Matt,

“For so long I have lived my life in the past and the future. If I learn to love myself, my wife, and my family with everything I have, RIGHT NOW. Than that is all I can ask of myself. I need to learn to let go of the fear/insecurities of what may happen tomorrow, and forget about what I have done or should have done in the past. That is the path that should free me from the angst. I fully understand that path is going to be difficult and that I have to allow myself to fall down every now and then.”

“Learn to love” sounds almost impossible to me. Granted, I read that babies actually learn compassion and pity, maybe even love. Or do they learn how to express the love that they feel? More than that, everything concerning the “love” of a particular individual, to my mind, is similar to any other emotion felt by that particular individual. Let me explain.

Several years ago I came across one article that made me think about it and think about it and think about it. The article read that all of us, every single person on this planet, is inherently, endlessly, incurably lonely. Lonely not only because of the unique genetic composition of each one of us, but also lonely (and this piece would include identical twins) because of the unique circumstances, events, occurrences in every individual’s life and his or her response to them.

So, say, when I say to somebody who has been left by a boyfriend, “I understand your pain, I’ve been there,” it is only half-truth. My pain, what I felt, was the result of my previous experiences, reactions, thoughts, chemical imbalances and whatnot. Hers would be different.

So that was regarding “love” as a notion. Everyone says “I love you,” but everyone has different things in mind (I am not talking about players and such here). For somebody, it may mean “I want to be with you forever,” and for somebody (mostly men, as psychologists tell me), it means “I love you here and now [can’t tell what will be tomorrow]”

As for learning to love, I still stick to my original thought that it is impossible to make somebody (even oneself!) feel emotions.

Given that firm conviction of mine, I can tell you that the only thing that I reproach my ex (besides the way he broke off with me – and that despite our previous agreements on how we should proceed should we or one of us fall out of love with each other or the other) is not that he stopped loving me. It is that for one, he was not paying attention to his feelings (and he told me that he always tried to find out why he didn’t like somebody – so I naturally thought that he was the type who pays attention to his feelings (my mistake)) to notice that they were on the wane, and, as an extension of that one, that he didn’t undertake any measures to revive the flame (and there are some). I am not sure those measures would have helped EVEN IF he were the type who does not believe that “love would do anything by itself, if it is true love. “ (Wrong, wrong, wrong!) But he was not. And I just couldn’t be angry with him when I saw how sincerely in love he was with that new woman. It was all very sincere, like in a two-year old child or a dog.

I have lived my life in the past and the future

I thought that this pertained mostly to women. I thought that men were more child-like (or animal-like – no offence intended) in this respect, their brains being naturally wired to live in the present moment.

You know, there was quite a long time in my life when I tried to live anticipating the worst. The idea was that if I expect the worst, then any other result will be a welcomed one. Well, several years ago I realised this was not the way to live my life. One expects the worst, one thinks about the worst, the worst happens, one has spent all that time in a bad mood. If one expects the best, but the worst happens, at least one didn’t spend that time worrying and sulking and fretting. BUT the shattering of expectations can be devastating. So I realised that the way to go was to expect NOTHING. Super difficult, but it falls completely in line with keeping one’s mind open.

My ex opened up the door of living in the moment and enjoying things here and now for me. Not that I didn’t do it before, but before it had been kind of tied to a particular location (the country side cottage where I would spend my summer vacations). At the same time, the fact that we were in an LDR contributed to my continuing to live looking into the future. As a student, I would look forward to vacations, as somebody in love with him, I would be looking forward to his arrival. Well, last year, I finally decided that my life was actually nearly everything I had ever dreamt of. Granted, I don’t have a chateau in France, but I have a nice home; I don’t have a Porsche, but the car I drive takes me from A to B with no issues, etc. I can pursue my hobbies, I can eat out, I can travel, I get enough free time for that, etc. And I decided that I would be living my life as if I were on vacation; finally, I didn’t really have anything to look forward to, I had everything there and then.

I mean should I be afraid if my wife watches porn? Does it pass quickly for women that they can be back to loving their spouse the same way.

Honestly, I don’t know about women in general. Maybe you can google what psychologists say (but not only psychologists’ opinions may differ, how they gather the information may affect the results).

