[7r4m0n74n4]

I'm opening this thread in hope to find sympathy from people who experience the same, and hopefully advice from others who don't share the same problem.

Sometimes I wonder, if we are all truly meant to love and be loved.


Ever since I was little I spent my daydreamings in fantasies of love, romance, perfect partnership. For entire my life I'm dreaming of that ideal.
For entire my life, however, never have i been in a relationship or had any constant dating experience at least. A few one-time adventures and that's all.
I had crushes of course. People had crushes on me too. But never it matched, it never happened that someone I like would like me back seriously in a way something evolved from it. If you add an awful lot of shyness into the equation, it was just impossible for me to make anything real in that aspect of life.

But the natural human craving for love is constant, always in, smouldering somewhere in hidden.


Since it is extremely rare, when something does happen, it's a big deal.
In the recent month or so, unexpectedly I've had as much as two encounters (wow so much!), none of which evolved into something concrete.
The problem is that every time I have a crush on someone, or fall in love, I get completely fucking incapable of living my life and function in every day obligations.
I'm drowning in fantasies and dreaming about everything that could become of us. In that moments I'm fully aware that none of it is real, I'm actually hurting myself, that I'm digging a wound that will be hell to heal, but I can't control myself and stop this destructive mechanism. It's embarrassing but I get so drowned in dreams it's occupying every minute when I don't do something productive at work. It's eating me alive. Because I don't have anything real happening, human nature and the need for love is creating it internally.
Of course, since nothing ever happened nor happens for real, the moment I realize sad truth is the moment to retrieve and lick my wounds that I've made myself. It's a terrible state.

When the wounds are closed, all that is left is coming back to normal life where love is an abstract ideal, somewhere out there, no real face to stick to my fantasies. But I'm always looking, it might be just around that next corner, and next and next..



So I wonder.
Would it be best to cross love as concept completely from my life, to fucking close seal and weld that door for good (i'm on the verge of crying) because it's too fucking late for me to grow and develop healthy emotions, healthy loving relationships with people, healthy balancing. Is this all a story of a person retarded in every sense of the word, retarded for love, undeveloped, handycapped and an invalid non fucking valid.


How do I shift-delete love from myself?
How to get rid of one thing that is making a big part on me throughout life. Because I see now, that my emotions are too complex, excessive, twisted and perverse for the normal standard.
How do I pull that root out and cut that fuuuuucking torturing hope, fantasies, ideal that's corroding every other shine in my life?


I'm tired of searching, hoping, dreaming.. I can't control my dreams, the instinct.
There is no knight on a black horse, there is not even a horse to get me someplace away
and while the wind keeps blowing in my ear, whispering of the storm that will surely come
I dance alone

 

[7r4m0n74n4]

Please don't thank this post...there's nothing to thank for here.

 

[Reila]

I don't really understand love. Or perhaps my views on love aren't of the most healthy kind. I don't know.

 

[neutralchaotic]

Sounds more like you are caught up in infatuation (the “romance” part of love), and fantasies fill your head and become goals that you must reach, rather than realizing that this phase is unsustainable and a very small part of what love is.

Love is about action for me. Comforting someone, buying their favorite snack, helping them solve a problem, just offering my presence, etc. what you describe is “liking” someone. The feelings of attraction and chemistry. All amazing, but they won’t last (or at the very least, be consistent).

Once I realized I can love someone from the get go, I lost the mindset of feeling that love was unattainable for me. Whether I also like the person (and vice versa) is a different story, but at the very least, we can both love each other before we put a name to our actions.

 

[sippingcappucino]

Wow, that's a lot of raw feelings. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it a lot.

I want to say straight-up, though, I don't want you to not believe in love. However, don't make love your goal in life. Don't make any kind of abstraction your goal.

Love comes. It's incredibly rare, but it does exist. I have felt it. It's intense, satisfying and extremely scary. It opens up all of your sensitivity and vulnerability. And it is directed to this one person. It's terrifying. At the same time, it's a wonderful feeling, because even after getting beat up in reality, you realize you still have the capacity to feel that deeply. Love brings you another depth as a person.

But I do want you to know love is a feeling. Not an end goal you shoot for to achieve something, or something perfect. Love comes and goes. Like happiness and sadness. It's not absolute. You feel love, not find love. You find the person to love. And the person will come with flaws. The relationship will come with flaws. True love isn't perfect, but it exists.

