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Larsa

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Posts posted by Larsa

  1. To bluecherry:

    In love, the self is celebrated, not denied, abandoned, or sacrificed.

    The purpose of romantic love is, among other things, to celebrate self-esteem, not to create it in those who lack it.

    (These come from Nathaniel Branden).

    I'll add that there are 3 words in "I love you" --- understand these words fully before you bring Objectivism into your relationship.

    Good point, and I'll ask a question that takes it a step further.

    You say that he is willing to learn about O'ism in order to understand you, and that there are many things you do like about him.

    That sounds almost as perfect as you could get in a non-O'ist.

    So what if he was perfect in EVERY way, except for his unwillingness to embrace O'ism? Would you still have this demillia? Or is this the only problem you have?

    If this is the only problem you have with him, then I have to ask where the problem is. He seems to be bending over backwards to try to understand you on your terms, and to try to work with you. I know O'ists who would not do as much as you describe in order to come to know another person.

    Furthermore, I'd ask are you meeting him halfway, trying to get to know him? Or are you forcing him to do all the work in order to make the relationship work?

    If everything about him was perfect except his personal following of O'ism, (and I'm not saying that it is) but you still could not be with him, then I suspect your love of O'ism itself may trump your love for any human. If so, you will always have a problem getting to love a non-Oist, and even many O'ists who do not agree with your EXACT views of O'ism.

    If your love of O'ism keeps you from finding happiness with a person who is otherwise perfect, then there is something wrong with your view of O'ism, as it is causing you to give up on being happy. If that is the case, You have to look for where you went wrong, or realize that you may be out of relationships for a long time to come.

    Now, this person is not perfect (or so I assume from what you said.) so there are more issues there. Those issues may be the deciding factor(s), and his unwillingness to "convert" to O'ism (pardon the religious sound of that please) may play a role as well, but I cannot see how that unwillingness alone can make or break your relationship potential, given all he is willing to do to give you the visibility you need, unless you do love O'ism more than the person you are to be with.

  2. You have already taken the hardest, and most important step. Keeping his secret is what is at the root of this problem. By continuing to stay silent, you had allowed him to continue to act in abusive ways. By staying silent, you allowed him power over you, and that kept the fear of the threats he made a strong and personal emotion. By bringing it up, you begin to break this down. You take control of you, and in doing so put an end to the fear. By taking action you remove his control over you, and let go of the guilt.

    The guilt you feel is not guilt over what happened. You were powerless to stop that at the time. The guilt is about not acting since then. The fear stems from the fact that you had, up till this point, done nothing. Therefore, if this was to repeat, would you do something now? I am sure that you would, but you had reason to doubt yourself UNTIL you began to speak up. Now you are taking responsibility for yourself in this, and insuring that something like this will NEVER repeat.

    Burying the truth of what happened will not help you. That is just hiding from reality. Tell the people important to you about it. Bring legal action. Know that these memories, brought back up, will hurt you. But keeping them buried also hurts you. And letting them out will help you to heal, as you are no longer hiding what is real. Keeping them buried brings the nightmares, as you continue to hold fear and doubt, and your mind reacts to this.

    The nightmares are your own subconscious mind pushing you to face this, get it out of you, and finally live with the truth in the open, instead of hiding from the truth, ignoring it, and acting like it does not exist. It is your mind trying to help you live up to whom you want to be. It is your mind doing everything it can to allow you to live as happy a life as you can. And it would not do this, until you are both ready and able to deal with the pain of the process.

    It just has to get you past some very painful things. Things nobody should have to go through. And it is doing the only thing it can. Pushing you to speak up. Pushing you to deal with reality, instead of ignoring it.

    Because you know, in both parts of your mind, that you have to, in order to be as happy as you can be.

    You have already taken the hardest step.

  3. Mostly.

    My answer to you will be in parts, as I see several things here.

    First, as long as everything is completely honest, and you are sure that he understands your feelings, then there is no contradiction. You are doing what you need to do in order to be happy with him. True that the actions are unusual, but your reasoning behind them looks to be valid. Therefore I have to say that you are in the right there.

    Second, I am concerned with the draining/wear and tear you talk about. I find that most arguments are wonderful learning experiences. If you are suffering over them, you need to balance that with your desire to have a relationship with him, as otherwise you may be together for a few more years, then find you can no longer take the emotional strain and have to end things anyway.

