No "Arranged Marriage" - Yet.

Few days ago when I solicited your comments on "Arranged Marriage" (A-M), I thought I was ready to go - to answer those questions I posed. Especially after I read so many thoughtful, practical, and balanced yet passionate comments from you all. Since then, I had been thinking and thinking. But the doors of my heart are refusing to open - acting like a stubborn, unreasonable 2-year old. I tried so hard but no answer.

So I am going to rant about my frustrations and insights here. I am strongly reminded of what my very-spiritual-friend said to me once "how can u jump classes when you don't know what's been taught in the intermediate class? no….you have to spend time in that class…"

So, I had been trying hard to find ways of balancing L/B and D, compassionate and passionate love (discussed in previous posts) in my head. They largely involve blessings from family, mutual understanding (more like being on the same page about life's present and future) and similarity of background/common interests - in no particular order of importance as is evident from your comments on A-M post. But besides checking off some obvious boxes about looks, education etc I wasn't able to go very far. I mean, how do you really "connect" with someone? "We just clicked" usually leads to short-term encounters I described earlier and that is NOT what I wanted.

Anyway.

I did precisely the thing that I always do in such situations. I said to myself - screw it. I don't know what to do but unless I go in there and try, how will I ever know? I can't just wait around. So I disciplined myself, got my act together and went on to follow the parvasi bharatiya* A-M track (you-know-what-that-is) with the blessings of my closed ones. All right then. I will just meet people and I will know.  As Shital had mentioned, "just clicking" has to be "built".  As strange as it sounds, that is the only way. She put it very neatly: " It now becomes a Q of making it work -  as you may not be in love at that time with your partner, but also to some extent, an identity crisis on your part because you are going to spend the rest of your life with someone who you have met only afew times"...Well, what she forgot to mention is that - it is not as easy as it sounds!! The part I ignored here is the one that came back to bite me badly. Identity crisis on your part. Why didn't you put red flags around it, S?

My beautiful theory: I will meet people and I will know fell flat on the face. It Doesn't Work That Way. If you enter this process with such foggy head, all you will get is a headache and migraine. Ulcers too. As we were checking out profile after profile all looking similar (reading, hiking, workouts, eastern+western values), I got more and more confused. Then I started surveying my loved ones: What kind of a guy I should go far? How do you see me living in future? How will you describe me as a person? What do you think I like more - career or family? etc ** As you can guess, I was getting a variety of answers for these questions and the fog in my head was just getting thicker and thicker. Still I continued.

But yesterday I got my answer from one smart cousin: Only you can know what kind of guy you want. When I asked, how will I ever know that realistically (i.e. not George Clooney), he said something that blasted through the fog in my head: you just need to find yourself and then you will figure out everything else..

It just freaking makes so much freaking sense. I mean, how long can I live with the fantasy that my Prince Charming will come and take all my problems/confusions away? And what are the chances that he is waiting for me on xyz-matrimony.com?? Seriously!!


*read NRI
**yup, this is what I have been up to lately - so feel blessed if you are not one of those getting surveyed. Also, I strongly suspect that S's moving to Seattle has something to do with this..

It is a cliche..but the beginning of a life-long romance is starting to love yourself.

Love Quiz

Yet another smart psychologist named Elaine Hatfield talks about two basic types of romantic love  -Compassionate Love vs Passionate Love*. It is very much in line with my earlier explorations of psychology of love (Missing In Action), albeit clearer. According to her, while compassionate love is characterized by mutual respect, attachment and trust, passionate love is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction and anxiety. She says three factors influence love - timing (being ready or not), early attachment styles (emotional security in life through previous romances and other relationships) and similarity (to ourselves - personality, style of living etc). She further suggests that passionate love is transitory and compassionate love is more enduring. Intimacy or affection, of course is always there in any type of love. Third type of love, consummate love is a combination of passion and commitment; strongest, most enduring and rare (LB+D).

I must say, I am blown away by the neatness and clarity of thoughts here.

So going back to my story. 

My existence is marked by the seesaw of emotions around romance - desperate longings (of soul) and desperate fears (of mind). Any of them can easily put my nervous system into top gear and get it roaring. Obviously in very different ways (panic is one of my least favourites)!!  Balancing that seesaw is not easy because it is - Me vs Me. And there is really only way to do it. To get close to the center as much as possible.

