fahye | (no subject)

Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication

Entry tags:

musing

(no subject)

I am not a huge one for self-reflection, generally. But Ji managed to pull some stuff out of me by asking the right question.

This will be of no interest to many people, I'm sure, but I feel I should make an effort to share this sort of thing more often. Because I very seldom open up. So. Throwing this out there, unlocked and unadorned.

Fahye Dielle: Also: I used to be firmly convinced I was a romantic at heart. Now I have no idea. What do you think?
schiarire: I have no idea. your romanticism/pragmatism confuses me.
Fahye Dielle: *throws up hands*
schiarire: it is the strangest thing in the world
schiarire: like your elitist snobbery/complete lack of indieness.
Fahye Dielle: Because I used to think "oh, yeah, I would love a relationship where we do sweet things and remember anniversaries and such", but, really, I would not give a damn if they forgot the anniversary
Fahye Dielle: or were not all that demonstrative. or anything.
schiarire: I don't think I ever thought that ...
I don't know. what DO you want
Fahye Dielle: Um. Okay. This will take me a little while to articulate.
Fahye Dielle: There are lots of days when I don't want a relationship at all. At ALL. But when I do....okay. I want someone who understands that I need my own space, both physical and mental, a lot of the time. Who doesn't expect me to be very demonstrative of my emotions, especially in public. Who doesn't expect me to cry, and who won't get anxious and probe-y when I refuse to talk about bad events. I want someone I can rely on to give me little things like a squeeze of the hand or a hand on the shoulder if I'm in a bad mood, but not push things further. Someone I can flop down on the couch with, lie down on their legs, watch a movie and not have to talk. Who has a good sense of humour for sarcasm and teasing. Who is intelligent and will bring up and/or tolerate odd conversational topics. Who will be totally honest with me about when I'm pissing them off, and let me be the same.
Fahye Dielle: Who will go to things like movies and museums and parties with me, but have no qualms doing things on their own or asking me to do likewise. Hmm. Someone who gets on with my friends, obviously. Ambitious. Determined. For some reason the idea of cheating doesn't bother me as much as the dishonesty it implies. Someone who will support me in my ambitions but level with me when I'm full of crap.
Fahye Dielle: *pauses for breath* Any thoughts so far as to what this means? In any way?
schiarire: i have no idea! you're the one who takes psych!
Fahye Dielle: not this kind of psych *eyes it all disgustedly*
schiarire: hahahahaha.
schiarire: I agree that for some reason cheating doesn't strike me as a deadly sin either.
Fahye Dielle: this is personality psych, we only did a little bit of that. mostly theoretical approaches and how being loved as a child makes you secure
Fahye Dielle: People who are all "DUMP HIS ASS! RIGHT AWAY!"....no. No. TALK. There's a reason he hasn't dumped you. Find out what it is.
schiarire: people who, in relationships, don't talk to each other, make me sad
schiarire: also people who don't actually seem to be happy around each other
schiarire: and never hold hands in public, etc
Fahye Dielle: If he was all "moment of weakness! I feel ashamed! I love you!" I would very probably accept that and move on
Fahye Dielle: if it happened AGAIN I would want to have a serious talk about whether he actually wanted to be in the relationship
Fahye Dielle: going with male pronouns for sake of ease, here
schiarire: I swear I had this conversation recently, but I was more with the "Gosh, that is pretty bad, you should talk to him" and less with the "cheating doesn't bother me as much as it's supposed to."
Fahye Dielle: I have this weird idea that if he told me he was having a just-sex affair with someone I would be all "okay! I won't wait up! have fun! don't get the bimbo pregnant!"
schiarire: hahahaha
schiarire: like, send me a postcard
Fahye Dielle: Largely because you'll notice that sex doesn't factor highly into my wants, what with my sex drive being mostly low and always mercurial.
Fahye Dielle: I keep being struck with the desire to get married but not be obliged to have sex with them. Because then you could find someone really INTERESTING and NICE and COMPATIBLE and not feel like you have to be attracted to them as well. It'd be great.
Fahye Dielle: Because I am attracted to so few people
schiarire: the cynical idea, of course, is that people do not have sex after marriage
schiarire: so you would be fine
Fahye Dielle: I feel like it is unnecessarily restricting my range
Fahye Dielle: I think to be in a normal relationship I would have to be attracted to them, yes, because otherwise the touching thing wouldn't happen. I don't know. I don't need a LOT of touching, but sometimes I need a little.
Fahye Dielle: And I didn't mention the word love, either. Huh.
schiarire: hahahaha
schiarire: too much education.
Fahye Dielle: clearly
Fahye Dielle: I think...I am just somehow really skeptical of the very IDEA. That you can feel an emotion that big. I never feel big emotions unless I am PMSing, and then they just piss me the hell off because I feel messy and uncontrolled.