The fact you feel you can't function... I guess the only thing you could do for that is have control over yourself. I don't think denial or opression will help, because it's like building a volcano. What worked for me was to completely separate dream and reality. I mostly live in my head and cannot stop myself from fantasizing. I've made myself laugh and cry because those dreams are so vivid. I can't function if that world doesn't exist, either. So what I did for myself was to completely drown when I am able, and live on in reality. Let yourself exist in both worlds, but never let one know of the other. In other words, don't let one permeate into another. It's okay if you dream. We need breaks.

Let yourself feel love. But feeling love automatically make your reality a bliss. What you do in reality because of you feeling love will let you develop further. What are you willing to do about that feeling? Sulking, unfortunately, only puts you into thought-loops. What are we willing to do about it?

I hope you find love. I really do. I would like a new dose of it soon too. Let's find love and let's show reality what we are capable of.

 

[dlb]

I'm opening this thread in hope to find sympathy from people who experience the same, and hopefully advice from others who don't share the same problem.

Sometimes I wonder, if we are all truly meant to love and be loved.


Ever since I was little I spent my daydreamings in fantasies of love, romance, perfect partnership. For entire my life I'm dreaming of that ideal.
For entire my life, however, never have i been in a relationship or had any constant dating experience at least. A few one-time adventures and that's all.
I had crushes of course. People had crushes on me too. But never it matched, it never happened that someone I like would like me back seriously in a way something evolved from it. If you add an awful lot of shyness into the equation, it was just impossible for me to make anything real in that aspect of life.

But the natural human craving for love is constant, always in, smouldering somewhere in hidden.


Since it is extremely rare, when something does happen, it's a big deal.
In the recent month or so, unexpectedly I've had as much as two encounters (wow so much!), none of which evolved into something concrete.
The problem is that every time I have a crush on someone, or fall in love, I get completely fucking incapable of living my life and function in every day obligations.
I'm drowning in fantasies and dreaming about everything that could become of us. In that moments I'm fully aware that none of it is real, I'm actually hurting myself, that I'm digging a wound that will be hell to heal, but I can't control myself and stop this destructive mechanism. It's embarrassing but I get so drowned in dreams it's occupying every minute when I don't do something productive at work. It's eating me alive. Because I don't have anything real happening, human nature and the need for love is creating it internally.
Of course, since nothing ever happened nor happens for real, the moment I realize sad truth is the moment to retrieve and lick my wounds that I've made myself. It's a terrible state.

When the wounds are closed, all that is left is coming back to normal life where love is an abstract ideal, somewhere out there, no real face to stick to my fantasies. But I'm always looking, it might be just around that next corner, and next and next..



So I wonder.
Would it be best to cross love as concept completely from my life, to fucking close seal and weld that door for good (i'm on the verge of crying) because it's too fucking late for me to grow and develop healthy emotions, healthy loving relationships with people, healthy balancing. Is this all a story of a person retarded in every sense of the word, retarded for love, undeveloped, handycapped and an invalid non fucking valid.


How do I shift-delete love from myself?
How to get rid of one thing that is making a big part on me throughout life. Because I see now, that my emotions are too complex, excessive, twisted and perverse for the normal standard.
How do I pull that root out and cut that fuuuuucking torturing hope, fantasies, ideal that's corroding every other shine in my life?


I'm tired of searching, hoping, dreaming.. I can't control my dreams, the instinct.
There is no knight on a black horse, there is not even a horse to get me someplace away
and while the wind keeps blowing in my ear, whispering of the storm that will surely come
I dance alone

I can relate to everything you've written. When I fall in love, my entire life slows down, and (often) I'll neglect some of my real responsibilities. Now, I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask, because all of my loves have ended in disaster. I always chose unwisely, and maybe was searching so hard, I created it in places it did not exist. But, I think balance is the best solution. Focus on the love when it's there; meaning, when you really feel it in your heart. If it's just daydreaming; meaning, you're trying to create it in your heard; it's better to just focus on your work. Keep reminding yourself, nothing wonderful comes from daydreaming about others. (Sometimes we daydream about ourselves, and it's important. It's important, because it's how we form goals and ideas. But, with others, we can't control them; and it's impossible to predict.)

Maybe my opinion is negative, because of my experience, but I've found it good to be in love when there's love happening in your heart, and better not to craft it when it's not.

I wish you a lot of luck. Don't give up on your heart. You just need to find a way to balance it. Sadly, some people have the opposite issue and feel nothing. I'd rather be in our positions.

 

[Reila]

Wow, that's a lot of raw feelings. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it a lot.

I want to say straight-up, though, I don't want you to not believe in love. However, don't make love your goal in life. Don't make any kind of abstraction your goal.

Love comes. It's incredibly rare, but it does exist. I have felt it. It's intense, satisfying and extremely scary. It opens up all of your sensitivity and vulnerability. And it is directed to this one person. It's terrifying. At the same time, it's a wonderful feeling, because even after getting beat up in reality, you realize you still have the capacity to feel that deeply. Love brings you another depth as a person.