Passionate love has fulfilled the longings of my soul, no doubt! but almost always it was followed by anxieties and despair, and changed my life path completely.  It reminds me of one of the most sensible Coelho quote: "Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly."** Despair is one of  the most important of human emotions (I would rank it just below love). In whatever the situation (relationships, career, health), when despair enters, it creates this sense of urgency. As if we are losing the sand beneath our feet and we end up taking decisions thoughtlessly and in haste. Sometimes good, most times bad. In either case, nerve-wrecking. So, these days (which are filled with anxiety and intensity), I try to ask myself this question before every action - Why am I doing this? In particular, am I doing this out of despair? Or do I really want it? Anyway.  If you are thinking, ' Aha P, you have got it all under control.', think again.

So, here is the Love Quiz.

Q1. Have you seen passionate love blossom into compassionate love? i.e. do fairy tales come true?

Q2. I think despair cannot always be a bad thing because it propels you into action, to change the status quo that is no longer working. Aye or Nay?

Q3. (For extra credit) Will you go for passionate love or compassionate love?  Why or Why not? Please answer it honestly irrespective of your current marital status :-D




*http://psychology.about.com/od/loveandattraction/a/theoriesoflove.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/loveandattraction/a/compassionate.htm

**"Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books.  A writer once said that it is not time that changes a man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love.  What nonsense!  The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.  Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next.  But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair.  Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.” 

I feel that every woman should read 11 Minutes by Paulo Coelho (free online). Although it has mixed reviews for various reasons (and I agree, shoddy story), it is a powerful attempt at exploring desire, sex and spiritual union. I love Maria for her strength and honesty.

Jupiter represents spiritual and emotional creativity of Divine Wisdom. The Lila (the play) - acting, emoting, imagining. It creates polarities and makes them play. The plays of hope, love, anguish, seduction, separation and finally the union.

You have already played all the parts, put on various costumes, enjoyed being a thief, a peasant, a princess, a king, a seductress and all that.

You are the Director now. A successful one, who has been directing many hit shows. All the while dreaming up a grand role, creating the ultimate production which has it all - love, lust, name, fame, relationships, hardships, successes, failures, the fire, the wind, the romance, the tinge of melancholy, boredom, loneliness, enthusiasm, loneliness hidden under enthusiasm, humor, longing, desire, extravagant costumes and sets, and the most outrageous characters of all - from kings to monks. You have put in all that you had into it. Your blood, your life, your love, your passion. You gave it your best, you gave it your all and now your job is done. The grand finale is up. You are watching it from your chair. A perfection reached in every single detail. Moments unfolding one after the other. You are sitting and enjoying, not interfering.

Now, for how long can this playing go on without the creative urge transforming into insanities of life?
You are so engrossed watching the perfection you created that You forget that it is all a drama.

It is funny! Ridiculously funny.

Scenario 1:
You just forget that it is a play and you fall in love with one of the characters in it. For real. And you fall hard - head over heels and all that. Your heart pining, seeing Her everywhere etc etc.
Now are you miserable. You want Him/Her. You cannot live, you cannot die. You are just suffering, going insane. Running wild here and there. Conspiring ways to win Her. At any cost, you want Her.

Scenario 2:
You just forget that it is a play and you become afraid. You are scared to death of one of the characters in it. For real. You think He is after you, he wants to kill you.
Now are you miserable. You are just petrified, going insane. Hiding here and there. You want Him/Her to go away and leave you alone.

...so on.


hahahahaha. Ludicrous! Absurd! Wicked!

Why are You miserable? Why are you running, hiding, crying and emoting again?
Remember. You are the Director and this is your Ultimate Show. Everything In It Is Perfect Because It Is Your Very Best Creation!

Retract. Recollect. Detach. Chill. 

This is your last creation. When the show ends, the Director ends. The tremors and the applauds end. The polarities end.

Only the Silence remains, the Love remains.

Missing (in) Action

This was my Love Horoscope today: "The current aspect at play promises both action and depth of feeling, but not both at the same time. You will enjoy the action part, but when it comes to sharing your feelings, there could be some ambivalence. You dislike this kind of scenario, because it has the potential to make you feel trapped into something that you are still uncertain about. Perhaps it's time to grow up."

Action and depth of feeling, but not both at the same time.  It seems to be a recurring theme of my life.