schiarire: The worst, absolute worst thing to me is clinginess. I can't tolerate it. I'm pretty easy going, but I can't stand being suffocated, or being put in the position of having to (for example) call someone every day and want to talk to them constantly if it isn't natural. Which it's never been.
Fahye Dielle: Ugh. I hate clingy. Haaaaate. Even in my description of what I want there is a lot of s-p-a-c-e
Fahye Dielle: Also: I think my adherence to plans and structure is detrimental. In ALL of my Plans For What's Going To Happen Next there is quite a bit of travel - two years here, three years there - and I think I feel weird getting into something when I know it'll end at such and such a time. Or I feel like I could lower my standards just for that reason, but who the hell is heartless enough to enter into a relationship with the mindset "it doesn't matter if this is less than ideal, I'm leaving in a year anyway"

~

But what does it all MEAN, doctor?

I welcome any and all comments, insights, suggestions or helpful impromptu analysis. Disagree? Surprised by anything? I don't deal well with anything that smells like pity, but other than that...

ETA:

Fahye Dielle: I am kind of worried that all the things I repress are hiding somewhere
schiarire: doubtless they are
Fahye Dielle: it FEELS like they've just disappeared.
schiarire: like tumours!
Fahye Dielle: but what if they're LYING IN WAIT
Fahye Dielle: JUST LIKE TUMOURS
schiarire: YOU HAVE PSYCHOLOGICAL TUMOURS!
Fahye Dielle: *cracks up* NOOOOO
schiarire: PSYCHOLOGICAL MRI! PSYCHOLOGICAL MRI
Fahye Dielle: I think it's called "therapy"
schiarire: "Therapy" ...
It's probably true that just about anyone could benefit from some actual good therapy.
schiarire: As opposed to the bad kind. der.
Fahye Dielle: But I would feel like I was wasting the therapist's time! I would just sit there and feel silly because I'm not really unhappy and I didn't have a bad childhood
schiarire: Aww ... everyone has the right to therapy. Like life/liberty/property, thank you John Locke.
schiarire: Therapy is the modern addendum.

~

*giggles* Clearly, Ji has the answer to everything.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Possibly means you're just happy being single. Possibly means you want more of an intimate friendship than relationship. Possibly means you want more of a guide than a partner. Possibly means a fuckload of things :p

I think that the problem with love and attraction is that it does all its hitting unexpectedly. You're too systemically minded for instantaneous "love", I think...so I think a partnership might be better suited to you than a relationship. Having said that, I've lost some very logical and rational people to love, so it can happen, heh. You're not the type to fall in love at the drop of a hat, unlike those that fall in love with everyone they meet. You're more the type to only find one or two people in your whole life that you feel suitibly comfortable with to consider yourself "in love".

Like I said, could mean a lot. You remind me a lot of

lunatic_pages in this post...you're both searching for a logic and rationality to love that doesn't exist *grin*

I was hoping you'd reply :) You are good at teasing out bits of me I'm not good at seeing myself. Like catching the bit on your back that you can't quite reach with the sunscreen.

