Saturday, July 17, 2004

Solo On: Love

"Love is like oxygen…" In many ways, it is. But it’s something people take much more notice of, obviously. It affects everyone at some point or another, in many different ways. The love you have for one person may be completely different to the love you have for someone else, and the same goes for things you possess. Although you might ‘love’ spaghetti, you really wouldn’t consider entering into a long-term relationship with it. Well, you might, but that’s a different matter entirely. I’d have to say that at least 90% of all songs are written about love in some way or another. It’s not an unheard of concept by any means, and in essence is what life revolves around. On an instinctive level, it’s designed to help us find a mate, and is almost purely a physical assessment. On an intellectual level, it’s much much more than that. Through both, it effects everything you do. The friends you make, the things you buy, anything like that are all attached to something inside you which you find appealing or attractive. All that aside, what I’m actually intending to talk about is love in the context of relationships, heh. Fancy That? I’ve fancied literally dozens of people thus far in my life. I’m not easy (well…) or a lecher, it’s just instinctive that I like someone who I find attractive slightly more than superficially. Yeah, you might see pictures of someone in a magazine or in a show and think they look absolutely gorgeous, but it’s not the same unless you can actually connect with them on a personal level. And I’ll admit that whenever I see a member of the opposite sex that seems nice, friendly and attractive thoughts enter my mind that either she or I might be interested in each other. It’s absurd, but it’s just superficial friendliness and first instinctive reactions. Of course, if I saw someone who looked repulsive or was plain unfriendly, those would never develop at all. Sometimes I hate being male o_o; I don’t think fancying is a bad thing; if anything it can be beneficial in the way that it allows you room to find out what you really want to try pursuing in a partner. Some people have problems releasing feelings though- oft heard is the story of someone bullying another because they really fancy them but can’t understand why or just don’t know what to say. In my case, I tend to become incredibly shy and say nothing at all, and then get disappointed when I find out they’re going out with someone else ^_^; I’ve lost count of how many times that’s happened, heh. But I rarely tell anyone, because I know it’s just a fancy. At least, it always starts off like that. Once I fancied someone who I’d known for a while- the first person I could say I really had a deep emotional bond with. The problem was, since I’d never experienced anything like that before, I tried too hard and I think that’s probably what brought it all crashing down. I don’t even know if she felt the same way about me. But you live and learn, bearing the scars of experience. The Receiving End In terms of physical contact (I’ll get onto online relationships in a bit), as far as I’m aware I’ve only had one person really fancy me to extreme. And normally I’d be flattered, but I’d only known her for a day and spoken to her for about two hours at most. To have someone try and work their hand into yours when you’re walking down the street after such a short time is a little unnerving. It’s not that I probably wouldn’t have liked her given a little more time, but that was exactly the point. And I was only going to be there for another fifteen minutes. What did she expect- for me to just carry her off and say “Yes, I’ll love you! But I’ve got to catch a bus back home in ten minutes and probably won’t see you again for at least six months, if that.” It just doesn’t work like that. But when you’re young, I guess things don’t quite seem that way. I acted dumb, although I knew exactly what she was trying to do. I figured it’d be best that way; at least then I wouldn’t have to bear the burden of telling her I didn’t love her (which I’ve had to live with twice before; it’s not something I want to repeat if I can help it), and neither would she. So I went home, feeling incredibly confused. From the start, you can tell some relationships just aren’t practical. Well, I was wondering if… if you’re interested… you don’t have to… So, if you’re successful, comes the relationship proper. Having only been in one myself, I can’t give an expert opinion on it, but I can go over what I know. For a relationship to work, there has to be a balance between love on intellectual and physical bases. One or the other doesn’t cut it, not least because love stems from a physical desire in the first place, but if you can’t stand the attitude of the person you’re going out with you wouldn’t want to get into the same house as them, let alone a bed. I spent a lot of time looking at other people’s relationships in Sixth Form (and no, I wasn’t spying). The boys in the Rugby Club always had girlfriends, mainly because they were the ones who organised all the parties and had the physiques and character to bring girls to them. The rest of us, who I think in all fairness probably deserved girlfriends more than they did, had about one between twenty of us. But we weren’t extroverts or musclemen with Greek figures (at the time the best I could do was a Transformer ^_~), so it’s not like we were just being ignored. But the younger you are, the more superficial these relationships are and on the whole, I think the less they mean on the whole. That’s not to say that they can’t be as personal; but when you’re young you’re changing all the time, along with your wants and needs. Girls moreso than boys, who seem to be happy as long as there’s a pair of lips glued to theirs and a nice arse to look at every now and then. I used to get really upset when I was with another couple, specifically those I knew. I feel stupid for it now- not just because it didn’t get anywhere, but because it was pretty shameless. It was probably just attention seeking crossed with self-pity, but I don’t do it anymore. I’m happy that they’re happy (for the time being, anyway) and I know I’ll find someone to love some day. It’s not like I’ve not been trying. Forever Love… In the relationship I/we had, there was both physical and mental attraction, although the physical contact was very restrained because we