Action is, well, action. All of it from start to end. Walk by the beach, dinner and movie, gift and surprises, endless talks, kisses and hugs, passionate love-making. Marriage, kids. Depth of meaning, I don't quite know how to describe it but we all know what it is. Deep understanding. Of each other, of the world, of us in relation to the world, of world in relation to us. Understanding of me and you.  Understanding of you and me. Understanding of Love. True Love.*

Love is also quantitative in a way. You can measure its length (L), breadth (B) and depth (D). Length by time of involvement and breadth by range of activities and emotions. Success of your relationship is defined by these. More length and breadth your love relationship has, more perfect it is. ...But Depth is a whole different dimension. It wipes out length and breadth. Depth can be felt in few minutes and even when there is no possibility of breadth, it remains. Depth always remains as long as you don't screw it up by forcibly trying to add on L/B.

So, to combine above two terminologies: Action corresponds to L/B; Depth of feeling/Understanding corresponds to D.

Ideal relationship would have both - action and depth of meaning, i.e. LBD. Jisme se ruh tak style!**

But, action and depth of feeling are yet to match in my life. Whenever there was action with L/B, D was missing. D happened a few times but got screwed up by me/us trying to force L/B to it. It was just not meant to be. Just a few days ago I met someone. The moment we looked into each others eyes, we knew. We knew it was going to be a short-lived love-story. And so it was. ***

So, what I am trying to say is that the action in my life is very attractive to the spontaneous explorer in me and although it will probably stay that way as long as I live, something else is arising from inside of me which is much stronger. The search for meaning, the search for understanding. Although it is ruining all the fun, I don't mind it. In fact, I am finding it irresistible and will likely marry it.




* PolyamorousPoet on twitter says it with all the passion and devotion:
- When you love you start to hallucinate about distances and ideas.
- Loving yourself is a myth, it is impossible to love yourself, you can only love your beloved, you can only give yourself away.
- To love is to hand over the self to the powers within the finest grains of the self.
- When you love there is nothing that you can do but wait and wait for your beloved to make an appearance.
Follow him!

** Jisme se ruha tak = from body to soul

*** Was it just an infatuation? It was part of it, most certainly. But when it hits you at the soul level like this, you have two options - do you want to keep it there as a burning flame or do you want to apply it as a soothing balm?  Keeping it alive requires fuel and causes soot. But feels warm and looks breathtakingly beautiful. Applying it as a balm requires nothing and it heals. Also makes you smile when you think of it. 

Love Addiction*

Sometimes I feel that I am completely addicted to the Concept of Love.  I am 'in love' with love! As far back as I can remember, I have been in love. With someone or something. Probably some childhood coping mechanism to escape from the boring school and homework. Even now, I am always escaping into a fairyland where my shining Prince Charming comes on a handsome white horse and rescues me - the eternal damsel in distress. Nothing out of the ordinary, a standard fantasy of countless girly girls. Nonetheless, I often wonder - why love? Why not something else like monsters or bunnies or ...whatever? It bothers me. A lot. Because in my regular life I am an independent, intellectual, feminist type and am quite happy with that. No place for a hopeless, logic-less romantic there.  Yet I cannot reconcile my fantasy with my reality. And in my heart, I am constantly looking for an object to get devoted to.

So bipolar!

Anyway.

It is not such a bad thing. This love addiction. Rather quite enlivening. Anywhere, anytime I can turn the imagination switch on and start coloring. For example, I am at a train station/airport and he shows up DDLJ** style! Or I am walking by the bay and this tall perfect handsome stranger comes straight to me, looks in my eyes soulfully and says "It's you!". That's it. Simple. I can command its "high" at my will without any substance aid. Anywhere, anytime.

Do you see the beauty of this fantasy? No, not the pink kind. The smart kind.

--It is goddamn vague!  I can never hold it down with my hands. I can never pinpoint at it. Just like all other fantasies, it is there to validate my fears and protect my laziness. After all, real relationships are hard work. More on that later.

* Addiction to something happens when the circumstances in life go beyond our coping capacity.  In most cases, it is a substitute for attention, care and love.  Addiction is essentially an obsessive behavior triggered by brain's reward/memory system. A glass of wine, makes me feel divine! sort of a thing. Food, drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sex, internet are some well-known forms but it can take many other forms. Behavioral addiction, as defined by wiki, is a recurring compulsion condition where a person engages in a specific activity despite harmful consequences to his health, mental state, or social life. Examples include gambling, food, sex, pornography, computers, video games, internet, work, exercise, spiritual obsession (as opposed to religious devotion), pain, cutting and shopping (I say, leave shopping out of this!!!).