But I do want you to know love is a feeling. Not an end goal you shoot for to achieve something, or something perfect. Love comes and goes. Like happiness and sadness. It's not absolute. You feel love, not find love. You find the person to love. And the person will come with flaws. The relationship will come with flaws. True love isn't perfect, but it exists.

The fact you feel you can't function... I guess the only thing you could do for that is have control over yourself. I don't think denial or opression will help, because it's like building a volcano. What worked for me was to completely separate dream and reality. I mostly live in my head and cannot stop myself from fantasizing. I've made myself laugh and cry because those dreams are so vivid. I can't function if that world doesn't exist, either. So what I did for myself was to completely drown when I am able, and live on in reality. Let yourself exist in both worlds, but never let one know of the other. In other words, don't let one permeate into another. It's okay if you dream. We need breaks.

Let yourself feel love. But feeling love automatically make your reality a bliss. What you do in reality because of you feeling love will let you develop further. What are you willing to do about that feeling? Sulking, unfortunately, only puts you into thought-loops. What are we willing to do about it?

I hope you find love. I really do. I would like a new dose of it soon too. Let's find love and let's show reality what we are capable of.

That is just so complicated. It is so much easier to live without love.

 

[sippingcappucino]

That is just so complicated. It is so much easier to live without love.

But life is so dull without love. The ones who are capable of loving so deeply, should be allowed to love.

 

[Reila]

But life is so dull without love. The ones who are capable of loving so deeply, should be allowed to love.

Life is dull regardless. At least it has been for me. I have no intentions of prohibiting anyone the right to love, so feel free to love and be loved.

 

[sippingcappucino]

Life is dull regardless. At least it has been for me. I have no intentions of prohibiting anyone the right to love, so feel free to love and be loved.

Yep, I didn't think you were prohibiting. Just stream of consciousness. I personally believe one can be full of life when we are rich with emotions. When we are okay with ourselves actually feeling intensely. In order to do thathough, a lot of introspection and awareness is required. So we feel safe letting ourselves feel. It takes a lot more thought to feel as we get older and more complex. Because, we don't have the courage to feel anymore in this rigid 'logical' world. Thus, life indeed become dull.

But I don't want that. Life is all I know.

 

[entheos]

@neutralchaotic already said a lot of what I'd say.

I can't respond to you OP when you ask something like (paraphrasing) "should I delete love? should I stop believing in it?" because that's your own decision, and I don't think there's a universal answer that is a Truth.

As for myself, I have experienced love, both gave it and received it, and so for me it would be impossible to delete love from my consciousness, because I have solid evidence of its existence. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

And maybe the concept of what love is changes from person to person. I only know what it means for me. And for me, being a demisexual, I don't experience infatuation. I love someone only conditionally, and these conditions are actions, along the lines of what neutralchaotic said. And these actions stem from character. And that's why I always say that I can only be sexually attracted to + love someone's character. And how do I determine their character? Through their behavior, actions. So I'll fall in love (over time, needs time) with someone who is generous, for example. And how do I know that they're generous? Because they just tell me with words? No. Because I watch them operate in life. I observe the person interacting with the world, and of course also interacting with me. So just like this example, I gather information about their character, and the more I admire it and enjoy what I see, the more love grows over time.

I don't desire to live without love, because love is not a problem, nor my enemy. And in fact, if I gave it up I would be giving up my very raison d'être. I was born to experience a certain state of mind and state of feelings as often as possible. And also I know that I love people well
And we might be good at feeling love, but being good at loving others is something you refine over time, with practice, seeing what works and what doesn't. So like an athlete who has basic skill, unless they train, they won't realise their full potential. Same with our love gift. We must train and refine to get good at it, and failure is a part of training.

So it's just a personal choice. But I've noticed that people who make an emotional-hurt decision about giving up on love, they are never ever ever happy. They are just as miserable as when they lived with a longing for love prior to their decision. They numb themselves with work, countless travels, hookups, random friendships... but at the end of the day, you can see these people at crazy hours of the night watching youtube videos on rational explanations about love, trying to understand it all, and secretly longing to have that experience. So one can deny all they want seeking a "rational explanation", but when one is longing for something... well, that's spirit talking. And spirit doesn't lie.

my emotions are too complex, excessive, twisted and perverse for the normal standard.
How do I pull that root out and cut that fuuuuucking torturing hope, fantasies, ideal that's corroding every other shine in my life?