    Third, as an extension of the second part, what would need to be done in order for you to love him fully? In the long run, if you cannot bring yourself to do that, you will fail. The fact that you do not currently love him suggests something is missing, and no amount of wishing or dreaming is going to create it. You need to figure out what you need in order to truly love him, and present that information to him. Perhaps it is something within yourself you can change, like a fear of failure that is holding you back. Perhaps it is something within him, like his secrets. Perhaps it is something between the two of you, such as the unresolved arguments. But you are the only one who can figure out what it is. And without doing so, your relationship will remain where it is indefinitely without you ever growing to love him fully, and that will not be good for either of you.

    Fourth, are you happy? You seem to be looking more for a reason to end it than a reason to continue it. You need to look at how you are feeling and try to understand if and why this may be. If the truth is that you are unhappy, you need to change things. If you are happy, then work to make it better, but also be happy with it. You look to have a good thing going here, but you are upset that it is not better. Is ending it because it may never be better worth losing what you have together? Only you can answer that.

    Given what others have said before they saw the stress you are having, I am very curious as to what they would say now. Has anyone changed their minds about the posts they made or have more to add about them? I really feel that I should not be the only voice answering bluecherry now that the question has been re-defined, as my knowledge of O'ism is limited at best.

  4. But this is what I want to be. How do you become like those people? How do you create something new, something only you could have created and nobody else?

    By being true to your artwork and the meaning it has for you.

    No one has ever understood my poetry, regardless of how many people I show it to. Regardless, I write what I feel compelled to write, when I feel such, regardless of what other readers do.

    Some put in metaphor where none was intended, while others do not look for the meanings in each part, but they simply take it as a trivial and pointless whole.

    Your artwork has meaning to you. Keep a journal. Write down the meanings of each piece. This way, when your artwork does become recognized for it's uniqueness, you can look back at the early pieces and remember everything it means to you. With the vast number of people who will look at a gallery piece, some people are bound to see what you do. Think of what people must have said to Salvador DalĂ­ when he painted La persistencia de la memoria. "Clocks melting... Must be a really hot day out when you did that..." How long must it have taken him to have someone understand that? But in the end, he was finally understood, and the meanings he had were discussed at length by many.

    In this case, Psychological Visibility is not about the world understanding you. It is about a few select people understanding the deeper meaning you instill within your own artwork. That said, they need not understand the meaning the first time they see it. They may even need to be told what it means by you. The important thing is that they come to see the same things that you do. If they look at your work after you tell them it's meaning, and still fail to see it, then that is painful. But if they come to see it as you do, to understand the meanings so much that forever afterword when they look at it, they intrinsically think of the same meanings that you do, then there is a powerful connection between you and the person, forged in your common understanding. Forever on, you would share a knowledge between the two of you that brings with it pleasure all its own. The pleasure of being understood and recognized for being who you are, and thinking how you do.

    In that regard it is the same as the dog that gets excited by the person holding a ball... Both share the same meaning in the intent of the actions they display, and both are excited by the other's interest in that meaning.

  5. Doctor- Yes, many of the premises for God are silly, but continuing belief in and trust in God is called faith. Depending on the person, I have seen faith destroy one person, and yet save build another up and save his life. Do not be afraid of death! Be afraid that you have not accomplished your goals in your life!

    It is completely your choice.

    Very true. You should not rush into anything, less you make mistakes in what you are trying to comprehend. Take your time, and know that it is always your choice. Read more about O'ism, so you can see what makes sense. Read about your old religion, so you can see what does not. Come to your own conclusions, and live life for yourself, for your reasons. But the most important part is that you get out there and make your life worth living for yourself. People who do that find that they have no fear of death or anything beyond that.

  6. To your OP Myself:

    -- There is no proof that they do.

    -- This varies based on the unique relationship (or lack thereof) between the two people in question. My father is emotionally detached, but extremely rational. My mother puts her emotions and those of the people she cares about before all other criteria, barring only logic and reality. Thus the things I have learned from them are vastly different from each other. Meanwhile, my brother tried to kill me more than once before I was ever a teen. These experiences have helped shape whom I am, and for that I give them all thanks. (Even my brother, for I learned quite a lot about taking pain, not trusting people easily, and many skills from what he did, and what I was forced to do to survive in my own house.) That said, While my love for my Mother comes from the fact that I know that she has always tried to care for me as best as she could, I know that she does not truly understand me. My father understands a lot better, but has trouble showing his love. And my brother is little more than a stranger to me nowadays.

