No more about S
S said do not write to me any more and of course that felt bad. I had been trying to help but she didn't like my methods. I knew she wouldn't like my methods but doing what she likes wouldn't have helped her. So I ask myself, should I have stuck to doing what she liked so that she would still love me? But I can't help answering, no, because if you stick to doing what people like, they don't love you, they love your doing what they like.But what's the difference? Am I anything other than the things I choose to do (or don't choose to do if they are things I just do without thinking or choosing at all, but we are not looking at those things here, because I think that after all, you can make up for the things you can't control by applying the things you can)? I feel as though I am, so I could say I'm something other to me, but to other people, well, I'm not so sure.
It is the worst thing about me that I'm aware of, that I am perfectly able to pretend but I choose honesty. I know, it's supposed to be a virtue, but is anything virtuous that hurts others?
***
Why was I trying to help her? In the broadest sense, I was doing it because I want to help people. I'm only able to do it in my own idiom, and that doesn't mean I give all my money to charity (it's dubious what help that is in a lot of cases, given how little some charities actually achieve), nor do I volunteer a lot of my time in helpful ways. I suppose I need a connection to begin with. Maybe I just need to feel my volunteering is wanted -- mine personally, not just that of any avaiable warm body -- because I rarely feel better than when I'm doing something for someone else. In the narrower sense, I was doing it because she has gone badly off the rails, if she was ever on them. I wanted to rescue her. Believe me, if I have ever met someone in need of being rescued, S is it. Or pretends to be it.
Well, maybe having an oaf like me ride to your rescue is not something she enjoys, or anyone would enjoy.
And maybe that wasn't what I was doing. Maybe I just wanted the old S back. Maybe I just wanted the boring, one-note specimen that she had sent instead of the lively, engaging, wonderful person I had known to disappear.
Wrapped up in that is that I never believed she was the real thing. I believed she was a pupa, which could become a butterfly if circumstances allowed. But she wrapped her cocoon tighter, to the point where it seems suffocating, a cage rather than a step on the way to something better.
***
I could easily fix my marriage. I mean that I could easily fix it for Mrs Zen. I do sometimes think about why I won't. What difference would it make for me? Would the gain in happiness, which I would surely make, outweigh having to lie to achieve it? It wouldn't feel right either, but my life already doesn't feel right. What difference would it make what makes it wrong? Perhaps I should look at it less selfishly, because it would certainly be better for my children if I made a better job of being married. Are children better served by lies if they make a better world for them than they are by the truth if that is painful? I think I have always found it hard to accept that the truth should not bring life's rewards.
Things are clearer with S. It's probably just as easy to fix my relationship with her. I mean, we could be friends. But I don't want to. Again, I only mean that I could fix it for her. And there is just no point to that. Friendship doesn't really work when it's a oneway street in the same way that marriage does. Yeah, I'd be a great friend for her to have. But what is in that for me? I have three children. I don't need another needy, demanding person who feels no obligation to give anything back in my life.
***
S said write no more and I won't. Not to her or about her. She is no more than the scent of perfume in a room she has long left, and I have never liked perfume on a woman anyway. I shut the door behind her and open the window. Soon the scent is gone, and the fresh air comes in to clear my head.
posted by Dr Zen @ 12:52 pm
10 Comments:
Would the gain in happiness, which I would surely make, outweigh having to lie to achieve it?
I suppose this will be a little out of turn, but here's where you and I just don't see things the same way.
If I understand you, you would have to lie about how much you love, cherish, care, etc. for Mrs. Z.
But that's only if you allow yourself to be led about by your emotions. Emotions are simply a reaction to whatever stimulates them. They aren't right or wrong, and they certainly aren't there to act as an accurate gauge of reality.
Love isn't something you feel. It's a decision you make. I'm guessing you're with Mrs. Z because you had feelings for her at one point. To put it a little too simply, committing to love her the way one would a wife one cherishes isn't lying. It's keeping your commitment. If you were to do that without reservation, you would probably find that the feelings would follow the commitment.
My wife and I were once on our last leg. The only thing that kept us together was the commitment we had made. We decided we were here for good, no way out. We had to work it out or perish. We worked it out. We both treated each other lovingly despite the feelings we had that were born of our own unreasonable expectations and unfulfilled wants. I made the decision that I was going to love her regardless of how she acted on whichever day. She responded to that and did the same.
Anyway, I'm probably full of shit, but I really think that you're choosing not to change the things over which you do have control, so your results are unsatisfying and empty.
Yeah, you'd certainly have to make self-sacrifices, but to go way too far about to answer your question, it would be worth it.
And you wouldn't have to lie.
What do you mean, love isn't something you feel? If the only love you know was a "decision" or whatever, then you don't know what you're talking about. Love Is not only something you feel, but also something you can't control. Treating someone lovingly and loving them are not the same thing at all.
No, they're not the same thing, and love does include feeling. My point is that if you let your feelings dictate the important decisions in your life, you've got the cart before the horse. If you "fall out of love" with your spouse, and so leave him or her, then you've let your emotions become the controlling force in your life. However, if you have the fortitude to make a decision to love the other person (not just treat her lovingly, a big difference that I think you missed) which entails putting the other person's needs and desires above your own, making what's important to her become important to you, and which is an act of will.
Your feelings will react to the circumstances you create.
And I *do* know what I'm talking about, friend.
"Making a decision" to love someone is rationalising something that is no longer there, and hurts everybody in the end.
Self-sacrifice never works in relationships -- it's like sitting between 2 chairs.
Rationality is not orthogonal to feeling. Our emotions arise from our reality.
And you have the choice to determine your reality.
Cart - horse...
"Your feelings will react to the circumstances you create."
Sounds a bit Orwellian. If we could always make ourselves love the convenient person, we'd be living in a world that is quite different from the one that is.
While you have some choice which will determine your reality, you're never in absolute control. You didn't control where you were born or who your parents are. You cannot control how others will respond to anything you do or say. You cannot control yourself nearly as much as you are suggesting. It is one thing to shut down certain emotions while encouraging others. Loving is simpler than that. It's there or it isn't.
Yes, but you did control the commitment you made. If you made a commitment, it was based on feelings, but not only feeligns, but probably some level of rational thought that you could make a lifetime commitment with this person and make it work.
Yet in any relationship, you're going to come to a point where you almost can't stand the other person.
That's going to happen in every marriage. If you then quit, you'll simply start over, then come to that point again and quit.
But if you honor your commitment to love and cherish, and set aside your emotional rollercoaster of wants for a time to focus on your spouse, the feelings that you desire can certainly be rekindled. Sometimes feelings will be there, and sometimes they won't. You can't just go making decisions based on them.
And it's not rationalization. It's honoring a commitment. Rationalization is lying to yourself to convince yourself it's okay to do something you shouldn't do. Honoring your commitment is going back to doing what you should have done, loving and cherishing till death do us part, etc.
You do not determine your reality. Reality is not subjective. A is A. Read up on Objectivism.
Reality is not subjective.
To all intents and purposes it may as well be. It's our perception of reality that matters, and that is going to be subjective.
Thanks, Ayn. I have. Useless in this conversation, of course, because this is a segment of your reality over which you have some measure of control and come capacity to decide.
And what Arleen said too. If reality isn't subjective, then why are you depending on the subjective to make your decisions?
The reality is that he's married. A *is* A. Therefore that ought to be enough.
Nice corner you've painted there.
Post a Comment
<< Home