clevermanka | A very moving experience

roya_spirit and I got moved out of the house on Perry on Saturday with minimal fuss. The weather was a bit nippy, but no active precipitation occurred. Whew. A million and one thanks to

adamcrafter, to whom I owe a great debt for helping me move twice in less than six months. I owe you more than a lunch, sugar.

This morning I had a sad comment made to me by one of the grad students. He said his wife (who recently cut her waist-length hair and I guess loves my haircut b/c she wanted the name of my stylist) was turning all "professional" and that wasn't the girl he fell in love with. It makes me wonder, what part of a person does one actually fall in love with? It's normal and healthy for people to change over a lifetime. It's a rare love that finds it can withstand drastic personality changes. So what, exactly, do people fall in love with? What do I fall in love with? And why is it so unexpected and hurtful (yet so common) when people find that they person they loved is now no longer that person? Hmmm.

Also, some small work drama caused by miscommunication and the failure of someone to tell the absolute truth.

rougewench, thank you for being a stellar example of how the sky will not, in fact, come crashing down if you are honest with people, despite possible hurt feelings. Tact is nice, but honesty is so important. I don't like having to explain someone else's inability to tell the truth, straight up, no chaser.

Life is starting to rev back up. My calendar is starting to look ridiculous. I had hoped for some sort of public birthday celebration this year (Dude! 35! Wooo!), but I don't see how that's going to happen. Drat. Perhaps a party this spring? Not sure. My inner 8-ball says "Ask again later."

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It's odd. I fell in love with a (I thought)patient woman with a randy sense of humour, a taste for fine food, a love of being a rennie, and a fellow jones for Disney. As well as the understanding that any flirting I was doing in the Shire was a matter of being in character having fun and not a reflection of our relationship.

Things seemed to be changing for the worse before the actual marriage, but I stupidly attributed that to pre-wedding jitters and figured we'd work things out when we'd returned from the honeymoon and were under less emotional stress. I think I knew it was really gone when, before I left for Heartland PaganFest, she told me to "fuck anyone (I) wanted, (she didn't) care." Still made an effort afterwards, but nothing helped.

In retrospect, i don't know if she changed (probably, a little) or if the problems were there and I had just ignored them (probably a lot).

And I can say that the change in the relationship was both unexpected and hurtful, because I'd thought ... or, at least hoped ... that it was Right and Forever. Had a lot of illusions nuked with this one.

That's so sad. It's tragic when you find what you thought you fell for might not ever have existed in the first place. =(

Yes, that stings like hell. Of course, were you to ask her, i'm sure she'd say the same thing.

35 is sort of quaint, really. Delayed bday party in, say, March?

March is a good month to have a birthday in!

Thought of this:

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--W. B. Yeats

I would like to know more of the story...and as for the belated bday party, let me know when you are going to do that, as I would love, Love, LOVE to be included in that celebration. :0) Out of curiosity, may I ask why you had to move so often? If you don't want to talk about it, or this is not the appropriate format, lemme know. *squeege*

R.

In October, I moved out of the house I had shared with my ex. The "halfway house" I shared with

roya_spirit finished its purpose for us last week since we're both shacking up with our honeys now.

Considering the massive changes in your life over the last few months, you are to be commended for dealing with the general flux with aplomb, my dear.

I think that generally the reason "love" doesn't survive major personality changes is that "love" is tied to a sense of connection with another person. That connection is made up of those things you find in common with the other party, plus a healthy dose of lust/physiological bang. Depending on the nature of the personal evolution, it can completely gut the sense of "things in common" connection (say, if a once pagan partner became a rabid born again Christian). When you couple that with a human's socialized fear of change causing rigidity of viewpoint, you've got the recipe for a break.

Me, I don't really believe the monogamistic lie. That lie being one day your prince/true love will come and you'll live happily ever after with that one person being all the social/sexual interaction you will need to be whole for the rest of your life. People generally tend to get along in 4-7 year spurts (generally about the time a child would become somewhat autonomous). But then I also don't believe feelings die for a person, just because you've opted not to have a co-habitive life relationship with them.

In fact the only instance in which my feelings actually changed for any person I've been involved with is my 1st ex-husband. They died the day I truly realized that the person I thought he was literally didn't exist. It was simply a cadre of lies calculated to manipulate my feelings and behavior. All others I continue to care for with the same feelings I ever had for them, even the ones who choose to no longer have contact with me for whatever fucking reason they think is appropriate at this point in time.

D.

Steven Covey, of 7 habits fame, says he sees love as a verb, something you do, or I guess don't do. It's active, not passive. I kind of liked that. A reminder that we create the love in our lives through our loving acts.

More recently I heard Marshall Rosenberg say that form Love is a precious need rather than a feeling (or even an action.) I like this even better than a verb. We have a need for love, like a need for nurturing or support in our lives, or a need for belonging. So we do not love so much as we meet each others needs for love. I kind of like the way this puts love into the context of what we give to and receive from those around us.

I don't know what that means about what part of others we fall in love with. I guess those things that meet our needs. For beauty perhaps, for those who like long hair. Or maybe we like the way giving to the other person meets our needs, but when they get all self-sufficient/professional like, we wonder where that leaves us. Our relationship changes. We might wonder how then will we get our need for love met?

Gotta run. Nice to see another shocking deep thought from you Lydia! Glad your move went well.

this puts love into the context of what we give to and receive from those around us
That's wonderful. I really like that. It also goes well with the idea of change. When a person changes, and perhaps does not need your love in the same way as s/he did before (if at all), your feelings towards that person change as well. Interesting.

Nice to see another shocking deep thought from you
They are rather rare, aren't they? I don't mean to be so shallow, it just works out that way. ;)

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You have to at least let yourself get publicly spanked
Hell, I do that when it's not my birthday!!!

I stuck my response in my journal, because it would have been rude to stick this long response in someone's LJ (http://www.livejournal.com/users/chronovore/63429.html).

I'm still formulating what I'd really like to say about love and it's pleasures and it's backlash. But they'll come clear with some more thought.

-=-
So briefly I'll say that Love can be a Movable Feast.
I'm thinking movable because only the mostly dead cease to change.
(So much I want to say here, must put off for now.)

==============
Hey! CR!
I had fun helping you move To-wards the Good, instead of Away from the Bad.
That's the way it should be, right?

Love,
Adam

A very moving experience

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Wow...

Re: Wow...

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