** DDLJ -Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilwale_Dulhania_Le_Jayenge

Love Sick

Friday morning has brought some penetrating insights into my love life.

As far back as I can remember, I have been in love. With someone or something. Always looking for an object to get devoted to - a hobby or an activity. Always escaping into the fairyland where my shining prince charming would come on a handsome horse dressed in all white and rescue me, the eternal damsel in distress. But I never did. Never succeeded in actually committing to something serious or love someone completely, fully. I was always holding back. Never being able to trust anyone or anything. Also there never was any happily ever-after in my dreams. The prince would come and ....it always became a blur and I felt even more miserable. I never understood that. Why can't I be happy even in my dream love story? Don't get me wrong, there was always plenty of romance. Strong passions, gentle touches, melting kisses,...a lot of sensual stuff. But it rarely culminated in the ultimate pleasure. The big O I mean or anywhere close to that. It mostly stayed superficial. At the first case, if you will.
Why?? I always wondered. What is stopping me from getting there mentally. Am I not mature enough? What do I need to do to get there? It was like a big black box.
A flash of revelation came this morning. You know how it is, you hear some words regularly, you utter them but they remains dead words. Yeah yeah, true love, yeah yeah the sense of complete absorption or yeah yeah, misplaced feelings, yeah yeah, attention seeker..whatever.
And a day comes when the same words start glowing with a force of light. They actually start communicating to you. Revealing their secrets. Dancing around you, letting you touch and feel them. It happened to me today. "Love" had become my addiction. Not just romantic love but any love. Love for my friends, love for my family, love for my guru, love for...anything and everything. The "high" of feeling of love makes me forget my surroundings, my reality. I feel euphoric. Add to that some spice of romance or the sugar of spirituality and you are on cloud 9. I can stay there however long I want. Or so I thought. But slowly the feeling of unease starts creeping in from the back door. This is not it. I can't believe it - but this too is really not it.

What is it then? What is the damn thing that has been evading me all my life?

The answer is right there. Right inside of me, right in front of me, all over me. I am too busy distracting myself with love to look at it. Rather, I am getting myself Love Sick so that I don't have to really see it.

Why? Why would I do such a thing??



1) I am lazy. 2) I am afraid.

Yes, I know what I want to do and what will make me happy. Who else is going to know it better than me? But I am too lazy to actually do it. Because it requires work, a lots and lots of hard work. Patience, perseverance and self-whipping. I am afraid. I am afraid that it will break me, it will disappoint me. When I was little,everytime I wanted something and didn't get that, it created a small hole in me. Lots of small holes over year turned me into a sieve where nothing could stay in for too long. A weak, mostly useless drainer. These the disappoitnemts I experienced as kids and your adults on many fronts - mostly emotional and mental because people around you weren't always sensitive enough converted into insecurities, feelings of inadequacy or incompleteness. I am incomplete because I didn't get that red dress in 6th grade. My parents didn't love me enough. anyway. So basically I am scared to take the steps that will make me happy because I have hardly done it before. I worry about how? what? when? where? What I am most scared of is my own expectations from the results. I am putting too much pressure on myself to get it absolutely right. To not fail whereas there IS NO right. anyway. So I am lazy and I am afraid. I expect that someone else will come in and transform me from this heavy burdened maid to a beautiful elegant princess. But it is never going to happen. For no prince will ever come for me if I am not already a princess. You see what I am saying?

Paulo Coelho says that people kill the thing they love the most because they are afraid to be happy, they think that I don't deserve it. Everyone around me is unhappy so how can I be happy?

So I guess, unless I cure myself of this love sickness, I will not be able to get my act together and really feel and experience the true love.

Ironically, I did experience the true love that shook me to my core.. and you know what I did?

I ran away from it. I ran away from it as fast as I could.

That was the right thing to do. I need to cure my love sickness before I can truly love.

Love Lab

One smart psychologist has quite neatly laid out a procedure to fall in love. It goes like this:

• Find a complete stranger.
• Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.
• Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.

