Musings on Love

Musings on Love

"...loyalty is love’s partner…"

 --Seth/Jane Roberts, The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 4: Session 770, April 5, 1976

  

I remember being age 8, second grade, and having a brief romance with a very cute classmate named Diana.

 I can only recall being with her on the playground once and another time where I asked my mom to ask her mom and her over to coffee which they had while Diana and I played together.

 The whole "affair" probably only lasted about two weeks! We never kissed. I don't think the thought even occurred to me, and she didn't ask for one.

 It just sort of faded away, no fight, no bitter goodbye.

 I suppose I just went back to playing with my male friends and she, respectively, to hers. I know that in the following year, third grade, the boys suddenly started playing "girls germs" tag games, something I joined in on but with mixed feelings.

 Yet it was briefly serious with Diana in the second grade.

 She slapped me, not that hard, in some kind of juvenile misunderstanding that that's what the female does to show she cares, that things are serious, perhaps misunderstanding some Hollywood drama she saw.

 I didn't and don't understand it, but I was pleased at the sincerity she told me it connoted.

 "I had to do that," she told me.

 So there had to be a bit of build-up to that encounter, other playground frolics. I remember also being in the same Sunday school class as her.

 I recall, for instance, on the playground mimicking Beatle Paul McCartney's count-in to "I Saw Her Standing There," "One, two, three, foah!," and eliciting a smile from her.

 Why did it all just evaporate?

 It would have likely been doomed had it somehow been carried on.

 She ultimately became quite popular, in high school an attractive cheerleader, while I was "just"  a rather ordinary and introverted "nerd."

 Many years later, we had a brief e-mail correspondence where she was helping to organize a high school reunion and long-married she said she still remembered that day, her coming over with her mother to visit.

 -------=-------

 I submit that most of the hundreds or thousands of pop love songs are really infatuation songs.

 It's not love yet.

 After the "honeymoon," after the infatuation, is when love begins -- if it's even there to begin with.

Seth recommended reserving sex as an expression of love.

"...sexual encounters are a natural part of love’s expression, but they are not the limit of love’s expression."

"Again, it is natural to express love through sexual acts — natural and good."

—Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 5, Session 771, April 14, 1976

"I am not saying here that any given sexual performance is 'wrong,' or meaningless, or debased, if it is not accompanied by the sentiments of love and devotion. Over a period of time, however, the expression of sex will follow the inclinations of the heart."

—Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 5, Session 774, May 3, 1976

 So I think many people when infatuated are ready to call it love (and jump into bed) before love is actually established. I know it happened to me, more than once!

 Barbara De Angelis, in one of her relationship books, strongly urged that a couple put off having sex for as long as they can possibly stand it in order to try to first establish a friendship before entering the bedroom together.

 Otherwise, when things go awry, part of the pain of break-up is the pain of losing also the sex.

For instance, there was a woman I dated for about two months. She was kind of a prude I thought. In that time, per her wishes, we never went further than hugs and lip kisses. Had it been entirely up to me, we would have gone much further, perhaps all the way.

Not due to that, though it probably was a background factor, I called things off with her; I broke it off. There were “wavelength” compatibility issues (see below).

That was the first and only time I was the breaker-upper. Previously, it was always the woman breaking it off.

I never realized until then how painful it can be to be the breaker-upper.

I figure the pain would only have been that much worse had we "done it." Her prudery was in hindsight a blessing.

And, looking back on the few relationships where the woman and I had done it, I see in hindsight that we got physically intimate too soon. We didn't know one another that well. We operated from infatuation and lust.

One of the women even invited me upstairs to her bedroom before I would have tried to make such moves were it all on me.

And the sex can lead to a hanging on to one another longer than is otherwise “warranted.”

Also, something to keep in mind about the infatuation period is that there is often a mutual “best foot forward” aspect, which, in a sense, can be a well-intentioned dishonesty.

 "Some people are naturally solitary. They want to live lone lives, and are content. Most, however, have a need for enduring, close relationships. These provide both a psychic and social framework for personal growth, understanding, and development. It is an easy enough matter to shout to the skies: 'I love my fellow men,' when on the other hand you form no strong, enduring relationship with others. It is easy to claim an equal love for all members of the species, but love itself requires an understanding that at your level of activity is based upon intimate experience. You cannot love someone you do not know — not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless."

—Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 5: Session 774, May 3, 1976 [emphasis added]

 So when do you really know someone?

Obviously, simple physical attraction only goes so far.

At least a few times, being attracted to someone, I have asked her out, been rebuffed, and later, incidentally getting to know her better in social contexts, discover that I don't even especially like the person, that it really was just as well that she said no.

I now try to bear this in mind in the event of rejection; it's way too early in knowing her to feel hurt.

Perhaps only with a parent-child relationship is unconditional love possibly attainable between two human beings.