This is my whole romanticism/pragmatism dichotomy again. If I was JUST pragmatic it wouldn't bother me much. I'd just shrug it all off. But I feel like I SHOULD try and work out why most people manage some kind of relationship experience in their first two decades of life and I've managed to sail on past.

Woo! I'm like, mindleech extrordinaire! Or somesuch.

Okay, to do that annoying thing psych-people do, why do you feel that way? I mean, you're not the first person to go through life without jumping on the lovewagon. Is it particularly important to you to experience love, is it a curiosity thing, or is it just what society tells you you should do?

I'm curious as to why I am attracted to so few people, and why so few people show any interest in me. I'm curious as to what it's like, as I said, to feel something that big and important. I feel like I'm missing something that everyone who experiences it would agree that it enriches and expands your life.

It's not a societal thing at all. Half of society thinks I shouldn't be bisexual. Some of society is probably surprised that I'm a virgin. Some of society probably has far less divorced ideas of love and sex than I do.

Well, I guess then it comes down to what kinds of people you find yourself attracted to. If there's something about them that's common in all of them, you know? If you find yourself attracted to certain types of people, then that's a good place to start with figuring out what might or might not be either helping or hindering the progress of getting close to someone - ie, if you were attracted to people that deep down you know you're incompatible with, then that would naturally affect whether or not you found yourself involved with anyone or not. I was going to rant more about this kind of thing (such as acting on attractions and not and so on) but then I realized I was pretentiously speaking out of my ass, so I'll spare you that ^_^

As for people being attracted to you, I'm sure there are millions but you've firmly planted your beliefs elsewhere and don't notice them.

What kinds of people? SO FEW. It's horrible. I have brief flares of 'everyone is pretty! whee!' at the appropriately hormone-driven times of month, but this is just a recent thing. Because I went on the Pill before my sex drive kicked in, and then the Pill SUPPRESSED these hormone cycles, and so I didn't actually have much of a sex drive at ALL until a year ago. Attractiveness-wise, I have very high and/or inexplicable standards. Which I don't like at all.

And I haven't properly met anyone new in a long time, so it's hard to assess what I find immediately attractive in a personality. There has to be something physical there as well for me to even start thinking in the relationship mindset.

I have had maybe two crushes on real people in my entire life, and neither were serious enough for me to consider acting on them.

Ahahaha. Haven't I told you my bitter tale of...not woe, really, more PISSED-OFF-NESS...regarding people being attracted to me?

I remember a few horror stories you told me from when I was in Canberra last XD

Hmm, I don't know. Come to Melbourne. We have lots of shiny pretty people here that look like something out of comics. Especially on Brunswick street. I'll find you some nice straight artistfag or something. XD

I live in a state of "everyone is pretty! whee!" so I understand that part *shifty eyes* Unfortunately it effectively castrates me because I'm never sure whether I'm interested in someone really or if it's just a case of thinking they're shiny. Hence my eternal living in the land of everyone-else-should-make-the-first-move.

In terms of what you find attractive in people, fantasies count as much as real people do, by the way. ^_^

Ooh. Well. Certainly I'll just pack up and move to Melbourne :D Well, I mean, if you can put up with me for a weekend, I'll be happy to scrape together some money and let you drag me around the streets showing me pretty people and interesting shops.

Hmm. Okay. Confidence, a little bit of aloofness (I will confess to a dreadful weakness for the challenage of someone who is known to be very picky). Quick sharp humour. Eye contact that says a lot. Dares. Challenges.

I feel this serious conversation needs flippant icons.

Sure thing. When we've moved we'll have a spare room all set up for visitors for exactly this reason - me dragging people around Melbourne and pointing out how pretty the people are and how scummy the city itself is. Whee!

Hmm. The downside is that people like you describe often have either their fair share of arrogance or insecurities. You certainly know how to have rare tastes.

Hmmmmmmm. This will need consideration.

I agree with the use of flippant icons. ^_^

Well. I'm saving for my trip to America, so I may not have the airfare to & from Melbourne any time too soon. Maybe in the midsemester break!

