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WHY LOVE ISN'T "IT" Is ordinary love . . . futile? Your brave and cuddly LiveReal Agents - and in our daring quest for the real thing, Talk about it. We all start out with fantasies of finding "true love" in life. But how often does it actually turn out that way? Here is a guide, from your trusty LiveReal Agents, to what really happens in life . . . and why.
"Love" drives "The Typical Cycle" "Hell is other people." The Honest Love Letter My Darling Maureen, Two beggars What ordinarily happens in the world is this: The basic quarrel is that the husband thinks he is not getting what is his right to get: the wife thinks she is not getting what is her right to get. The wife thinks she has been deceived, and the husband also thinks that he has been deceived. Nobody gives, everybody wants to get. And when everybody is trying to get, nobody gets it, and so everybody feels poor and deprived. That Small Distance Between Lovers . . . No matter how intimate an embrace is, a subtle separation remains between two lovers. Even if I squeeze you tightly in my embrace, a distance, a separation will be there. This distance can disappear only when two lovers disappear as egos and merge into each other and become totally one. Otherwise every distance is a distance, whether it is a distance of an inch or of a million miles. Even if you reduce the distance to a thousandth part of an inch, it remains a distance nonetheless. This is the sorrow and pain of every lover. No matter how close and intimate he is with his loved one, he remains discontented and unhappy. His problem is that unless he becomes one with his beloved - not only physically but spiritually, at the level of love, of being - there is no way for him to be satisfied and happy. And this is really, really difficult. To be one at the level of love and being is one of the hardest things to achieve. This is not going to happen even if two lovers remain tied to each other like logs for the fire. And the irony is, the nearer they are to each other, the greater their disillusionment and misery. When there was a distance between them they had hoped for the heavenly happiness and joy that would come when they became close to each other. But when they are really close, even closest to each other, they feel disillusioned, almost cheated by their own hopes. Nothing is lacking in their relationship, in their intimacy and trust, yet the hoped-for happiness remains a distant dream. Then the lovers begin to fret and fume at each other, they begin to suspect each other. Each of them thinks that while he is doing his best, the other has his reservations, or is deceiving him. Now they are besieged by worries and anxieties that they never had before. But the real reason is that unless lovers become totally one, they can never be content and happy. For this reason I say the lovers of today are devotees of tomorrow, for they have no way but to turn to devotion. When they know for themselves that it is impossible to be one with an embodied person, they will turn to God, who is bodiless, because it is quite possible to be really one with him. So sooner or later every lover is going to turn into a devotee, and every word of love is going to turn into a prayer. This is how it should be. Otherwise there is no escape from the torture and misery of love. A lover who refuses to be a devotee is bound to be in everlasting anguish. Ironically, while his longings are those of a devotee, he is trying to fulfill them through ordinary love. His aspirations are running in one direction and his efforts in another, and so frustration is inevitable. He so longs to be one with another that nothing should come in between them, not even the thought of "I" and "thou." But he has chosen a wrong medium for the fulfillment of his longings. No two persons can come so close to each other that the thought of "I" and "thou" cannot come in between them. It is impossible. Only two non-person, non-egos, can achieve this unity and oneness . . . such fusion is possible only with the unmanifest . . ." Promises, promises . . . A man promises to make a girl happy: "Darling, " he says, "Let me make you happy!" - when he himself is unhappy and does not know what happiness really is! No doubt the thinks it will be enough to sleep with her to make her happy . . . if it were only so simple . . . Lovers Can't Unite Forever Two individuals are finite beings, hence their union cannot be infinite, cannot be forever. And this is the pain, this is the misery of all marriage, of all love - that we cannot unity with the person forever. We unite together for a moment but again we fall back to a distance; the gap enters. This distance creates pain, it hurts, and so lovers are in a continuous state of despair over it. Slowly it begins to appear as if the partner is creating this distance. Hence anger and irritation with the other begins to arise. But those who know would say that two people are essentially two separate individuals. They can force a momentary meeting but they cannot meet forever. This is the very pain and hurt that gives birth to a constant conflict between lovers, that begins a struggle with the very person you love. Tension, strife, a feeling of aversion creeps in, because it begins to seem as if the beloved doesn't want to merge and so the merge does not become complete. But no individual is to blame for this. Two individuals cannot met on the level of "forever." Lovers can merge only momentarily; because the individual is limited, the individuals' merger will also be limited. The eternal merger can only be with the divine, with the whole existence. Party Topic: Songs Listen to as many songs about love as you can.
