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Wellness Wednesday for March 29, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Not enough context, I think. How old were you when you met?

40, she about the same. To give you some more context, she was big time into meditation.

How long have you been together?

2 years.

continue working together in the "companionate love" phase

She has become disillusioned with "companionate love" as well. We call it unconditional love which she claims does not exist. This is what she told me:

The longer I observe how I am in relation to other people, the more I find that whenever another person evokes a feeling reaction in me then there is some kind of invisible thread or emotional hook also present on my side. I remember a visit from a close relative and how at first I felt guilty for not returning the love, affection and excitement that was offered to me. It was as if a web of invisible, yet sticky vibes was cast out to catch me into feeling loyal to and connected with her. These bonding strings might well be presented as a generous offer of love or friendship, yet – often unbeknownst to the person himself or herself – this offer always contains a request for returned feelings, a demand for support and an obligation for further loyalty. In other words, love is never unconditional, it is always given with conditions and it is only received subject to conditions.

In the situation with my relative I was able after a while to understand the nature and source of my guilt by observation and investigation and then, by being free of my feelings of guilt I was able to give her my full attention and care. While we spent time together we were able to talk as fellow human beings, swap stories about how each experiences life and what each had found out so far about the business of being a human being.

As for a one-to-one man-woman relationship, there is an inevitable expectation of returned favours and feelings. Love by its very nature cannot stand by itself. Love always needs a giver and a receiver, someone who loves and someone who is eager to be loved. In my ‘past-life’ love-relationships, my dreams of how I wanted to live life were automatically intertwined with the man I loved – as a woman I gave him the responsibility for my happiness and I expected him to do the same. (Then I am also jealously guarding that he is not happy without me!)

Soon after I met you I found it vital to investigate this dream because it caused me to be miserable whenever we were apart and made my life difficult whenever we were together. When I looked into the love-dream that I had cherished all my life, I was faced with a rather shocking choice – either keep my dream and my identity as a woman and a lover and remain struggling, frustrated and unhappy, or drop all my high-flying ideas and ideals, grow up and take responsibility for my own life. This also meant that I had to put my becoming unconditionally happy and cheerful as number one on my laundry list – above my relationship. That very choice made me not only autonomous for the first time in my life, it also released you from the burden of ‘my’ unfulfillable expectations and emotional needs. Nobody else is responsible for my becoming happy and nobody is standing in the way of my becoming happy.

One thing is true though, I definitely feel freed from a sense of responsibility (that a typical man suffers from) when being around her. We are enjoying each other's company but I miss the heady feelings of the old days.

Why did you get married?

Marriage's purpose is to raise children, clearly that's out of the window.

In your 40s you're supposed to either welcome your first grand-children or get ready to welcome your first grand-children.

She could be brushing up on her cooking, baking, knitting skills, or helping a teenager / young adult form or get ready to form a family, but here she is...?

Get her a dog. Please, no pitbull.

If she's bored, she can volunteer at the homeless shelter or something.

How long have you been together?

2 years.

So yeah, sounds like she's dealing with the end of the "euphoric" stage. This is more concerning, though:

She has become disillusioned with "companionate love" as well. We call it unconditional love which she claims does not exist.

These are very different things. The standard reductive view on "altruism" is that there's no such thing, because every example you can give, someone else can explain a way as not really selfless. Even the paradigmatic "parent throws themself in front of a bus to save a child" can be explained as "pro-social behavior geared toward benefitting one's own bloodline through the development of a personal legacy" or somesuch. I think it was the philosopher David Hume who suggested that this kind of reductive analysis is unhelpful--our analysis must stop somewhere. But of course these ideas are certainly out there.

But companionate love can still be "conditional" in these ways. The entanglements of responsibilities toward others are often burdensome but they are also widely regarded as essential to a flourishing life. Having children is a lot of work, and yet it is (in my experience) rewarding work. Having good familial relationships often requires a high degree of tolerance, compromise, and forgiveness, and yet familial relationships are usually the most reliable and lasting--and beneficial--of all. Chris Gowans writes a bit about this in his book "Innocence Lost," if I remember correctly--basically he notes that even though there are times when we feel absolutely burdened by even our very good relationships, it is morally important for us to experience and bear such burdens, but also to be aware of when, and to what extent, it's okay for us to put them down anyway. The movie "A Monster Calls" is an exploration of this very idea through the eyes of a child losing a parent to illness.

Now, this bit does sound suspiciously like a woman who is either already cheating, or is exploring the possibility:

As for a one-to-one man-woman relationship, there is an inevitable expectation of returned favours and feelings. Love by its very nature cannot stand by itself. Love always needs a giver and a receiver, someone who loves and someone who is eager to be loved. In my ‘past-life’ love-relationships, my dreams of how I wanted to live life were automatically intertwined with the man I loved – as a woman I gave him the responsibility for my happiness and I expected him to do the same.

Many people describe companionate love as each partner being the other's highest priority. Certainly relationships come with expectations! But the idea that this is a bad thing seems like a red flag to me. It just might instead be a particularly clumsy way of characterizing the end of the "euphoric" stage, which would be less to worry about.

Nobody else is responsible for my becoming happy and nobody is standing in the way of my becoming happy.

I think this is just wrong. Here is one of my most highly upvoted comments on reddit ever:

Humans are social animals. Isolation, as a rule, is bad for our mental health.

To the extent that this is saying, "you don't always have to be in a romantic relationship to have a fulfilling life," it's a good reminder. But with very few exceptions, most people are incapable of being happy while living their lives truly alone. Our brains, for the most part, aren't wired that way. And telling someone that they need to learn to be happy alone before they can be happy together will often only worsen their depression, because they start to take their inability to be happy alone as a sign that they will never be happy at all--

When in fact they would be truly happy if they weren't so alone.

Put a little differently--it may not be your responsibility to make her happy, per se, but if she sees no reason to at least occasionally make personal sacrifices for your happiness, and you see no reason to make similar sacrifices for hers, then you don't really have a relationship anymore--you're just two people sharing a house. Even friends regard themselves as at least minimally responsible, in context-bound ways, for one another's happiness and well-being; otherwise, how are they friends?

We are enjoying each other's company but I miss the heady feelings of the old days.

This is normal; this is how the euphoria stage ends. It can be recaptured at times, with effort. If this is your only real complaint, then you just have to work through it (hopefully with each other's loving help--that seems like a reasonable responsibility to think you have toward one another!). But I have certainly seen relationships where the end of the euphoria stage was accompanied by a drastic reduction in sexual congress, which is totally unnecessary and frequently kills marriages. Communication is important, but don't mistake words for communication. What you've shared so far from your wife is a lot of words that don't say much of practical value. So far I am about half convinced that she still loves you but doesn't know what love is, or doesn't understand how important interpersonal relationships actually are to her because she has internalized a radically individualist mindset that is complete empirical bullshit.