    -- I find value in most people, even if it is only to see what is the current political beliefs espoused by the masses at the moment. Most likely I'd find value in them for the same things I do now, but as they would likely feel less of a desire to help me, I would most likely not go out of my way for them as much as I do now.

    -- Yes and No. I understand problems of biology better, as we share common health problems and similar growth and aging patterns that give me better insight to several little things they are likely to be feeling, but none of that is strictly "blood". Anyone with those situations or with a loved one with them I could most likely relate to a bit more than others.

    -- No.

    -- Nonsensical.

    To the rational child discussion:

    The formation of formal thinking is really the time that a child becomes able to conceptualize rationally. Before that, the brain is simply not fully developed, and the child is generally unable to separate the views that they hold from how the world in fact functions. Therefore you should treat a child in much the same way as you would treat the mentally handicapped. That is, do the best you can to use a rational argument, but be prepared to have them ignore it, and be ready to act to protect them if rational discourse fails due to the inability they have.

  7. I kenw a girl who knew nothing about O'ism, and had a truly sad life, filled with both self inflicted pain, and pain caused by others (often when she was too young to stop it.) yet was able to keep her self esteem high by insisting to herself that every day she would find something to give herself an honest complement on.

    I have gotten some other people to do this, and those who hold to it also have shown better self esteem.

    But, as others here have already said, THEY have to be the ones to do it. You cannot do it for them.

  8. In general this is in line with what I have seen, both in relationships, and in neuroscience. (In college undergrad courses.) Emotional involvement in the act is one of the major factors in the power and time a biochemical response, (such as orgasm) is triggered within the brain, and therefore it makes sense that people who better understand the emotions that they have will have a better sex life. That said, it is not the only factor. Biology, mental health, emotional attachment to a partner, age, and past experiences will all play a part as well.

  9. bluecherry, I am having trouble understanding your OP. I am going to attempt to re-phrase it so that I can understand it better. Please correct any inaccuracies on my part, or if I am correct, please say so, this way myself and others can see about answering your question.

    You are in a relationship with another person, of a romantic and possibly sexual nature. You feel that you do not love this person, but you like him a lot, and feel that given time to understand each other better, you could be completely in love with him. Meanwhile he loves you already. This relationship has been going on for two and a half years this way.

    You need to know that he is at least compatible with Objectivism before you can bring yourself to love him fully, his life has kept him from learning more about it, but he shows many personal traits that are in line with Objectivism.

    You have been with him up to this point because you were in situations where being just friends was simply not a possibility, and now that you are in said relationship, he cannot go back to being just friends. (Something that generally does not work anyway. IMO)

    You are asking if your actions of being with someone who loves you, whom you do not yet love, but want to, are a contradiction of your feelings for him at this time.

    To answer this question, I feel I need more information from you. Specifically, I would like to know:

    Are you involved sexually. (do not answer this if it is too personal, but it does show a level of involvement beyond that of most non-sexual relationships, and the level of involvement you have with him is one thing I am trying to understand.)

    Are you living with him, and if so, how long have you done so. (Same reason)

    What traits specifically does he have that are in line with O'ism? After all, the more he is compatible, the easier it would be to be with him, both as a "trial" and as a mutually loving relationship later on.

    Knowing these things, I feel that I can look at your situation in detail, and figure out if you are in fact living a contradiction by being romantically involved with a person whom you do not love, but loves you; a situation where the feelings and actions are unequal, both within you, and between the two of you, but at the same time, both of you know exactly how the other feels, and therefore your interactions are not inherently dishonest.

    Thus:

    He and you both KNOW everything that is going on, but the actions and feelings you have are, while not necessarily in conflict with each other, are each sending a different message about your relationship.

    You are worried that this is a contradiction, and want to know what we think, both about if it is a contradiction, and if so, is the relationship justified with such a contradiction existing within it, given that there was no other way for the two of you to ever be together otherwise.

    Is that about accurate bluecherry?

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