Moved.

I've moved this blog to a new location, as Word Press has more features and control options than blogger does. You can find a blog about common things at http://blogaboutcommonthings.wordpress.com/. My schedule is still Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, with today's blog in the works. I hope you enjoy the new location and layout, bigger and better things are in store.

Thanks for your continued readership and/or bookmarking, it means quite a bit to know that others enjoy my hobby as much as I do.

On Love.

DICTIONARY DEFINITION.

love
  /lʌv/ [luhv] noun, verb, loved, lov⋅ing.
–noun
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.
4. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5. (used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?
6. a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.
7. sexual intercourse; copulation.
8. (initial capital letter) a personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid.
9. affectionate concern for the well-being of others: the love of one's neighbor.
10. strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking for anything: her love of books.
11. the object or thing so liked: The theater was her great love.
12. the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God.
13. Chiefly Tennis. a score of zero; nothing.
14. a word formerly used in communications to represent the letter L.

The dictionary's partially correct, but sadly misses almost everything that matters about love.


ATTEMPT IN BRIEF.
A friend of mine asked me how she'd know when she was in love, and I told her she'd know. I foolishly tried to explain love, and fell flat on my face. How can I possibly expect to explain love when no one in the world can properly? There are literally millions of poems, movies, stories, and songs about it. Fuck, The Beatles built an entire career on it. All they needed was love.

Love isn't really an emotion, not a singular one anyway. Someone said that love was essentially controlled madness. Can't remember who (maybe I'm making them up and it's something of mine. Who knows.) This is partially true. When in love one will find themselves willing to do a number of things they never would when in sound mind. When in love, people are more willing to do things both astounding and frightening.

Love is a hybrid of every emotion humans can feel, I believe. Everyone sings and writes about the happiness, contentment, and trust associated with love. That's dandy. Some write about the pain and humiliation associated with it. Swell. Few ever remember that with love comes a degree of concession. One will find themselves willing to give up things they adore in daily life to make the prospect of love work. Maybe that's why it works so well with relationships.

Love comes with a degree of lust usually, though it is not required. It serves mostly as garnish for a main course with significantly less tangible substance. It's common to say that you want to "make love to" someone, but really you're probably just having sex with them. Making love is something very different, even though the mechanics of it are essentially the same. The difference is on a psychological level (and obviously emotional), in the fact that you feel a connection with someone beyond what you could just feel bumping uglies.

Love is anger and pain, love is happiness and contentment. Love is unconditional trust and conditional (but voluntary) freedom.

POLYAMOROSITY.

All that said, I feel that all people are capable of loving one another on a genuine level, especially people we don't normally even like on a day to day basis. Love is a little like scent in this way, it is unique to all people. This means that all people are not only capable but actually expected to love more than one person at any given time. Not all are romantic loves (I love my best friends as much as my girlfriend, but I'm not looking to move in and sleep next to most of them for the rest of my life), but at any time we all love many people.

In this way, we are all polyamorous, even if we are monogamous. I have a small theory that monoamorous people are actually usually insane and become either stalkers or shut-ins.

LOVE IS NOT OBSESSION.

This header is half a lie. Obsession is sometimes tied to love, but obsession alone is not love. Many people get caught up with the concept of one person as everything they love (possibly something about the way attraction works), even though this is not love either. Having the compulsion to follow people online, in person, or anywhere else without them wanting you to/knowing you do is not healthy, nor is it love, nor is it legal. If you have trouble with this, please get professional help.

On the same note, one can feel a "deeper connection" physically without being in love or making love. All they need is to have an obsession with the other person to the point where they develop dependency. Dependency (or codependency, more importantly) is not love. It is a personal issue.

CONCLUSIONS.

I'm failing at describing love. Shit.






Love is something beyond words, even though I just wasted a few hundred trying to do so. It just is.

Bonus Content!

I was going to repost an old piece I wrote about Valentine's Day, but that would really just rip off my audience. However, I feel it might be helpful to explain why this "holiday" doesn't matter to me. After I'll post a real bit for the night.