were both too polite to try anything much ^_^; But alongside the balance of love and lust, there has to be faith that it’d work and you have to have faith not just in the other person, but in yourselves. Unfortunately, I wasn’t experienced enough to tell what I wanted and she didn’t have enough confidence in herself to keep me feeling that it was going to work. When someone cuts themselves in the room next to you instead of trying to talk things over and doesn’t even tell you she did it in the first place, it’s a big shock. When you love someone, to have them hurt is the last thing you want. To have them hurt themselves is soul-destroying. It was really bearing down on me and I simply couldn’t cope any more. It wasn’t a decision I wanted to have to make for obvious reasons, but I had to. And since we were so far away in the first place, it made making a real difference to loneliness that much harder. Despite knowing it was the right thing to do and making a promise that we’d keep talking, it didn’t happen. I’m still sorry that it didn’t, because she was- isn’t a bad person by any means. But when the stakes are so much higher, the damage is so much greater when it fails. It’s not always the case though, but it’s something I’m deathly afraid of. l337 l0\/3 Okay, it’s not actually l337, but I couldn’t think of a better way to distinguish it. Yes, online relationships. I know someone who married someone they met over the internet and a lot of people seem to be really damning of them which I think is incredibly unfair. Yeah, the people themselves aren’t the brightest of the bunch, but why should it matter? They’re happy and that’s what counts. But they had the ability to get over and live with each other, whereas a lot of online relationships often don’t have that capacity. It doesn’t make them necessarily any less viable than a relationship based on mutual physical contact and discussion. Assuming both parties are being entirely honest in their answers (I think the main reason people disregard net relationships off the bat is because it’s so easy to falsify something- I could easily pose as a 46-year-old woman from Venezuela and no-one could be any the wiser), they get to know the person’s mind before the person. And in love, a mind can be much more important that a body. But therein lies a problem- the written context of the net is very different to the spoken context you’d meet in. It’s not viable to only communicate through laptops everywhere you go, and the conversation you’d have in person may be different to that you have on the net because there are so many extraneous influences bearing down on you, the most important being a real physical presence, voice and atmosphere. And you still have to deal with he physical appearance. I don’t mean to say everyone on the internet’s a fat nerd or anything like that (far from it, in reality), but when you’ve known someone for so long and feel you have a real emotional attachment to them, finding out what they really look like as opposed to the image in your mind’s eye can be a bit of a shock. But I’ve not had to deal with that yet, hehe. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised with people who’ve shown me their photos. And there’s also distance- if the only time you can see each other is in the summer holidays, it doesn’t give much for the physical side of love to interact with. One of the biggest parts of companionship is actually being there with the person you love. I know a few people who can attest to how difficult it is trying to keep up something like that. But if you’ve the means and the will, it can still become fully-fledged love as it’s most generally assumed, just on a slightly different tangent. And if you get to know the person first, you can probably be more sure about wanting to settle down with that kind of person above any other. It’s more than likely marginally quicker, too. First comes Love, then comes Marriage… That rhyme’s odd, because it could be interpreted that love comes before a marriage, not during or afterwards. And in some cases I wonder why on earth they got married in the first place (certainly I’ve had my doubts about my own parents from time to time). I was shocked to find out mum had been divorced before having my older sister. I was very young when I heard it- I knew she’d had a husband before, but it never occurred to me that she’d have to have been divorced before marrying my dad. Divorce has very strong connotations attached to it, regardless of the terms upon which it was forged. One of my friends has two sets of parents living on the same street- his dad and step-mom and his mom and step-dad. It must be odd, but kind if refreshing to see that after going through a marriage people can still keep in contact with each other on friendly terms. It makes me less apprehensive about getting married myself, which brings me onto my next point… Bringing it Together I had a dream a few nights ago in which I asked someone to marry me. It was really bizarre, but after waking up I was left with the feeling that it might be the right thing to do. It still confuses me a little. Having never even considered marriage before in my life, to have something like that crop up out of the blue shook me. It’s odd… if and when I do marry someone, I want to be sure that they’re someone I’m not going to fall out of love with even in twenty years of staying with them. Realistically speaking, I could probably stand living with anyone with exception to those incredibly vain, selfish, depressive, loud, superficial, dirty or quiet. I’m not intending to get married for at least another three years or so simply because it’s not practical to do so- I have no house of my own and no job, and I’ve not even finished my education yet. But it goes to show that as you grow, these things do start to take root. I’ll admit that I’m feeling more and more like I want someone close to me, but to be married this soon… I don’t think I could manage that. On the other hand, I know two friends of mine who are engaged to be married at 18 already, and two others who’ve been in a relationship for about three years and look like they’ll be together for a very long time yet. Nothing’s certain- someone could turn up tomorrow who I instantly decide I want to spend the rest of my life with. But I doubt that. I’m not going out tomorrow.

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