I don't understand the perverse part. I understand the other three adjective as I felt that way too years ago. The answer to having a better control over your emotional realm is to study yourself. Keep a journal. Analyse yourself. Give yourself little goals to do with emotional management and daydream management. There's are countless resources online and in books. Countless.
A mistake would be to think that you can just "fix yourself" and that one day you'll just wake up and be someone else, someone perfect and composed and laid back. The idealist's struggle is a lifelong journey and it will never end. But it definitely can be managed, I know I have managed my own realm, although there's still a lot more to do.
Other people have other problems. Like I used to have a friend who would complain to me constantly that he felt like a robot, dead inside, and that he couldn't daydream or love his girlfriends. He suffers because of his robot-ness, and longs to have a more accessive emotional realm. That is his lifelong journey, to unlock that realm to the best of his abilities.
Ours is the opposite: to understand deeply, interact & negotiate with our realm.

 

[neutralchaotic]

And we might be good at feeling love, but being good at loving others is something you refine over time, with practice, seeing what works and what doesn't. So like an athlete who has basic skill, unless they train, they won't realise their full potential. Same with our love gift. We must train and refine to get good at it, and failure is a part of training.

This is good. I like to think love is residual. People don’t like to “give” too much of themselves, but we cannot reap what we don’t sow. I think I was pretty selfish when I was younger, wanting others to show me love but being so guarded to them.

 

[twirler]

Sometimes I wonder, if we are all truly meant to love and be loved.

I think, yes. :hug:

Desire, belief, fulfillment... Hmm, I don't know. I think sometimes belief ushers in fulfillment, and as others have said, it sometimes comes in ways we do not expect, I think. Often in the ordinary-regular-mundane.

Desire unfulfilled is definitely tough. But, I think intensely wanting and watching (for whatever it might be and however it might come to you) can be a really cool thing. I like desire, but having an openness of how it is fulfilled is key, I think.

 

[leictreon]

Love is just something good and bad at the same time. Like life itself, it's not like you can truly escape the bad.

Are we meant to love and be loved? Yes, but at the same time it's going to be a long, bumpy and tragic ride.

 

[1whoseeswithoutbeingseen]

Please don't thank this post...there's nothing to thank for here.

Please, no unwarranted self-abasement or self-denial.

I'll summarize your post:

1) You are one true INFP, in a world full of mistyped ones.

2) You are rather self-conscious. And yet, in the face of what costs it does import in your life to have a soul, you haven't yielded to the temptation of turning your back to it, denying it, deserting it.
That's some courage.

3) Ever listened to Rachmaninoff music? Try his prelude Op 32 N. 9 (or 10). You may like his music.

4)

When the wounds are closed, all that is left is coming back to normal life where love is an abstract ideal, somewhere out there, no real face to stick to my fantasies. But I'm always looking, it might be just around that next corner, and next and next..

Ever read Kafka's The Castle? Or Deborah Eisenberg Collected stories?
They are all about corners. Today's. And the next one; and the one after the next one; and again the other one...

5)

How do I pull that root out and cut that fuuuuucking torturing hope, fantasies, ideal that's corroding every other shine in my life?

Should I retract my complimentary 2)? Don't make me, please! :spacecraft-1:
A soul is the rarest endowment in this world of ours. Are you complaining that it also is the most onerous? It's logical that it be.

**

Sometimes I wonder, if we are all truly meant to love and be loved.

The sincerity in the answer to that question should be proportional to the inquirer's ability, and willingness, to withstand sorrow.
No, we are not meant to.
We are meant to use each other for more or less evolutionary purposes. And slap names that sound well — love, friendship, community, ... — because, since we have acquired consciousness, it's been very visible, under the sun, that things between humans work much better if they are never named verily — and often contrary to actuality.

But what is not meant to is not impossible.

 

[Dragoncress]

Read if you will but here's my two cents:

Love is an abstract idea that is very hard to understand.
It does consume you but it's not a negative feeling to have. More so it is very important in society. Without love how the hell are we supposed to care about anyone else?

Here's how I define romantic love:
It is a very strong bond between two people despite all the differences and barriers that can be put up, those two people will somehow find a way to be with each other. People are capable of loving romantically and it is very idealistic but also way more stronger than a friendship bond can ever be.

I myself have experienced it and it's consuming. It takes over my mind and I can't stop thinking about it. Realistically speaking, love is just chemicals in your brain but those chemicals are what makes harmony between two people despite everything. Since love is so idealistic and practically a miracle between two strangers it can really feel like magic.

Thing is, relationships are not just sugar and spice and everything nice. Relationships are going through conflicts but deciding to stick to them because you love them. There is never gonna be an ideal person just waiting for you or anyone.