Valentine's Day is viewed as a celebration of love, but that in itself is a lie. If love exists in a relationship, then it is celebrated every day. Instead, Valentine's Day has degraded into International Fuck-Day. Now candy, card, and condom companies around the world (though really, America's where it's at) are cashing in on the blind group think of people that feel inadequate.

VD (to borrow a joke from a friend) is sickening. Because of the need to cash in, the single would-be consumers are left feeling alone. They feel like there is something wrong with them that they couldn't attract and keep a mate, even though that's no easy task in reality by any stretch of the imagination.

Consider instead for a moment doing these things on any day besides VD. Pick a random day in May to go out to eat and see a show with your significant other, a date in August for random roses, and another in November for chocolate. You look like you actually care about them, rather than feeling obligated to do so by society around you.

I suppose I'll reference something that doesn't exist yet, but the post on love will tie into this heavily. Anyone can spend large amounts of money to buy a girl a gemstone, and it would mean nothing. You could do it, your brother could do it, her best friend could do it. It would mean nothing, especially for a day that you're almost expected to do it.

Want to celebrate love? Do something you don't want to for their behalf, and do it with a smile for them. Do something nice without feeling obligated to or expected to. Go to that opera they want to go to, even though you can't stand it. Leave the mp3 player at home, grin and bear it. Show that you're worth a shit the whole year round.

Check back later today for something oddly fitting.

On Relationships.

I've received some feedback recently about my Nature of Attraction post, and was asked about the nature of love and relationships. I will not talk about the nature of love, outside of it as a necessity in a healthy relationship. Love is too fucking complicated to really describe in my own verbal capacity as of yet. Maybe after this weekend.

Relationships, however, are well within my ability.

A healthy relationship is more than just liking someone enough to bring them around in public and have sex with them. It's more than having someone to be comfortable around, or to write sappy songs about and regret two years later. A healthy relationship is built on trust, honesty, love, compromise, and commonality.

Trust and honesty are obviously linked, but not the same. Trust is something that must be earned in most situations in life. Without trust, a relationship can never actually happen. In this case, trust is conferred usually after a trigger event in the early stages of the "courtship phase," which is the time of exceptional stupidity between two people interested in one another.

Honesty is the way you keep trust. This doesn't always mean not lying when you go out drinking with your friends, or admitting when you forgot an important date (Note: admission does not earn forgiveness.) It also means showing genuine character without masking the things about yourself that you don't like. If you're hoping to share your life with this person, they're going to have to know how you are. Otherwise, you are not only doomed to fail in the relationship, but not even retain the (now) former lover as a friend. If you liked them enough to consider being with them in the first place, you probably still want to be friends. So don't be a dick.

Love's complicated. It alone is also not enough to save a relationship. Sometimes love alone can lead people to do many crazy and stupid things, but it should not be the only reason you're with someone. As love is also too big to put into words, it is also too big to always be there at the start of a relationship. It should grow into it. If anyone says straight away that they love you, they're probably lying to nail you or bat-shit crazy with abandonment issues. The most important thing to take away is that love is a definite must, but not too early on.

A lot of people say "love is give and take." Most of these people also live in Clicheville, and couldn't form an original thought if you threatened to torch their houses. Unfortunately, this one is situationally correct. There must be a degree of compromise between a couple, but not about the grand things that people imagine. Sometimes it's as limited as giving people time to themselves to gather their thoughts and de-stress. People that make jokes about developing a timeshare for who gets to drive the minivan are usually too pussy-whipped to really understand that they've lost all they really had for themselves. The same is said about people that refuse to leave the house whenever a show is on, even when their lover got tickets to a concert for that night. Neither example is really compromise or absence of it in a meaningful way, both are examples of a couple that will probably fight often.