And I have never watched porn, so I have no idea. I am far from being asexual, but there are some things I am simply not interested in. Sorry, can’t provide any insight here 😉 When I watched some scenes, like the ones in Basic Instinct, I simply got slightly aroused without any thought about any particular man. Besides, I don’t find and never have found male actors whom the majority of women is crazy about (Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise) particularly attractive, so there is a big chance that porn male actors will leave me indifferent.

Could you be in an intimate relationship with a man, and also have a best friend who is a different man. Yeah maybe platonic love. On the surface of my thoughts, I would think there would be a conflict of interests with this. But who am I to tell another person, whether it be my wife/daughter/son, who they can and cant be friends with. If my best friend was female I would throw a fit if my wife ask me to stop talking to her. I know you should be best friends with your spouse, but does that mean that you can’t have more than one best friend. I have about 6 college buddies who I would call my best friends, they all provide me with something different, but I know how each one of them would act.

Hm-m-m. For one, the practising psychologists whose books I have read and whom I trust (even though, as I said in the other thread of mine, I did find a few contradictions) are positive that sooner or later the “basic instinct” will surface.

On the other hand, I have one good male friend in my life and our relationship is completely asexual. And there are men to whom I am completely neutral sexually. But there are two but-s. The one is that the men to whom I am completely neutral are not really “best friends.” They are very good acquaintances and co-workers, but not even “friends” in the proper meaning of this word. And the other one is that even with that good male friend there was once an instance when I felt some sort of a spark towards him. It lasted only for five minutes or so, was extinguished with no effort at all, but it was there. And I suspect that during my most recent visit to his place, he felt something, too. But it is really tiny and nothing will ever come out of it.

Maybe, the key here is to have several “best friends”? My best friends (girlfriends) are somehow “covering” different aspects of my life, meaning that when we talk, I talk about different things with either one of them.

I was of that opinion for a long time that one must be one’s partner’s best friend and do everything together. Some pairs claim that that is how it is. But on the other hand, one can hardly expect one’s partner to be one’s twin in terms of interests, abilities, talents, etc. Besides, it is akin to those searches when you are offered a book or a film based on your previous selections. If you go with it, you will be getting only, say, romantic comedies, and you will never know that there are some really good thrillers around.

If my best friend was female I would throw a fit if my wife ask me to stop talking to her.

Well, my ex had one best friend who was female. By the way, no best male friends, only one guy from college with who he sort of got reconnected later. I later learnt that that was one of the characteristics of a narcissist. A female best friend (who also was his ex having refused to divorce her husband and marry him and who (soap opera at its best!) was also the best friend of his wife #3 – that is how they had got acquainted), no male friends, AND a few women with whom he enjoyed talking (but would claim that he was not attracted to them sexually) – that was subconsciously being done a) to prove to oneself that he has options and is still popular with the opposite sex and b) to let the partner know that she is replaceable. Also subconsciously.

That’s funny because my wife said something similar to  this one day when we were talking about Jay. She said all she really wanted to do was make-out like she was 15 again. Whereas my male mind equates that to leading to other things, she was quite positive that it would end there, maybe a walk on the beach or just sitting in the car.

I don’t quite understand how that correlates with your post from yesterday: “You know if my wife decides to sleep with another man”…?

The biggest thing for me would be to understand that I will be all right if no one catches me,

Some understandings come with time. As if Step 1 – your mind needs to become aware of it, Step 2 (happening without your active participation) – your body takes it on, soaks in it, processes and then one day you are there all of a sudden.

It happened like that to me with the idea that one must be happy, that one’s cup must first be full to be able to help others and to make others happy. I was still expecting somebody to come along and make me happy (and growing desperate that I was already 24 and had never had a two-sided relationship with a man with whom I would be in love and who would be in love with me; this rush didn’t do me good, as you know). Next I saw the validity of that statement (about one making ONEself happy first), but my whole being still couldn’t take it on. And then, I don’t know how, but that understanding became accepted as a truth. I could probably compare it to the process of falling asleep – you are not asleep yet, and then suddenly you already are.

Right now I am sort of stuck in this way on that idea that one must be whole and complete to be in a happy relationship. It has been a while already, but I think it is finally “sinking in,” my logic and reason having agreed with it a lo-o-ong time ago.

what I am reading is that Love expands and wanes as an individual changes. I think that Chemistry plays a huge role. Did you know that when a woman is on birth control, her pheromones change. Someone did a study on women who got involved with a man while they were taking birth control and what happened to there relationship once the woman stopped taking the birth control, there preference in men change.