He conducted a study where he asked his subjects to carry out the above 3 steps and found that many of his couples felt deeply attracted after the 34 minute experiment. Two of his subjects later got married. Some love lab!

I admit, he is right on about the key ingredients - someone listening to you and caring about you deeply. We all have experienced this at some point or other. I, personally, have gone through this lab procedure several times. I still do but less frequently. When someone who I just had a stimulating and meaningful conversation with, slowly leans forward and looks deeply in my eyes, I start trembling.  The dopamine, oxytocin in my body start firing up and I start feeling deeply attracted toward that person.  I am going to be careful with my use of words here. Attracted if that person is a man. Deeply connected if that person happens to be a woman. This is very important because these boundaries are very clear for me naturally. However, I have had many conversations with my gay/lesbian/bisexual  friends on this topic - about how they 'converted'. To my surprise,  for many of them it wasn't the natural biological preference. They confessed that they felt so deeply connected to the other person that the boundaries of gender melted, attraction flared up and before they knew, they had converted from a heterosexual to a homosexual person. It didn't matter that they had to go through tremendous  resistance from the close family, cultural/social re-adjustment or in some unfortunate cases, leaving the old ones behind. The strong force of love was able to carry them across.  When I asked them, would you 'convert' back if you met someone of opposite gender in similar way?, the answer was always - Yes!

So, going back to the 'laboratory of love', is this really it? Is that all it takes for you to get swept off your feet completely?  Steps 1-3?  Probably. For few minutes at least. But what he doesn't talk about is the time effect on this initial explosion of feeling of love. In my case, almost invariably, scales start falling down my eyes within a short time. It could be the next sentence he utters or the way he sips his tea ..or the reminder by my left brain that he is unavailable to me for various reasons such as he is a film star or a fictional character (!) or my friend's boss or my own boss or ..you get the idea.*  I imagine that it is true for most of us. It may happen in a less straightforward way but it happens. Soon you realize that you are projecting way too much onto something where there is nothing much. But once your chemistries are entangled, it is hard to get away. Really hard. Love or hate or both, no matter what form it takes, it will stick. That emotional mess will stick like a glue. And if sex was involved, well, it will stick like a super-glue!
  
So, the answer is, No. Steps 1-3 may be necessary but not sufficient to truly fall in love. Refer to my previous article for what it means to "truly fall in love'. 

What does it take then? 

I don't know. 

But I do know that it feels like a divine intervention. 

Something that is meant to be.  


* Luckily for me, another natural boundary I have is the strong, unshakable belief in fidelity/marriage. It means as a rule I never get attracted to a married man. He automatically goes into my Friends bucket if I like him. That is why I stayed in my marriage for so long even when it wasn't working and that is exactly why I got out of it too. A story for some other time. 

Doomed to suffer AND destined to be happy

Love is incorrigible. Excruciating agony and limitless sweetness simultaneously. As long as I am alive, I can never resist it. Thus: doomed to suffer AND destined to be happy

It shakes you to the core when it happens. Shattering your body/mind/heart/soul by its force. You lie there helpless, exhausted. But Smiling. ...And I am not talking about sex. Sex can be a part of it, sure. As one of the expressions. But it is not necessary.  Now a days people are fond of explaining tsunamic emotions of love by using neuro-biological terms like Adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. I suppose it gives them a sense of control. A false sense I must say for no amount of rational and scientific thinking can help you get back in the driving seat again. When love is driving, the only thing you can do is: sit back, relax and enjoy. The anatomical part it affects the most is - well, the heart! There is a reason why those cheesy red throbbing hearts you see on the Valentines' day are so popular.

You create your own heaven or hell with these emotions.  Eat some chocolates, get some sunshine and tread that exercise machine if it gets too overwhelming. If you try to resist the feeling or try to control the object of your love, you are walking down the path to hell. I am not kidding. So, don't. Carefully avoid those habitual mistakes. I have a lot to say here, saving it for some other time.

Are you one of those hopeless romantics constantly falling and failing in love? 

I am. 

And I am at it again.   

 

* Love, Explained: http://www.chemistry.com/datingadvice/LoveExplained

Science of love: http://www.youramazingbrain.org.uk/lovesex/sciencelove.htm

My First

I am going to explore the much trodden territory of relationships, love, intimacy, boundaries etc here. Primarily to get to those hidden places in me and gain some clarity. With the hope that this will lead to a happier, healthier (love) life.