What LIAC means to me
When I joined LIAC, I only thought LIAC meant that unrequited love is painfully stupid (and stupidly painful). Now I feel I should make it clear that I have come to a wider conclusion. LIAC for me means that all romantic love is my enemy. Romantic love is possessive, unreal, negative and painful.
By “romantic love”: I mean the sort of love that is peddled in songs [from “Someone to watch over me” (I. Gershwin) to “Feel” (Robbie)]. The sort of love that makes an irrational suggestion about what the object of my love is. The sort of feeling that makes my heart race with excitement. The sort of feeling that someone out there might save me. I want my mummy! Being more positive, I could say it is something absolute and spiritual. I have read a description of this romantic feeling (in a book by The Barefoot Doctor) as “falling off a log”. He suggests we imagine oursleves balancing carefully on a log floating in a lake. We reach out to someone, we embrace them, enjoy them, it’s mutual, so far so good. [I even call this love – brotherly love, not LIAC-love. The kind of thing that friends can have for each other, quite happily for years, which can even get quite strong, but is always rational, and based on reality.]
Then out of caprice, we decide to allow oursleves to lose our balance, and to fall/jump into the water, hoping that the other person will fall in too, but knowing that this is not a realistic / successful approach to survival on the lake. Once in that water, we may enjoy the immersion in the irrationality and loss of control to a force stronger than ourselves for some while, but eventually (apparently the average is 3 months, but at this site I think we all have different stories to tell) reality will kick in, and we’ll climb back out to survey our life / our loved one in the full glare of reality. And that is where pain is almost inevitable – fitting our fantastical vision into what exists in reality is going to hurt. If it hurts less than usual, maybe you both climbed out at roughly the same time, and maybe you can set about seeing if you and your partner actually like each other. But you can only really tell then, once the magic curse of LIAC-love has worn off, and you see things as they really are.
So my suggestion: if ever you find yourself “in love” get your friends to break your fingers. The better alternative: at all times keep things nice and friendly, like your significant other as a best friend, want what is best for them, not what is best for you. They will annoy and be imperfect, so will you. Don’t bother them with your crazy romantic notions that don’t fit with reality. I realise my views may be very idiosyncratic. To perhaps explain how I arrived at them, I may post about my past (see next), to show that I have my own set of issues/problems.
By “romantic love”: I mean the sort of love that is peddled in songs [from “Someone to watch over me” (I. Gershwin) to “Feel” (Robbie)]. The sort of love that makes an irrational suggestion about what the object of my love is. The sort of feeling that makes my heart race with excitement. The sort of feeling that someone out there might save me. I want my mummy! Being more positive, I could say it is something absolute and spiritual. I have read a description of this romantic feeling (in a book by The Barefoot Doctor) as “falling off a log”. He suggests we imagine oursleves balancing carefully on a log floating in a lake. We reach out to someone, we embrace them, enjoy them, it’s mutual, so far so good. [I even call this love – brotherly love, not LIAC-love. The kind of thing that friends can have for each other, quite happily for years, which can even get quite strong, but is always rational, and based on reality.]
Then out of caprice, we decide to allow oursleves to lose our balance, and to fall/jump into the water, hoping that the other person will fall in too, but knowing that this is not a realistic / successful approach to survival on the lake. Once in that water, we may enjoy the immersion in the irrationality and loss of control to a force stronger than ourselves for some while, but eventually (apparently the average is 3 months, but at this site I think we all have different stories to tell) reality will kick in, and we’ll climb back out to survey our life / our loved one in the full glare of reality. And that is where pain is almost inevitable – fitting our fantastical vision into what exists in reality is going to hurt. If it hurts less than usual, maybe you both climbed out at roughly the same time, and maybe you can set about seeing if you and your partner actually like each other. But you can only really tell then, once the magic curse of LIAC-love has worn off, and you see things as they really are.
So my suggestion: if ever you find yourself “in love” get your friends to break your fingers. The better alternative: at all times keep things nice and friendly, like your significant other as a best friend, want what is best for them, not what is best for you. They will annoy and be imperfect, so will you. Don’t bother them with your crazy romantic notions that don’t fit with reality. I realise my views may be very idiosyncratic. To perhaps explain how I arrived at them, I may post about my past (see next), to show that I have my own set of issues/problems.
posted by Anonymous | 10:55 pm
CM you are bang-on target with this one. Reminds me of our Matrix / Plato's Cave postings of yesteryear.
BUT:
"The better alternative: at all times keep things nice and friendly, like your significant other as a best friend..."
Is fucking impossible. There is no prevention, just damage control.
(the end of the segment I just quoted, I'm not sure what you meant but perhaps that's a more specific situation you were talking about)
I think we're at odds here. You're saying the problem is that people are making the mistake of choosing to fall in love, whilst I'm saying the problem is not being able to choose not falling in love.
Maybe it's something that happens with age, but I think that if indeed there comes a point where I/anybody here could actively choose not to love then we'd all vote nay.
I agree with all of that.
To clarify: I don't think *all* people in LIAC love relish their suffering. Some people like to self-pity and woe-is-me but I do agree with you - fuck that. I see LIAC love as something that happened, which was good at the time, and nothing should nor will ever take that away.
Falling in love is inevitable, yes, and it might hurt forever when it ends, but that's not the part to dwell on. The parts of dwell on are the good bits and how the fuck to stop it happening again.
One can take crack once and dwell on how nice it was without ending up on a Cardiff street corner selling every orifice for another hit.
Not if you're weak, true. But come on Spock, belt up.
JiB the Cardiff example sounds suspiciously autobiographical.
Shh.
If you read *my* posts, CM, you will see they are either about why to avoid love, or about how good it was. So... Fuck off with the pseudoparaphrasing.
And yes, until the next time. Which there may well be, but I'm not in any denial over it.
I need to find a 44 year-old, well spoken man to be my "ShopGirl" sort of love interest.
Any Takers?