Sunday September 7th, 2008
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Where does one find love?
Posted by Chris on February 2, 2007 - 10:21am.
With life at such a hectic pace....lots of work, little time for leisure, where do you find love today?
Do you venture online? Do you make lunch dates? or have you just given, hoping that one day true love will come to you?
I am a believer that love will find you when you are least expecting it. We all think we control our lives but really there is this higher power moving things around us and when we are ready... poof, the love of your life appears.
Of course it is important to be social and open minded but certainly don't go on a quest for love because you may try to hard to make it work and love really is effortless.
It's been my experience that you find someone when you are doing your thing. Girlfriends that I have had I've met mostly through other people, a cousin of a friend, a friend of a friend, friend's sister, etc. just by hangin' out with with those other people.
I was hangin' out with people I enjoyed, doing things I enjoyed, and although I sometimes did have in my mind "maybe I'll meet a hot chick at that (insert event)" I still enjoyed what I was doing, and I would meet other cool people that I had things in common with.
Also, what has worked for me is that I keep an accepting mind/heart/soul or whatever you like to call it. What do I mean by that? Well, hold your horses; I'm getting to that. I take every relationship as is, meaning I accept the love that comes to me without trying to make of it what it is not. I don't put limitations like time on it. If it lasts 4 years, than that's fine. If it lasts, 4 months, then that's fine too. If it's exclusive than that works too, and if it is non-exclusive than I accept that as well. Love I believe is "fluid", so it needs to wend it's way through our lives naturally.
Regarding a "potential love", I don't think it's accurate to say that I turned her away. She is a nice, seemingly loving, good-looking woman, so It's probably reasonable to believe that she is dating other guys (I know of at least one. She told me.) Also, I look at love as being abundant, so I intuitively feel that it will always be there. It has been like this most of my llife. Now, there WAS a time when I felt I had to find "the one", but after I actually began to experience deeper love and loving relationships, I began to see that my preconceptions of love were limiting. I began to develop a more accepting idea of love and what it brings. I don't deeply feel that I will never have a "potential love". I believe that love is always availabe to us. I also feel that love does not equal marriage. Over 50% of households are headed by unmarried couples (according to article I read on MSN.com yesterday). And I would guess (I've never been married) that a great marriage would require a deep love for one another.
Perhaps it is more important to have many great loves: your family, a particular song or music in general, love of travel, love for nature, love of life, and of course love for your lover. Perhaps love begets love. So I say the way to find love today is to accept love that is already there.
But after writing this it occurs to me, isn't it always a matter of timing? Hmm, well, back to the drawing board. :)
Wow I really did not think this post would garner such attention, and was expecting perhaps a couple of comments like "at the bar" or "at match.com" so happy to see that it has evolved into much more than that.
My firm belief is that if you look for love you won't find it....love will find you
But after all of this is said and done, would we be in a better position to find love, if we understood what we think love actually is for us? Because many times when we start getting to know someone, it has seemed to me that we are trying to figure out what that person's idea of love is, whether we do it consciously or subconsciously.
lationships...
Did you have a chance to watch this short video on relationships? It's an interesting thought. It kinda speaks to what you are talking about.
I saw it once or twice on Lime TV in between the commercials, but I didn't really focus on it enough as I have now to get a more analytical perspective of it. But now that I have, I can definitely relate to the idea that "we are attracted to those people who have traits we have but want more of". As I look at my circle of friends and their spectrum of traits, I can see part of what keeps us interested in each other: loyalty, charm, ambition, competitiveness, coolness :) , family oriented, sense of humor,biting but playful wit, and many others. I'm thankful that I have these people as my friends. I actually see them as family.
#1. One of them I met through my best friend when I was a DJ. It was her cousin, and we, my friend and she, just partied together until I eventually asked her to be mine. Lasted about 6 months. Fond memories.
#2. Met her through her sister when I was still a DJ (Note the DJ thing. Lots of social interaction, doing something I loved). When I first saw the sister I exclaimed to myself, "Woah, Who's that!" She had beautiful, straight, long black hair, and big gorgeous eyes. Lasted a year. Learned a lot.
#3. Met this sweet girl through my brother and his friends. I remember walking into a friend's house during a party (if memory serves me well) where they were all sitting on the floor playing a game or something. When I walked in, she looked up and our eyes embraced like lovers reunited from eons past (sorry, but I thought I was losing you, :) . Anyway, we started slowly getting to know each other and having a great time going to local band performances. She was so full of life. She was wonderful. Lasted about 4 months. Didn't really end; it just faded away.