Do you mean love in general (as the ability to give love, that is why you capitalized it) or the love that one feels for somebody in particular?

I didn’t know about that study, but I did read that women have preferences for different types of men depending on when where ovulation is (I think it is more brutal features around and during ovulation and guys with feminine features at other times (or the other way around)). I also read that men would find the scent of women (they were given T-shirts to smell) who were having ovulation more attractive than that of women at other stages of their cycle.

My wife and I share a strong chemical attraction. Her smell, her presence, her look drives me crazy. I have a unique view of this because my wife and I took a very long break between when we first met and when we got married. We had absolutely no contact during that break but both of us say that none of the relationships we had during that time had anywhere close to the same physical/chemical attraction as we have together.

First, I need to share with you the following page from the Tiny Buddha blog: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/strong-chemistry-doesnt-always-lead-strong-relationship/

I read a similar thing in Evan Marckatz’s blog. If I paste the link in, this website says that my message is a spam, so I suggest you just google “How long should I wait for chemistry to develop” and Evan’s name.

Second, my personal experience. The scent of my ex would drive me crazy. Him even more (he kept saying it all the time, and I don’t use tons of perfume). But it never prevented him from falling for another woman and enjoying her scent, too. But that’s my ex.

A year after my breakup with my ex, he and I were sitting together in his car (nothing personal, only work), and I felt that familiar pang in my chest. At the same time, there was a pause in our conversation, and I thought that he felt it, too. He didn’t say anything though.

One digression. I once openly discussed that similar “pang” with one man to whom I felt that incredible pull, like iron to magnet, and who was absolutely not a match on any other level. He said that he was feeling it, too. Next, I had a few interactions with my #2 after I had left him for my ex. I felt it too several times (not as acute as when I was in love with him, but still). I voiced it. He didn’t deny that he wasn’t feeling it at the same time.

I guess my point is that that is the result of the basic instinct of procreation in action. The question is whether the other party is aware enough of his or her emotions to acknowledge it or not.

So personally, I wouldn’t look too much into it.

To me, it is on par with “signs” as I call them. There was a period when I was missing this most recent guy, and I would see his name everywhere – movie subtitles, some Power Point presentations, for some reason his name would be mentioned at work, etc. I would see a rainbow when thinking about him, etc. And then it stopped. And nothing happened. It was most likely all coincidences amplified by my thinking about him all the time. So naturally, whatever happening having any relationship to him would be happening when I was thinking about him.

I hopefully can disagree with this point in one way, I agree that boundaries need to be set so that expectations can be made, but I also think there is room in any relationship where those boundaries can be re-evaluated.

In one of my answers to Jeff in July I wrote on the subject. Here it is:

General antagonisms would be being stubborn vs being persistent and being a coward vs being careful. This is just to give an idea what pairs or antagonisms I mean.

As for relationships, I still have no answer to

1. a) how to tell if a man/woman is coming strong, when it is a good sign (“really into you”) and when it is a bad one (such “love”may burn out quickly or, worse yet, one may be dealing with a narcissist)?

Similarly, when one is taking time, does it mean that one wants to learn the other person better, not rushing things (good?) or maybe s/he is simply not interested?

1. b) when one behaves in an understanding way vs when one is simply being a doormat and is being used for that
2. c) on the one hand, they say it is good to have values and principles, but on the other, they say that the one whose ideas are “set in stone”, is plainly not flexible, not learning, thus it is not good

I have a few more now, but those were the major ones.

I still don’t know.

Maybe this will be the next thing for my “being” to process…

I will be back to share my thoughts on your latest two posts in an hour or two.

But here is my question to you (just wondering, and I know that you are not any man, a man from a statistical report, so it won’t apply to ALL men out there). I have read in a few different sources that men are very unlikely to do this type of soul-searching that you are doing. I read that for some men this can even be akin to being mentally raped (sorry for such a strong comparison, but it is not mine). I wonder if you are really comfortable exploring (I am not talking about what you discover as a result, I am talking about the process) your feelings, maybe suppressed emotions, underlying reasons, etc?

“Talk” to you soon,

X