The key to understanding love is to find the middle ground between reality and idealism in a partner. It is not impossible but maintaining love is hard work.

A relationship is a bond between strangers and people are drastically different from each other. A good relationship generally requires understanding, loyalty, respect, trust, care and dedication. If you have love for that person then all of that is taken care of.

Also, no one deserves to be placed on a pedestal by anyone. We are all capable of doing wrong and making mistakes and as a partner it is your duty out of the care you give, to show them where they went wrong so that they can be a better person. If you love someone to overlook their bad points and their flaws then it's love to the extreme and that is unhealthy. There are different levels of expression for love and I think it's unhealthy to give too much or too little. Everything requires a balance.

It's hard for someone to experience love because it is irrational and purely subjective and it can be confusing why someone would do so much for another at their own expense.

We are selfish people after all, but that is relationships for ya.

(I might have made some grammar errors that I'm too lazy to fix atm.)

 

[Sily]

It got long, haha --

 

I'm a mix of 9, 1, 6, 5.

So here's an answer from me, with that in mind:

I was young at one time and went through all the mess-you-up types of Love. The experience was too damn taxing on me. Exhausting. Young and in love. OH BOY! It was fun and exciting for a time or two, but looking back, now... there are way more important things, in Life.

Like Knock You Out Beauty. And Creativity. And Creating. And Learning. And Helping. And Service to Others.

I guess, the best thing I can say about that time in my life is -- hey -- I got to experience it. I completed that class (Love 101) on University Earth. I made it through. Like signing up to be on the front line of some bloody war. I survived.

Does everyone deserved to be loved? Probably not. It's a need for many, but not a right, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unless your definition of happiness includes "love". I think humans deserve to not be abused. To be respected from the get go.

To the few out there who don't see Love as the most important thing on earth, I give, in your direction, a tip of my black fedora gangster hat.

 

[heroindisguise]

Always good advice around here.

I entirely agree with @entheos that "The idealist's struggle is a lifelong journey and it will never end. But it definitely can be managed, I know I have managed my own realm, although there's still a lot more to do."

Nothing stops being difficult. Problems will never cease to exist in the entire course of our lives... As pessimistic as this sounds, it is simultaneously enlightening if you realize that problems will never cease to exist for anyone. But we can get better in dealing with problems; even problems with ourselves. Life is a database, if you commit an error, learn from it, and build a more robust database. Sometimes you self-correct with machine learning algorithms, other times you receive help from a developer. Where there are problems, there is potential, and in your case, being conscious of what you're doing to yourself is the first step. It's not too late; we are all in the making. I am in the making - not a work of art yet. In fact, we are unique pieces of art, all with our very own set of faults and nuances.

Don't trap yourself in your own mind. Don't toy with fantasies to reignite feelings that you want to feel. Research on how to calm your mind, pick up meditation techniques etc. Stop thinking. Stepping out of your mind is the first step. Don't fuel your need for human connection with fantastical imagination. Don't try to deny or suppress it either. Personally, I never saw someone for who they were when they were more alive in my fantasies than in real life, and more often than not, nothing was born out of the budding relationship, because we wounded up being incompatible. We need to be present to connect with living, breathing Humans. Humans want to be seen in all their solidity, not looked pass like glass. Understand your need for human connection, but don't wallow on it, and don't seek for it in the wrong places. Consider the possibility of focusing your emotional energy somewhere else.

Also, quoting myself (lol) "Love is a process, and we're constantly engaging and disengaging in acts of love so we can gradually become more or less skilled at love. " Nobody is born knowing how to love right... It is weighty, important, and serious, and we need to give it the credit it deserves. Sometimes we can be bleeding passion, but passion is so unrefined we cut ourselves and others. We need to do the work of a blacksmith, and hammer that passion to death, before it can do the good that we want. It means learning how to understand another soul to your very best, learning about yourself so that you can communicate with the other soul, so on and so forth. I used to think that my emotions are excessive (and there was no order in that chaos). Yes, it ruined my relationships. But my perspective changed with time, and for me, wanting to know someone sincerely was a first step. My thoughts and emotions are still complex, but complexity is not bad in itself, even if it can feel that way a lot of times... It's a double edged sword that some people can, and do, appreciate.

Unfortunately, all I'm dishing out is suggestions on how you can change your "inner life"; your thoughts and perceptions. Someone else might give better advice on how to navigate the external realm.. Hope it helped a little :hug:

 

[7rr7s]

Just become so cynical that you realize all it is is a series of chemicals, an endorphin rush to promote pair bonding. Love doesn't exist.

 

[konas8]

All the unnecessary crap aside, love for me is merging with another.