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Love And Dependence.

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I thought there were some earlier threads on this topic, but I couldn't find them.

I do not know the circumstances of your particular case, but wanted to address the relationship of love and dependency.

What does it mean to be dependent on someone or something? If the loss of a value makes you sad, does that indicate dependency? For instance, if you love someone and they die, and you are extremely sad, would that sadness be an indication of dependency? It is one thing to say: "I love you, but I know that I can get back on my feet". On the other hand, if your attitude is "I love you, but I really do not care if you live or die", one would have to question what one means by love.

Kids can be passionate valuers. A kid goes to an ice-cream shop and they're all out of his favorite flavor. He might be a bit upset. Suppose he gets over it, pouts, grudgingly chooses another flavor, and then -- a few minutes later -- is saying, "Hey! This is really good!" Where's the dependency? If one is a valuer, then the loss of one's value does lead to some degree of sadness and disappointment. That isn't dependency unless it is debilitating in some way.

It is also fine for a kid to find the shop out of his favorite flavor and say: "I don't care, I'll have that other one." Indeed, as a kid is older and more aware of the abundance of values available to him, you'd expect less disappointment at the loss of a particular one. However, if there is no disappointment at all, not even a little screwing up of the mouth or puckering of the nose, one would have to question whether he was really keen on that flavor in the first place.

Take another example. Over the last year, I've "hung out" on the OO.net forum quite a bit (much more than I had ever anticipated). In the process, I've learnt a lot, made a few pals and grown to love the forum. Now, suppose GreedyCapitalist was bitten by a "communist virus" :) and decided to shut the forum, I wouldn't simply shrug and say "Whatever.... I don't care... ". On the other hand, given that there are other alternatives, it would be silly to be "gutted" by this kind of thing.

The point is this: happiness at getting a value is part of the nature of valuing. Sadness at the loss of a value is part of the nature of valuing. I don't think you could repress selectively -- I don't think you can say: "I'll feel happy when I gain the value, but couldn't care less when I lose it". That's because emotions are not in your control in that way. The only effective approach would be to value less passionately in the first place: reducing the resulting happiness and sadness, from a gain or loss respectively.

So, for starters, sadness is fine. Indeed, most "negative" emotions -- sadness, anger, fear, worry -- are perfectly fine in the right amounts and as long as rational values underlie them.

Back to the specific case you mentioned. I do not think people are gutted when their lovers is not around temporarily. If we're speaking of a permanent absence, it really depends on the specifics of the example (a.k.a. context). I can imagine, for instance, an old couple where the death of one person leave the other feeling gutted. From what I understand from the chat-room, you're young and the specific relationship you alluded to is one you do not expect to last more than the next few months. I doubt you'll stay gutted for very long.

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Interesting post SN.

It is also fine for a kid to find the shop out of his favorite flavor and say: "I don't care, I'll have that other one." Indeed, as a kid is older and more aware of the abundance of values available to him, you'd expect less disappointment at the loss of a particular one. However, if there is no disappointment at all, not even a little screwing up of the mouth or puckering of the nose, one would have to question whether he was really keen on that flavor in the first place.

This is the key point for me; suppose this actually did happen - the kid didnt seem disappointed, but he was adament that he did really want the chocolate icecream they never had. Do you want to say that this is impossible? In my opinion, although this would be unusual, theres no obvious reason why it couldnt happen.

Edited by Hal
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This is the key point for me; suppose this actually did happen - the kid didnt seem disappointed, but he was adament that he did really want the chocolate icecream they never had. Do you want to say that this is impossible? In my opinion, although this would be unusual, theres no obvious reason why it couldnt happen.

I've actually seen children do this; what it means is that they're intentionally pushing your buttons to see if they can get away with it, not that they care two figs about what type of ice cream they get.

I've always thought there was something wrong when parents go way out of their way to always arrange the world to suit their children; learning how to handle disappointments is part of growing up, whereas if you try to fix EVERYTHING for your kids, you're only teaching them to be truly dependant and also manipulative. There are times when you spoil your kids because they deserve it, but that should be reserved for special occasions. My mother would fix whatever we wanted to eat for our birthdays, for instance, even if it was kind of . . . weird.

SoftwareNerd is right that trying to avoid disappointment and sadness in your life means not valuing things; I did it to myself for years because I "learned" that getting anything I wanted was essentially out of my control; my only hope for occasional, momentary relief was to never get upset when things were arbitrarily taken away. Eventually I couldn't even be enthusiastic when I managed to get them after all. The end result was that I wound up not caring whether I lived or died. It was pretty obvious that this situation was unhealthy: I would have weird outbursts where I'd care WAY too much about things that were not important because they were the only things I had any control over.

I'm better now, but I'm still rarely truly passionate about anything, and it's very, very hard to sustain it in the face of setbacks after you've spent twenty years methodically giving up everything out of an effort to be polite. On the other hand, I'm MUCH better about not getting upset over stupid stuff.

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..suppose ... the kid didn't seem disappointed, but he was adament that he did really want the chocolate icecream they never had.
That's fine. I wouldn't say it can't happen. It sounds like something my kid will do from time to time. Sometimes it is short-term irritation from the disappointment, but there are times when he'll say: "Okay, then I don't want any".

That's fine. Sometimes a kid wants something in particular, not a generic substitute.

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