Commonality is one of the most important, underrated traits a relationship must have. If you have nothing in common with your lover, then you probably saw a way to work your libido and love came by way of repetition. This can also change as a relationship goes on. When you started dating you both liked football, birdwatching, and painting. As time went on, your lover stopped liking painting, you stopped liking birdwatching, and neither of you liked football after watching your favorite team lose at the Superbowl... four years in a row. You both feel comfortable with the relationship, knowing that it is still better than you feel you could ever land otherwise. So you never split up, even though you fight all the time. This issue can be fixed relatively easily, even though it's one of the biggest reasons why couples fail. Find something you're both interested in again, and try to find out why you both grew away from the things you liked in the first place. Most couples can be saved in this way, even if they don't realize it. In essence it means relearning your lover's personality, but it's a small setback compared to ending the relationship and going on a drinking binge until you're broke and covered in your own vomit.

So the final recap:

DO Trust.
DO NOT Lie.
DO Love.
DO Compromise.
DO NOT Let comfort blind you.

If you do these things, your relationship should be much more healthy than others would be. It works best when applied to long term relationships, but it seems to be a good general set of rules on its own.

I've assembled 97 cars! All of them fictional!

Beyond showing off one's personal effects, I'm often amused by an overexertion of intelligence and experience as well when two people compete for the same mate.

To keep the automotive trend, the girl in question is actually very knowledgeable about cars. She's taken apart several engines in the past on her own, and was raised around mechanics. She knows the inside of an automobile better than most people know the embarrassing birthmarks they have on the inner thigh.

Guy A tries to court her with flagrant language, attempting to romanticize the way that a piston moves. He makes himself out to seem so much more involved than he actually is, regardless of how much of his life he spends in his workshop. He tries to emphasize it too heavily, and ultimately fails. This example often happens when guys talk about their penises, often alienating women before they even have a chance to find out they were lied to.

Guy B however makes no claims about his experience with cars that are not true. He has the ability to do much with one, but seldom has the opportunity. He's more of a tinkerer, but when he talks about what he's done, he does not lie about it.

Nine times out of ten, Guy B will end up being that close male friend that never becomes more, despite being better suited for the female in question. On the rare occasion that he does become her love interest, it's usually after Guy A has already mind-fucked them into a lack of trust for all guys. By this time, the lady is assuming that all males are just out to "pump-and-dump," and Guy B has huge amounts of trouble showing their genuine, noble intent. By this time Guy A has had such an impact that should they ever split up, Guy B's reputation will be dragged through the mud, while Guy A is already hard at work on the next victim.

This doesn't have to be the way the world works, but most of the time it is. In the case when A and B are both mooning over the girl in question, B must use slightly more emotional force to show they're serious. Being the nice guy all the time is a recipe for doom, since most people seem to want someone that will bring equal parts comfort and conflict.

The trick is to make sure that you're being told the truth, in its entirety.

Look at my new toy! Love me!

Please ignore the time stamp, it's really Thursday night still.

I'm amused whenever I see guys going for the same girl, and vice versa. It's impossible not to play favorites, sometimes painful when they make obvious blunders, but always entertaining for an onlooker. This isn't because we take pleasure in your misery (while this might be a contributing factor in many cases), or because we see something beautiful in the human condition that we can best identify with through aspirations that are doomed to fail. We are entertained because when people are initially smitten they do the funniest things.

When someone has sense about them they know better than to try to impress others with their toys rather than their personality, like a small child bringing out their newest doll to show off to a guest. No one cares what kind of car you drive, how powerful your computer is, how many moths you have in your bug collection, or how you acquired that shrunken head collection. Actually, that last one's a lie. That's a very interesting aspect for other unrelated reasons.

If you're trying to get someone to notice you and maybe like you, you're much better off showing them the sort of person you are. That means more than just showing off your stuff, it means letting them understand why your stuff matters to you and is worth showing. A kid with daddy's Mustang might grab attention faster than the kid who worked for his Neon, but the kid that worked for his car just showed that he's capable of doing things for himself without needing to suck the parents' teats until they get married. Things like this matter more. The Mustang might go faster and look prettier, but at the end of the day it means nothing.

There are many other examples that amuse me, but the trumping of items over personality is truly the most entertaining. The folks in question aren't children, not legally at least. To see them vie like toddlers is hysterical on a level beyond perceptible humor.

I'll come back to this topic tomorrow night, it's worth breaking schedule for when I'm more awake.