OH. Adding something: I wonder if there is any nice way to say "is prepared to mock-fight in a way that actually results in bruises". Probably not. Blunt is good.

Man, Jamie Bamber does the best mockable faces.

I would suggest that you keep in mind that what you want and what you need can be very different things. I was thought that someone unpredictable and volitile would be exciting - it's only now I realise that I NEEDED someone stable and sane. Surrounded by the neurotics I am (not to mention being SO anal myself), he's extremely important in giving me perspective and realism.

Overanalysing yourself is not important in this situation. What you want at any given moment is a better guide - what begins as a lustful night of happy might end up being the one you want to spend forever with. Having a concrete idea of the 'kind of person' you want will mean that you are far less willing to make compromises, and no relationship would work without that.

You don't surprise me as such - but the detail does. :P

*plants legs on YOU. affectionately.*

Thank you, dearie. That is a very good point. We should get together and drink girly drinks and have a heart-to-heart sometime soon.

AWWWW. happy to. your hypothetical love life is a subject that interests me greatly!

speaking of drinks and getting together - you realise we are down a party venue for this semester? WHAT SHALL WE DO? I say we enforce a rotational system. *rubs hands menacingly*

*eyes apartment* Next time the chocolate fountain comes out, we are laying down SHEETS. So I don't have to scrub melted chocolate out of the carpet and off my beloved coffee table again.

We should do something on Thursday or Friday! We will have so little time in which out lives are unburdened by assessment!

AWWWW poor coffee table. *pats it lovingly*

so little time in which I'M WORKING THREE JOBS AT THE MOMENT!!

but yes. thurs i'm free from 1pm! which is nice. or friday? i could do a late lunch from 2pm?

also we need to email rachael. can you do it, on the basis that i emailed her the "we screwed up!" one last? As far as meeting her, I'm free same times as above.

1pm Thursday would be ideal. We could go into Civic and get cheap & swanky lunch at Red Gecko and taaaaaalk.

Sure, I'll email her and suggest...ugh...I only have an 11am lecture on Friday and then I was going to go home, but I suppose I could kick around campus. What do you suggest?

why don't you tell Rachael 3pm Thurs? That gives us enough time to babble and you don't have to hang around uni on a friday. lucky you. *grumble*

Red Gecko sounds TASCHTY.

also - just in order to make you green with envy - stooty has just finished downloading entire 2nd season BSG. he asked me to let you know sexual favours are welcome. :P

Can do. Hopefully she'll be free.

He can't have the ENTIRE second season. It hasn't aired yet. But ARGHOMGNEEEEEED. I wonder if I could just camp out in his room and glue myself to his computer.

*raises eyebrows* Tell him it's very tempting, but I'm not risking his girlfriend's scary scary wrath.

SO SCARY. let me tell you.
[actually i made that part up. he would be outraged if he knew i said he said such things :P]

he has 16 episodes?

You might raise your voice and I would quail in terror!

Right, there are going to be 20 in all and 17 have screened in the US. I have up to 13.

W00000000T FOR LAB ENTRANCE!!!!! i sat, constantly refreshing, and yet was beaten by about 15 people. how is this possible? to bed i say.

Well, you've already been given lots of sane advice and commentary, but my feeling is... I don't think I can say much of any help here, actually. For what it's worth: my standards of aesthetic attractiveness are rather wide, but finding someone pretty doesn't mean I find them attractive on a sexual level. In fact, as much as I know most people would find this hard to believe of me, I have a very low sex drive and am rarely attracted in a sexual sense to anyone, excluding those hormonal moments everyone has sometimes. However, I am emotionally attracted to people very easily, and I also am generally very tactile, which is where I differ from you. Luckily Mari is much the same as me in all the above regards.

My advice is, no matter how much you like someone as a person, don't date them if thinking about kissing them or whatever just feels wrong, even if you think they're pretty. It's bound to end in disaster, and probably quite quickly.

