did love "resprout" -- i.e., spontaneously burst forth -- or did you choose?
(All of that, of course, was responsive to the notion that one can't "analyze" the waxing and waning of relationships -- a notion I obviously reject.)
---- In "real world" news, WAW has done the "withdrawal" thing -- she attended her first IC session night before last (yay!) and after relieving me of the babysitting duties at her house (the only night she could get an appt was a custody night) gave me a once-over of what she discussed.
We had a brief telconvo yesterday on my way to work, and she expressed no small amount of anger/frustration with some hurts or another I visited upon her during the 1990s. (?) That's okay -- whatever it takes to clear the underbrush, as DB Coach Jody says.
But now apparently, these grievances having been aired, some of her thoughts are continuing to disturb her and, upon reflection, she's apparently decided to shift back into 1-word-answer-mode to SP's email queries.
Okee-dokee; whatever works for her.
At this stage I'm more interested in her unpacking her sh*t than in anything like movement towards some new kind of relationship.
I think there's a lot of junk in her head that needs to be taken out and looked at -- not the kind of thing her family upbringing prepared her for -- and that's a more important task than anything necessarily B'ing the D related.
One example: She said, with no small amount of amazement, "I didn't realize how much anger I have inside me." About me, SP Himself? "You, me, my parents, my jobs, the boyfriend I had before college...." Wow. That's a lot of ground to cover in 50 minutes. "Don't I know it?"
So that's good, I think; we don't have to be in any particular hurry, and at the end of the day frankly I'd rather have WAW be xW and sound in mind, body, and spirit than have her be piecing-W and still carrying all this stuff around.
SP, trying to define love you have to decide are you defining love as a verb or a noun. As a noun it's a thing, something you get. As a verb it's action word something you do. Even the Greek language struggles with four concepts of love. It's intangible. Like me trying to measure heart or hustle with my players. I can describe it and recognize it when I see it. Very hard to coach but it can be developed. In the immortal words of the Cowardly Lion, "Who put the "hot" in Hottenhot, who put the "ape" im apricot, what's he got that I ain't got?"
Isn't mojo something you chose to feel? It's the chicken and egg question. Which comes first choosing to feel mojolific or being mojolific? Or does being mojolific make you feel mojolific?
"When there is no wind, row."
Cheers
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
All quite true, yet one hears that Player X "just doesn't have heart" or that Player Y "sure has a lot of heart."
These are all implicit measurements, based upon observation -- conclusions reached through analysis (say, comparison of X to Y).
So the mere fact that they are intangible doesn't mean one can't explore them objectively.
Sure, love is like pornography which Justice Potter Stewart famously said in 1964 he couldn't define but recognized when he saw it.
I'm still struck, however, by the internal contradiction that lurks in so many posts -- love is a choice (verb or noun), WAS is in the fog because s/he's not "in love" anymore (feelings are not a basis for decision-making), assess who you were in the M and make changes (analyze and deduce) -- but wait! Don't try to analyze love! Paralysis through analysis! It's all about the feelings!
If you just want to date, in a non-exclusive relationship, then hey -- knock yourself out, and go with whatever makes you feel good, so long as you've both agreed to that.
I just think that when you marry, you make a commitment -- legally, spiritually and morally -- and to just walk away from a marriage, and/or choose to have an affair "because it felt good" is wrong. You made a DECISION to marry that person, and to have a monogamous relationship with them.
The point I was trying to make to you above is that -- to me anyway -- you put WAY too much time and energy into trying to analyze all of this, and if this is the way you come across to your wife, I can see where it might be unattractive. Conversely, when I read your exchanges of her positive interactions with you, they seem to be when you're using wit, humor, "mojo" and keeping things much more basic and primal, and I think she likes that.
Just my observation -- it doesn't make either one right or wrong.