Sartre on Why love can never be satisfied Jean-Paul Sartre . . . says there is a paradox, a contradiction in the very structure of human love. What do we want in love? What are we aiming at? He says the objective of love is to be united with another person as a subject, as a spiritual being. That is the goal of our search for love. When we love a human being, we want to be united with that person not as an object, but as a subject. But Sartre says this is impossible because there is a contradiction in the very texture of this impulse to love. Our consciousness at its present level is such that we have an invariable tendency to objectify. Whatever we are aware of becomes an object of our consciousness. When I look at you, you are an object of my consciousness. This is the very nature and structure of consciousness. When someone we love becomes an object of our consciousness, our tendency will be to possess that person as an object, our property. The loved one becomes an object to enjoy, to love, to relate with, to share with, but is still an object. The subjectivity of the loved on escapes our attention. Our consciousness cannot grasp it. It can be grasped only by a different faculty, which is not developed enough, as yet. Thus we can never be happy or satisfied. This is why so often we fall in love and strive to have the loved one be ours, have them, and then our interest evaporates. Why? Because that person has become an object, and we wanted to be united with a subject. This is why, as Sartre points out, our love is like a monkey which always jumps around from one object to another. But it never gets what it wants - because it wants to be united with a subject, which seems to be an impossibility. So Sartre came to a very pessimistic conclusion: that human love is a fruitless passion. There is an absurdity inherent in the very steps of human love, and so we can never be satisfied . . . The Hunt . . . then The Find . . . and then . . . The typical person - whom I will refer to as the emotional-sexual ego or ego-"I" - constantly hunts for an Other, that "special someone," that "soul mate," the "perfect match." The ego-"I" (a.k.a. the "self-contraction") hunts or seeks an "Other" (even all others, as in the case of celebrities) in order to be gratified, consoled, and protected, forever. The compulsive hunting for that special other is generated by the feelings of unhappiness, emptiness, and separateness that possess and characterize the self-contracted being. Once an Other is found, the ego-"I" clings to the other, at first pleasurably . . . and then aggressively. The ego-"I" depends on the other for Happiness, and over time, the ego-"I" makes greater and greater demands on the other for fulfillment of itself (in all of its desires). Often, in time, the other becomes depressed and exhausted by this demand, and leaves (or dies). Or, just as likely, the ego-"I" discovers, over time, that the Other cannot or will not satisfy the absolute demand for attention and consolation. In that case, the ego-"I" feels betrayed, and the ego"I" begins the strategy of punishing, rejecting, and abandoning the Other. Does it last? Never listen to someone who tells you "I will love you forever and ever" . . . a month later he or she will have found someone else. Under the influence of great emotion you can say all kinds of things. Lovers promise things, swear all kinds of vows, make declarations of undying fidelity and so on, but a few hours later it is all forgotten and they are fighting and tearing each other apart. Party Topic: Movies Check out the American Film Institute's 100 greatest love stories here. Notice a few things:
It's Not Just Having the "Wrong Match" The relationship as husband and wife is only a preparation for love, not its culmination; it is only the beginning of the journey, not the end. And because it is a journey, the husband and wife are always in the state of conflict. A journey is always a disturbance; peace is only to be found at the destination. A husband and wife can never be at peace, because this relationship is only the middle of the journey. And most people perish on the journey, they never reach the goal. Because of this, there is always a state of conflict between husband and wife; there is a round-the-clock disturbance, a round-the-clock fight with the very person we love! Unfortunately, neither the husband nor the wife understands the real cause of the tension and strife. They each think they have made the wrong match. The husband thinks everything would have been better had he married another woman, and the wife thinks everything would probably have been fine if she had married a different man. This is the experience of all the couples in the world. But if you were given the chance to change your spouse, the situation would not change one bit. It would be the same as changing shoulders while carrying a coffin to the cemetery: you would feel relief for a little while, but then you would notice that the weight had once again become the same. The experience in the West, where divorce is rampant, is that in a very short time the new wife proves to be just like the old one - and in a couple of weeks the new husband also proves to be the same. The reason is not to be found on the surface but deeper down. The reason has nothing to do with the particular man or woman; the reason is that the relationship between a man and a woman, between a husband and wife, is a journey, a process; it is not the destination, the end in itself.