Magical Friendships (Heart)

I've been rereading a few books from the old Magic: The Gathering series, from when a storyline still mattered. Specifically I'm rereading the Ice Age trilogy by Jeff Grubb (Gathering Dark, The Eternal Ice, and Shattered Alliance). They came out in 1999, at the beginning of my obsession with this game and the books that explained the storyline. I didn't realize it when I was thirteen, but the concepts covered in the stories thus far (still need to do Shattered Alliance one last time) are incredibly complex and relate to a number of things outside of this tiny corner of the nerd universe.

They've made me realize a few things:

-I don't know if I fully trust anyone based on intentions alone.
-Relationships are fragile, temporary, and can only exist while living.
-Relationships of all kinds - not just the popularized definition which only refers to romantic relationships - should be mended when injured, not discarded like a broken toy.
-I identify more with old men in regards to thought patterns and logic, without it seeming antiquated in execution.
-I hate publishing trends for phasing well written books like these out in exchange for much of the crap I sold when I worked in a bookstore.

The last is probably the most important on a larger scale, if I really wanted to talk about our culture, but that's not what I'm aiming for. I care about the way people work with each other, not the way they take advantage of one another for monetary gain.


The following partial synopsis contains spoilers. The books are eleven years old and harder to find now, but if you ever plan on reading them (you should if you don't mind fantasy) you shouldn't read the next few paragraphs.


A character named Jodah inadvertently becomes magical in his biology, aging significantly slower than the average human. Incidentally, a side effect of aging is the accumulation of memories, of which an overabundance will drive one mad. I understand this concept, and the writing presents it in a believable way. More importantly, he is able/forced to experience the loss of loved ones and friends hundreds of times over, as they die while he stays mostly the same. His only advantage over reality is that he can start over without the guilt weighing as heavily on his conscience as he would had they aged with him in his way. The guilt will still be there, and grow worse as time goes on, but at least the person it relates to won't be there to salt the wounds.

Maybe that just drives the damage deeper.


End spoilers. Pansy.


While thinking about this I realized that we can't all simply "start over" whenever we cause detriment to our relationships. Our friends are there for us only as long as we are alive and keep the actual friendship alive. Once it dies, it is dead. No rekindling into a zombie, no rising from the dead. Much like real life, it stays dead.

This can relate to many things. An old flame? Once it's snuffed, it's gone. Former friend that bonked your girlfriend? The damage can never be undone, outside of letting go and determining what matters more. Even when relating with strangers in the workplace, you must keep on good terms. The dead don't buy things (no one will get this reference). Every person you've ever interacted with, to a degree, has a relationship with you. The kind you have is entirely up to you, and how you play it out.

This doesn't mean I'm going to reach out to the man that raped a close friend and shake his hand, nor does it mean that I'm going to hold back from speaking my thoughts even when they might not be what someone wants to hear. It does mean that I will value all of my friends more than I would anything else though, and the people that matter to me will continue to matter/matter more than previously. It's a bit like elevating a pedestal that was already above the others.

More important than all this, I will make an active attempt to not let small things bother me as much as they potentially could. I will go out of my way to be the best individual I can be for all around me, human condition withstanding. I wish I could remember how Shattered Alliance went, though the title alone seems contradicting to the theme I present here. It's fine for the context of Eternal Ice.

The Nature of Attraction

Before I go into this topic, there's something very important to note. Attraction and love are not the same thing. This will not explain love in any way, so don't look for it here. It will explain from my point of view why people fall for people who will not treat them right, and why it's sometimes easier to just move on right away to a new person.

Someone I know recently went through a minor (though to them it seemed major) ordeal over a potential lover (referenced now as "Edgar".) Condensed, Edgar found someone else with most of the same qualities that they had found in my friend, and moved on after a long wait. Edgar wasn't in the wrong, really, because of circumstances that don't need to be brought up. Edgar did however raise an interesting point that I'd acknowledged for a long time, but never put to words. We aren't interested as much in a person as we are the things about them.