#4. Met her in college in a math class (I still resent her for getting a better grade than I in that class, j/k) Again, beautiful, long straight black hair, and gorgeous eyes. (I think I'm starting to see a pattern here. Am I a sucker for this type...Yeah maybe :) ) Well, anyway, I remember becoming friends with her in class. She was my sounding board when it came to me trying to figure out what I was going to do about the girl that I was currently dating (I didn't mention her earlier because I don't consider her a love. I was a little disappointed in her, :( ). Well, as fate would have it, she new who this girl was. She remembered that she was the homecoming queen at her high school. Well, I guessed I had found the right person to talk to, or had I? Long story short, we were together in a non-exclusive relationship for about 4 years (Very deep sensual and spiritual relationship), which leads me to the next one, and that's where I'll end this verbosely written soliloquy.
#5. Met her at college also, while I was still going out with the previous girl (Hey, hey, hey! No judgments please. Remember it was non-exclusive.) They both knew I was dating someone else, but they never mentioned it until months later, but that's a different story. Okay, so I was dating the new girl, more often than the previous girl, and we started to really hit it off. She was, er probably still is, intelligent, adorable, fun-loving, ambitious, did I mention adorable? We became exclusive, and things were going great until...she went to law school about 5 hours away from me. Again, long story short, the long distance was just too much for love this time. So we moved on. Lasted about a little over a year.
I still care about them all, and I wish them all peace and love throughout their lives, yes, even the homecoming queen :)
So the moral to all this prattle is: You can find love anywhere, but you'll probably find more love if you are actively doing what you like to do, especially if it involves other people.
(Whew! Did I write all that? Well, LIME people, feel free to erase this :() if it is just too much :)
P.S. Oh, did I answer your question Vicki? OK, Good night then.
(note to self: I definitely gotta work harder at not staying up so late)
So would it be appropriate to say that fulfillment begets fulfillment? Well, I don't think fulfillment is something that's dependent on external circumstances or that's exclusive to only a few people. I believe that we all have access to it; it's just a matter of connecting to it. Ah, now there's the rub.
Thanks for letting me share these thoughts with you. Your comments and ideas inspire me to think through ideas that I've had bouncing around in my head.
So would it be appropriate to say that fulfillment begets fulfillment? Well, I don't think fulfillment is something that's dependent on external circumstances or that's exclusive to only a few people. I believe that we all have access to it; it's just a matter of connecting to it. Ah, now there's the rub.
Thanks for letting me share these thoughts with you. Your comments and ideas inspire me to think through ideas that I've had bouncing around in my head.
I was listening to a show on LIME Radio, and one of the person's being interviewed mentioned something about Self-Actualization. It reminded me of a Social Psyc class I took in college. I think this class had a tremendous influence on my perspective of life. I'd like to share this info here if it's allowed. Here it is:
SELF ACTUALIZATION
"Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is."
Abraham Maslow
Maslow studied healthy people, most psychologists study sick people.
The characteristics listed here are the results of 20 years of study of people who had the "full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.."
Self-actualization implies the attainment of the basic needs of physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, and self-esteem.
Maslow's Basic Principles:
Characteristics of Self Actualizing People
Realistic
Realistically oriented, SA persons have a more efficient perception of reality, they have comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life. SA persons are unthreatened, unfrightened by the unknown. they have a superior ability to reason, to see the truth. They are logical and efficient.
Acceptance
Accept themselves, others and the natural world the way they are. Sees human nature as is, have a lack of crippling guilt or shame, enjoy themselves without regret or apology, they have no unnecessary inhibitions.
Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness
Spontaneous in their inner life, thoughts and impulses, they are unhampered by convention. Their ethics is autonomous, they are individuals, and are motivated to continual growth.
Problem Centering
Focus on problems outside themselves, other centered. They have a mission in life requiring much energy, their mission is their reason for existence. They are serene, characterized by a lack of worry, and are devoted to duty.
Detachment: The Need for Privacy
Alone but not lonely, unflappable, retain dignity amid confusion and personal misfortunes, objective. They are self starters, responsible for themselves, own their behavior.