Damned if you do . . . Whatever you get you will eventually be bored with; and whatever you don't get you will long for. So your life is spent going back and forth between longing for what you don't have, and boredom. The Possessed and the Possession. The moment you say to your lover or beloved, "Love only me," you have started possessing. And vice versa, if they want you to love only them, they have started possessing. When I possess you, you are not a person then, but just one more item amongst my furniture - a thing . Then I use you, and you are my thing, my possession, so I won't allow anyone else to use you. It is a bargain in which I am possessed by you, and you make me a thing. It is the bargain that now no one else can use you. Both partners feel bound and enslaved. I make a slave of you, then in return you make a slave of me. Does anyone dream about . . . their lover? It will be very difficult for you to find a man who dreams about his wife or a woman who dreams about her husband. But it will be absolutely common that they dream about their neighbors' wives and their neighbor's husbands. The wife is available; the husband is not suppressing anything as far as his wife is concerned. But the neighbor's wife is always more beautiful, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And that which is unapproachable creates a deep desire to acquire it, to possess it. In the day you cannot do it, but in dreams at least you are free." As the saying goes, there are always four people in every bed: one person, the person they are dreaming about, the other person, and the person they are dreaming about. Measuring Up You think that because a girl smiles at you and gives you a kiss that you have found eternal love? The chances are that tomorrow she will give you no more than a withering glance for she will have found someone who pleases her more! . . . it is far easier to make the entire world happy than to satisfy one woman. Why? Because whatever you do she will never be satisfied. When her husband is dead and gone, she may recognize his qualities, his generosity, but while he is still there, to her he is no more than an imbecile, a no-good, the neighbor is far more capable, look at all the jewels and cars and television sets and furs his wife has! . . Either you're mistaken . . . or you're wrong Believe me, it is impossible to satisfy human nature. If a husband gives his wife complete freedom, she complains, "Why doesn't he keep me for himself? Why does he give me so much freedom if not because he has another woman, somewhere? And if he is a tyrant, a despot, she weeps and moans and tries to find another man to set her free. Many women, in fact, are dissatisfied and unhappy if their husband is not jealous. A woman may have a husband who shows that he loves her, who gives her whatever she asks for, who gives her all the freedom he wants and, instead of being grateful and happy, she is worried and suspicious and thinks he must be keeping a mistress. Does she want him to keep her chained to the home? Does he have to behave like a dragon to keep her happy? We have already seen women in the clutches of a dragon and they are far from happy. Believe me, it is impossible to satisfy human nature. If a husband gives his wife complete freedom, she complains, "Why doesn't he keep me for himself? Why does he give me so much freedom if not because he has another woman, somewhere? And if he is a tyrant, a despot, she weeps and moans and tries to find another man to set her free. Nag the ones you love People are afraid of losing the one they love, and yet, what a lot of pleasure they get from nagging and tormenting them. "It's because I love you, that I torture you, darling." Strange logic! A woman wants her man to make more money, she nags him to get promotions, to work harder, to raise his status in the opinions of others. So the man tries to make her happy, and works very hard. Then she complains that he is never home enough, that he ignores her and doesn't spend enough time with her. So he stays home and works less. And the whole cycle starts all over again . . ." There's what they say . . . and then there's what they do . . . It is a reflection of peoples' incompleteness which makes them think they know what love is . . . but other people don't.
Only by beginning to restructure their basic relationship to these aspects of themselves will they be able to embody a true sense of inner well-being and the ability to share unconditional love with others. Two Empty Bottles A man and woman who love each other should become conscious of the fact that they are part of a whole without which they would be limited, too limited to express their love. Each one is like a bottle which the other drinks and, when not linked to the divine Source, the bottle is quickly emptied., whereupon nothing holds them together and they separate! What good is an empty bottle except to be thrown away? For the bottle to be full always, it must be connected to the inexhaustible cosmic Source, and then there will always be plenty to drink.
So . . . But then again . . . and we don't think so . . . So stay tuned . . . Talk about it: The LiveReal Relationship Products Sources:
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