Certainly, it is easy, in the throes of romantic infatuation, when one is still getting to know one another, for the read-out on the love-o-meter to take a dive to a lower "value."

Which makes a lot of love or "love" in actuality conditional.

A couple of hypothetical examples:

"I just learned that my new boyfriend is saving up to buy one of those infernal, ear-splittingly loud motorcycles! Appalling!"

"I just learned that my new girlfriend voted for candidate X who is beyond ghastly!"

It seems we are wired to prefer other birds to be of our feather.

“Now. Individuals within your system have difficulty relating to those with whom they do not have some fairly strong bond, either of common experience, general beliefs, cultural similarities—the list is endless.”

--Seth in The Early Sessions, Vol. 9, Session 461, January 29, 1969 [emphasis added]

Love illusion: In the early stages of getting to know one another, it's easy to presume that in the "uncharted territories" of the other, things are held in common. Certainly that is the hope.

There can be no end to getting to know someone, however; there are so many possible life situations, that until you come to and cross such bridges, you just don't know the other.

 So love or "love" gets tested merely by life's vicissitudes, the test of time, and so forth.

 I can imagine it may come as a great shock that one's partner holds a view one might find objectionable, even offensive, one previously never being the wiser because the topic never came up before.

The same for some trying circumstance or another the couple suddenly finds themselves in.

 

Any relationship can unhappily last ("A poor marriage, for example, bringing years of loneliness or bitterness is, again, the same thing in its way as, say, chronic kidney stones." —Seth/Jane Roberts, The Personal Sessions, Vol 4, Deleted Session, December 10, 1977), but for a relationship to happily last, there needs to be three compatibilities according to Will Our Love Last?: A Couple's Road Map by Sam R. Hamburg, Ph.D. (reading the book made me feel he was articulating what I already intuitively knew as I always sought “alikeness” with another):

 Sexual (appetite, style, and so forth)

 Practical (such as daily-life matters, decision-making, money-budgeting, even bed-time, and so forth)

 Wavelength (i.e., both must be on the same wavelength regarding life values, spiritual/religious beliefs, and so forth)

 It seems like couples who have all three have "won the lottery."

 It seems like Jane Roberts and her husband did:

 "There are invaluable benefits that you [Jane and Rob] each have that
are invisible to you. You take them so for granted that you do not realize
how extraordinary they are in comparison to other people's experience.

"Your basic trust and loyalty to one another for example. Many spend a
lifetime searching for that recognition with another human being, or
achieve it but briefly. You are blind to this, yet others are quite
aware you have it. Besides, you each have deep interests and drives
that have always united you..."

--Seth, The Personal Sessions, 6\24/73

 

''Now: you went beyond your family's beliefs individually, searching for
yourselves and trying various roads. You accomplished the quite difficult
feat, in certain terms, of finding each other, so that you each had a
mate who would aid you in your pursuits--and you tried as best you knew
to encourage each other. You were still plagued by remnants of
self-disapproval and self-condemnation, however, yet the spontaneous self in each of you managed to push here and there and blaze forth whenever you gave it a
chance, with some quite outstanding results....''

 --Seth, DELETED SESSION, 1\9/78 [emphasis added]

 The high divorce rate shows how apparently rare it is to have with another all three areas of compatibility.

Yet it would be foolish to conclude that all "lesser relationships," those with only two or fewer areas of incompatibility, are “a waste of time.”

Indeed when once counseling a troubled married couple, after outlining the respective “baggage” (my word) they each had, Seth said, “The challenges you both have can indeed be met within the framework of marriage, and can perhaps be best worked out in that fashion. They can also be worked out separately. If you decide to continue [ultimately they divorced –Mark], the entire atmosphere must change....” --Seth, Conversations with Seth, Vol. 1 by Sue Watkins.

Also, reincarnational factors can't be ruled out for the "reason" for a relationship that is lacking in good compatibility.

Further, failed relationships can be exercises in learning what one will not put up with in any future relationship.

"Love incites dedication, commitment. It specifies. You cannot, therefore, honestly insist that you love humanity and all people equally if you do not love one other person. If you do not love yourself, it is quite difficult to love another."

—Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 5, Session 774, May 3, 1976 [emphasis added]

 The "specifies" part of the quote above perhaps explains the millions of singles ads one can find on all the many dating sites. People perpetually looking for the special other.
 

A note, in lieu of finding a one special other, of finding someone where all three areas of compatibility are present:

Perhaps with polyamory a member of a couple can get what they need from someone else outside of the couple such as needs where the couple's sexual and/or wavelength compatibility are poor. Practical compatibility would seem to be, therefore, the basic requirement for a happy, living-together couple.

Finally, to repeat part of the Seth quote above, “If you do not love yourself, it is quite difficult to love another."

Loving oneself is an imperative whether paired off with someone or not.

--Mark M, Monday, 28 September 2020