Autonomy: Independent of Culture and Environment
SA's rely on inner self for satisfaction. Stable in the face of hard knocks, they are self contained, independent from love and respect.
Continued Freshness of Appreciation
Have a fresh rather than stereotyped appreciation of people and things. Appreciation of the basic good in life, moment to moment living is thrilling, transcending and spiritual. They live the present moment to the fullest.
Peak experiences
"Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstacy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences." Abraham Maslow
Maslow asked his subjects to think of the most wonderful experience or experiences of their lives--the happiest moments, extatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in live, or from listening to music or suddenly "being hit" by a book or a painting or from some great creative moment. He found that people undergoing peak experiences felt more integrated, more at one with the world, more in command of their own lives, more spontaneous, less aware of space and time, more perceptive, more self determined, more playful.
Effects of peak experiences:
Gemeinschaftsgefuhl
Identification, sympathy, and affection for mankind, kinship with the good, the bad and the ugly, older-brother attitude. Truth is clear to him, can see things others cannot see.
Interpersonal relations
Profound, intimate relationships with few. Capable of greater love than others consider possible. Benevolence, affection and friendliness shown to everyone.
Democratic values and attitudes
Able to learn from anyone, humble. Friendly with anyone regardless of class, education, political belief, race or color.
Discrimination: means and ends, Good and Evil
Do not confuse between means and ends. They do no do wrong. Enjoy the here and now, getting to goal--not just the result. They make the most tedious task an enjoyable game. They have their own inner moral standards (appearing amoral to others).
Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor
Jokes are teaching metaphors, intrinsic to the situation, spontaneous, can laugh at themselves, never make jokes that hurt others.
Creativity
Inborn uniqueness that carries over into everything they do, see the real and true more easily, original, inventive and less inhibited.
Resistance to enculturation: Transcendence of any particular culture
Inner detachment from culture, folkways are used but of no consequence, calm long term culture improvement, indignation with injustice, inner autonomy and outer acceptance. Transcend the environment rather than just cope.
Imperfections
Painfully aware of own imperfections, joyfully aware of own growth process. Impatient with self when stuck, real life pain, not imagined.
Values
Philosophical acceptance of the nature of his self, human nature, social life, nature, physical reality, remains realistically human.
Resolution of dichotomies
Polar opposites merge into a third, higher phenomenon, as though the two have united, work becomes play, most childlike person is most wise, opposite forces no longer felt as a conflict. Desires are in excellent accord with reason.
Maslow says there are two processes necessary for self-actualization: self exploration and action. The deeper the self exploration, the closer one comes to self-actualization.
EIGHT WAYS TO SELF ACTUALIZE
SELF ACTUALIZATION
Maslow (1954), believed that man has a natural drive to healthiness, or self actualization. He believed that man has basic, (biological and psychological) needs that have to be fulfilled in order to be free enough to feel the desire for the higher levels of realization. He also believed that the organism has the natural, unconscious and innate capacity to seek its needs. (Maslow 1968)
In other words, man has an internal, natural, drive to become the best possible person he can be.
"...he has within him a pressure toward unity of personality, toward spontaneous expressiveness, toward full individuality and identity, toward seeing the truth rather than being blind, toward being creative, toward being good, and a lot else. That is, the human being is so constructed that he presses toward what most people would call good values, toward serenity, kindness, courage, honesty, love, unselfishness, and goodness." (Maslow, 1968, p. 155.)
Maslow believed that not only does the organism know what it needs to eat to maintain itself healthy, but also man knows intuitively what he needs to become the best possible, mentally healthy and happy "being". I use the word "being" because Maslow goes far beyond what the average person considers good physical and mental health. He talked about higher consciousness, esthetic and peak experiences, and Being. He stressed the importance of moral and ethical behavior that will lead man naturally to discovering, becoming himself.
"The state of being without a system of values is psychopathogenic, we are learning. The human being needs a framework of values, a philosophy of life, a religion or religion-surrogate to live by and understand by, in about the same sense he needs sunlight, calcium or love. This I have called the "cognitive need to understand." The value- illnesses which result from valuelessness are called variously anhedonia, anomie, apathy, amorality, hopelessness, cynicism, etc., and can become somatic illness as well. Historically, we are in a value interregnum in which all externally given value systems have proven failures (political, economic, religious, etc.) e.g., nothing is worth dying for. What man needs but doesn't have, he seeks for unceasingly, and he becomes dangerously ready to jump at any hope, good or bad. The cure for this disease is obvious. We need a validated, usable system of human values that we can believe in and devote ourselves to (be willing to die for), because they are true rather than because we are exhorted to "believe and have faith." Such an empirically based Weltanschauung seems now to be a real possibility, at least in theoretical outline." (Maslow, 1968, p. 206.)