What it says about you, I think, is that you're the kind of person who's not very tactile or easily sexually attracted to other people, but that doesn't mean you're not a romantic. It just means your definition of romantic is different to most people's-- I, for example, do not believe in love at first sight, but I would still class myself as the romantic type.

Was there a point to all this? For someone who doesn't know what she's saying this is really long. Sorry, I hope it makes SOME kind of sense. ^^;

That's an interesting one. I find so few people attractive that when I do, it usually means I also find them attractive on a sexual level. Always, with men. With girls I have a wider range of aesthetic appreciation, but probably the same number of actual sexual attractions. Um. Does that make sense? There's also the fact that I never really bother letting aesthetic appreciation of a girl get beyond 'wow, she's pretty' because the chances are she's straight anyhow :D

Hah. Well. Things I could plausibly consider romantic include being bought a ticket to Titus Andronicus and letting me kick them in the shins when I'm frustrated, so you could be right.

No, that makes sense. It's like how I don't subconsciously flirt with females as often as males (despite my preferences) because it's less likely they'll take it well. <-- (Big neon sign to one of my faults/issues, but let's not go into that now.)

Hee. That is kind of cute. In a violent way. XDDD

Yeah, well, me and violence :) 'Nuff said.

I was hoping that you would reply :D

How do you define 'romantic'? it's one of those nights.

Ebony: Because I forsee this involving a lot of exchange, in the interests of taking less time I'm going to ask you here and probably c&p this to fahye's journal in case she wants to see the reply too: when you say "how do you define 'romantic'", do you mean what do I personally find romantic or more generally?
Ji: what you personally find romantic
Ebony: okay. hm.
Ebony: Little gestures, I think, that show whoever it is is thinking of me. Things that show that the other person really KNOWS me, and things that show they really care about me. Being able to accept me for who I am and not trying to change me; not necessarily putting up with all my crap because god knows I need to be called back into line at times, but more understanding that I need a lot of time to myself, that I sometimes love more than one person, that I sometimes need reassurance. That kind of thing. Um. In-jokes can be, because it's both a sign of humour and closeness. Sharing things, though this is subject to that whole need for freedom and alone time and such. Sacrifice; doing something that is hard for them and I know is hard for them but they do it because they care. Endearments. Sometimes things like hugging.

(The end-- then Ji had to vamoose to bed.)

I find it interesting that yours are very much rooted in the abstract and emotional field; we both know you're far more emotional than me, I guess, but I try to think of things I find romantic and it's all quirky and physical. I suppose the things I listed in the main post count.

*totally inappropriate icon, tra la*

Yeah, that is kind of odd. *contemplates it*

I second izumi on the what you need vs what you want thing. I'm not sure my mother, a scientist with a phD, would have expected to end up with a musician who didn't do any schooling past high school. On the surface my mother and father are very different people. My mother is more mecurial, less assertive and more of an A type personality than my father. On top of that when they first met it was going to be a one night stand and it has lasted over 25 years!

I don't think any of us really know what we need before we find it. It is all very well to see things a particular way when it's all hypothetical but doesn't really mean a whole lot because both the stimuli and your reaction to it are just your imagination. I'm sort of labouring the point here aren't I?

Just go with the flow. If you end up dying old and alone what the big deal, we're all essentially alone in the universe anyway and the whole lovey dovey 2 becomes 1 crap is just our human denile kicking in. Buy a dozen cats or so, that way they'll eat the corpse before the apartment starts to smell. Kidding kidding, well partly anyway. I did enjoy writing that though, I rarely show my cynisism.

Just be happy and everything else will follow on. As my maternal grandfather would say "Love is like butterfly, you chase it and it flies away from you, you ignore it and it will come and land on your shoulder" (for some reason I alway imagine that being said in an outrageously fake french accent - despite the fact he was Australian).

Oh shit I've written a novel! I do hope it makes sense 'cause I can't be fucked to edit it.

I do not get on well with animals. I feel that this is a sign the universe is going to grant me a relationship at SOME stage, because I could not at all pull off the spinster-with-cats thing. Although I am rather fond of the words 'eccentric maiden aunt'.