"Oh Andrew, if a person is made of things then you're interested in the person. How silly of you!" some would counter. Sure asshole, that's like saying that you can breathe water just because it has oxygen in it.

Example: guy A (Albus) has met girl B (Blair) and has fallen in love and lust (in reverse order) with. He loves that she's witty, and enjoys Shakespeare discussions with him. He knows he likes girls that are shorter than him, and a little wild sometimes. Blair likes guys that are taller than her, intelligent, and practical in their outlook on life. She also has a thing for long hair.

Blair meets most of Albus' list, except that the extent of her wild streak cuts off with the occasional sexual reference. Albus meets enough of Blair's list to be acceptable, but not really a preference. He lacks long hair, and his world view is more free spirited than she's capable of handling. The later is huge, and immediately she has less interest than he could ever have in her.

Albus meets girl C (Clara) and easily brushes off the "loss" of Blair from his mind, since she has all of these things that he's interested in as well. Clara is also interested in him, but because her preferences lean towards his height, short hair, and the fun view of life. She is equally comparable for him, as she has the same things as Blair without being the same person. All other things are important, but not the "must have" list. It doesn't matter that Blair listened to rap while Clara is a fan of country and light pop music. It doesn't matter what the cup size of either was, since that's not a preference on his list either. They are not the same person, but some of the same traits are there.

We draw from this overly simplified example the conclusion that not all people are really snowflakes, as much as checklists when it comes to attraction. Most people are so deep into their lists that they've set impossible placements for themselves, meaning that in some sense they've adopted the "One person in the world for me" outlook. With the population of the Earth right now, they're statistically never going to find that person.

In contrast to this example however, negative traits can sometimes find themselves on the checklist too.

Guy D (Donnie) has had three girlfriends. The first was absolutely amazing for him, and met everything he'd ever look for in a woman (incidentally, the first will almost always set the core list for every person after). She on top of all these things was also schizophrenic and bipolar. Because of all the other traits she has, he learns to adapt and deal with these problems.

His second girlfriend has fewer of the traits, but the schizophrenia is also there.

The third girlfriend has more traits than the second, but is bipolar and also suffers from ADHD.

By the time that Donnie is looking for a girlfriend and has to choose between Elanor (who meets all on his list of positive traits) and Florence (who meets all but one of the positive traits, but has schizophrenia and ADHD), he's more likely to pick Florence, despite her being bat-shit crazy and likely to destroy the relationship.

There are other issues that can factor into it too, but I don't really believe in Freud. While many of his arguments have validity, the vast majority seem to state that he just wanted to fuck his mom. I find that most people don't want their opposing gender parent as a lover, based on conversations. Most seem to want the polar opposite, actually. Without speaking too heavily from personal experiences, it seems that the kind of relationship we have with our parents will determine if we're all Oedipus incarnate or if we actually do procreate for the strength of the species.

This gets more complicated as you look at real people. If Georgette wants all of the following things in a potential lover, it becomes more difficult (barely possible) to find the "ideal."

Woman
Intelligent
C-DD cup size
Shorter
Long, dark hair
Glasses
120-160 lbs
Highly flexible
Central Asian cultural background
Conservative leaning centrist views politically
Interest in action movies
Interest in Crime Dramas
Interest in Star Wars
Interest in Swing music
Interest in James Joyce
Knowledge of French language
A nervous tick of biting nails down to the cuticle

This list is still abridged compared to reality, but already it gets much more difficult to find a person that meets this criteria. When factoring geography in (assuming that Georgette lives in New York) it can get very difficult to find someone that fits her criteria. Then, assuming that this person is found, the chances are equally slim of meeting this person's own list as the "ideal."

That's why people will "settle," which is not the true term. The "ideal" is nearly impossible to attain. We find people who are best suited for us, and we hope that love takes root and makes the checks on the list work the way they should.

This doesn't mean that all people ultimately find someone less compatible for them than possible. Technically it does, but I retort with "Fuck you, pessimist." When you find someone that you are capable of loving, it doesn't matter what else was left.

I'm sure I'm forgetting points I wanted to make, but it's late and I'm tired.