Morality then is natural. If we use our capacity to think, are honest, sincere and open, we arrive at moral and ethical behavior naturally. The problem is to not destroy our ability to become ourselves.
"Pure spontaneity consists of free, uninhibited uncontrolled, trusting, unpremeditated expression of the self, i.e., of the psychic forces, with minimal interference by consciousness. Control, will, caution, self-criticism, measure, deliberateness are the brakes upon this expression made intrinsically necessary by the laws of the social and natural world, and secondarily, made necessary by the fear of the psyche itself." (1968, p. 197.)
To me, this means listening to the inner self, the unconscious, the spirit.
"This ability of healthier people to dip into the unconscious and preconscious, to use and value their primary processes instead of fearing them, to accept their impulses instead of always controlling them, to be able to regress voluntarily without fear, turns out to be one of the main conditions of creativity."
"This development toward the concept of a healthy unconscious and of a healthy irrationality, sharpens our awareness of the limitations of purely abstract thinking, of verbal thinking and of analytic thinking. If our hope is to describe the world fully, a place is necessary for preverbal, ineffable, metaphorical, primary process, concrete-experience, intuitive and esthetic types of cognition, for there are certain aspects of reality which can be cognized in no other way." (p. 208)
Meditation, self-hypnosis, imagery and the like are sources of discovering our inner being. To become self-actualized, Maslow said we need two things, inner exploration and action.
"An important existential problem is posed by the fact that self-actualizing persons (and all people in their peak- experiences) occasionally live out-of-time and out-of-the- world (atemporal and aspatial) even though mostly they must live in the outer world. Living in the inner psychic world (which is ruled by psychic laws and not by the laws of outer-reality), i.e., the world of experience, of emotion, of wishes and fears and hopes, of love of poetry, art and fantasy, is different from living in and adapting to the non-psychic reality which runs by laws he never made and which are not essential to his nature even though he has to live by them. (He could, after all, live in other kinds of worlds, as any science fiction fan knows.) The person who is not afraid of this inner, psychic world, can enjoy it to such an extent that it may be called Heaven by contrast with the more effortful, fatiguing, externally responsible world of "reality," of striving and coping, of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood. This is true even though the healthier person can also adapt more easily and enjoyably to the "real" world, and has better "reality testing," i.e., doesn't confuse it with his inner psychic world." (p. 213)
Maslow has made a case for natural, human goodness. Man is basically good, not evil, he has the capacity to be an efficient, healthy and happy person. But he must nurture the capacity with awareness, honesty, introspection and maintain his freedom: to freely respond to internal and external events (values), to be himself at all costs.
The knowledge that man has this capacity motivates him to realize it. It also obliges him to actively work toward self realization. We cannot not respond to the call that a value makes on us. This whole discussion shows the importance of studying Values and Ethics. We are obliged to discover the range of our possible moral behavior. If we are capable of being healthy and happy, then we are obliged to work toward that goal.
Like with anything, if you really want something, you probably have to work at it a bit. I have found my true love, but am trying to make new friends in a new town.
Different type of friend, but I know that sitting at home with my family all the time is not going to let me meet new people. So, I've joined a gym and try to be more open to enountering new people who may not seem at first like they could be my type of friend. We'll see how it goes!
Do me a favor. If you find someone. Never get married. Spending your life with the same partner. Just sounds like a bore. Good luck.
Peaceful Regards
I've noticed that for someone whos userword is healthyliving, you are not such an upbeat guy. Maybe for you finding a partner for life is a bore, or maybe you just have not found the right person yet or had a bad experience.
Not everything is perfect, but being alone and bitter isn't great either. I hope you find whatever you are looking for.
Who would have expected to see so many analytic propositions?
:(
~ Greener today than I was yesterday!
I think that it comes to you, unexpected. But I think I watch too much romance flicks. I recently started thinking about this topic. Especially after watching the poll results for what can make you happier?
Most people feel they need more love. Interesting.