I like that logic :)

Seriously though, I'm sure you will - if there is no hope for you there is no hope for anybody. I get the feeling you are seriously underestimating the amount of people interested in you. I'm guessing the previously mentioned obsessed secret admirers might be the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps their are a few that are interested but haven't said anything because they got distinctly "I'm not interested" vibes from you. Seeing as how you are attracted to so few it sound very plausible.

On the being repressed thing. What exactly are you repressing? Is that you are really repressed or that you simply that just you don't have much to repress?

Oh, I repress my negative emotions. I trained myself to do it a looooong time ago when I foolishly decided that being seen crying would make people think I was weak, and now it's entirely automatic. I put events behind me forcefully. I keep a lid on my anger and I tend to not let it show when I'm upset or sad or scared. I can put things aside for long enough to function, and generally they never come back.

That's sound healthly me. Except the crying bit, crying releases happy neurotramitters in the brain, it's self-limiting - you deal, you move on.

But repressing bad events and so on sounds good. I think this is why people critise Freudian psycho-analysis 'cause it brings so much painful stuff. Sometimes it is best to put stuff behind you so can function. The GOOD thing about it is that is helps you analyse your motivations and can perhaps help break destructive patterns. If you don't have destructive patterns though why bother. Self analysis is a double edged sword.

My personal approach to emotion is to feel it, but then to disassociate myself from it and say "why am I feeling this way, what is the worst case senario, how can I fix it" and then I don't feel so bad because most things are solvable. I believe Freud called this defense mechanism intellectualisation.

What I think? Is that you're young, and you shouldn't worry so much. I didn't manage a relationship in the first two decades of my life, either. Everybody moves at different speeds. And some people are made for love, others aren't. I, for a long time, thought I wasn't. And you saw what happened to that. I tend, still, to be the pragmatic one in the relationship, I'm still the one who Needs My Space. But I've found someone who I also want to share my space with. It makes things difficult. But it's completely and absolutely worth it.

I'll say to you what I say to Selkie:

You're overthinking. There's nothing wrong, so don't worry about it. Things'll happen in their own time.

I promise. And I know all. *hugs* ;-)

For what it's worth, my aunt Janet didn't get married until she was 35.

While it's possible she was in relationships before that, I don't remember any of her former boyfriends, and nobody's ever mentioned them around me.

Also, my parents are a very bad example, but ignoring them for the moment -- I think that most people under the age of 20, or hell for that matter maybe 25, really really don't know themselves well enough to figure out if a relationship with this random person or that is actually going to work out. My first and second relationships have the potential to give me nightmares, if I think about them too much; the third moved too fast, for all that it took fourteen months or so to get there, but the thought that I could be married to him right now kind of frightens me also. (Oh god, I was so immature. It is good that I broke that one off, really, especially since as far as I know he's still not in college anymore and still working at Walmart.)

Had a while with celibacy, and a long-distance relationship that didn't work out due to massive lack of communication, and more celibacy, and now another long-distance relationship that may or may not end up working out, although I hope it does and at least there's long daily conversations and the like. Anyway. It's-- the point of this is not supposed to be me dumping a list of relationships on you, I swear. Really.

For what it's worth, though, I remain convinced that you will someday find someone who can fit into the majority of your quirky desires, if not all of them, and that it will be comfortable and you'll be happy and there will be kicking and it will be okay. *hugs*

Hm.

I'm not sure what to comment with, because I feel much the same.

And I'm beginning to think that that's okay. It's an okay way to be, no matter how many times my brother in law needles me about dating, or my mom worries about babies or whatever.

To be honest, I'm beginning to think I need somebody who travels for a living or something. So I can be alone, blessedly alone, but then have someone who comes home on occasion. You know?

I do know. Maybe instead of selling my soul to the army (or in addition to!) I should become an Army Wife. It'd be like a part-time marriage, and you'd always be so happy to see them when they come home.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only