On relation ships and love particularly

I will write about the writer as a character later, for now I must reply on love.

You (Bram) are free to interpret this critical response to your post as a statement of love and affection. First of all, I must say I might have misinterpreted some of your statements, please don't enrage if you find my response unfitting.

I found your definition of a relationship as 'an agreement of two people to call eachother boy-/girlfriend' very strange. You return to the notion of literal 'agreements' a number of times in your post. Such an agreement (whether explicitly stated or unconsciously assumed) seems to entail specific cost/benefit relations and an agreement to exchange certain affections. Although I can see how this works, I do not think this is very informative when considering your own, personal relationship and your affections towards another person; in fact I think that this way of thinking prohibits what I would call a desireable relationship, without even giving a correct picture of love, but I return to that later.

People can have a 'relationship' without making any agreement to call eachother boy-/girlfriend, as they do in some cultures where people enter arranged marriages which preclude such designations, but which can equally well entail romance (ultimately) or possibly even 'falling in love'. I do not however want to make cross-cultural considerations and I'll stick to our specific situation; heterosexual, kaukasian males etc.

A pleasant relationship (at least the kind that I desire), and I hope you agree, is always coincidental with what I call mutual love. I don't want a relationship with someone who doesn't love me etc.

I believe that, although relationships and love can share many features between individuals, couples, cultures etc., there is no set of specific features that must exist between people in order for these people to be in a 'relationship' or to be 'in love'. Many love affairs involve sex, some don't. Many (most, almost all?) love affairs involve intense feelings of affection (in the broad sense). However, I will not argue whith people who say their love involves other or even contradictory features, for our literature (and maybe even our lives) are filled with such stories.

My slightly confused writing signals that I'm fighting to stay out of semantics. I believe a more personal account could clear things up:

I think (and that might be obvious) that the relationships one embarks on, are determined by a person's fundamental desires and beliefs, which are very personal of course. When I was a bit younger, I looked for romance in forms that I would now consider naive and even destructive; romance barred with cliché's of cigarette's, rock 'n' roll, poetry and fatalism. Sometimes I long to be 16 again, but never to act like a 16-year old in this moment. I know the love I want when I see it; many people around me, my age as well as much older than me, enjoy relationships that allow both to flourish for their entire lives.

This could be another cliché (and well, fuck me, then) but I don't see any reason to be cynical and assume that something like that is not possible in my life. I don't have the feeling that people in loving relationships are fooling themselves or the other; I observe genuine affection, commitment, trust, dependence; love, and I laugh in the face of people who stand by and deny what is so clearly there.

Of course, I ask myself what the mechanism of this state (love) is. I assume that evolutionary processes have primed us to love only those who we can expect to 'return' the favor. In evolutionary respect, love is nothing more than a social loan with interest you extend to another person. But the evolutionary proces does not explain the psychological state, only the requisite for it. The picture I have of love is quite simple. It's a feeling which we innately desire, like food*. We can only feel it when another person feels the same way as we.

In order to overcome this paradox we fall in love easily; falling in love is a catalyst that enables us to start sacrificing to and benefiting from eachother. Not in simple commodities such as food or even sex (the value of which is easily calculable), but the gold and platinum of human interrelations; affection, dependence, respect, trust; the stuff that makes two people (feel) better than one. If the other is able to compel me to give these to her, and I compel the other to return them, we will be loving. I do not understand completely why (although I have my suspicions), but my love gives them to me and I, ranking both her physical and mental features very highly, return them with pleasure and intended dedication.

Although this state of love makes a lot of things possible (including even an increase in love, commitment and trust for one's self), relationships can still crumble once started succesfully. If I rely on her too much, she will grow annoyed by me. If she glorifies me too much, I will lose my respect for her. There is no way of predicting the outcome from the start (you can prove this impossibility scientifically), but falling in love is easy enough.

So, I also think love depends very much on the response of the other person, although I'm not sure if we agree in what way exactly. I am personally convinced that you must desire a loving relationship with a person, before either can benefit from it. But when both desire this, both can benefit immensly with only a little bit of saccrifice.

Of course, I can give a cognitive deconstruction of trust, reliance, affection etc.: Intrinsically desireable commodities although without calculable value or predictable returns, but potentiators of large amounts of future value. However, this is not the feeling we have when we love. The colour green is not a bunch of neuronal responses but a percept. The last has not been said in this discussion but even a description of the cognitive mechanism by which an affective state (love) arises is simply not decisive for how to deal with such a state.

* Although some people desire it more than others; like food!

On relationships and love in general;

First of all I want to remark that I previously thought I would never come to the point of writing something on love in this manner. This idea has only come upon me recently, probably by recent events in my personal life. I have, like others I think, for a long time assumed that love is a natural given thing. By doing so, I have asserted that love is the same for everybody and must therefore be experienced in the same ways that I experience it. However, this is a false form of analogy and I realize that now. I want to tell you and I can only tell you what my conception of love is and what role I think it should have in a relationship and how both factors should interplay. This however, must be seen as my conception and I therefore want to stress that I do not have the illusion that I am spreading the absolute truth here.

Let’s first begin with the concept of the relationship, since I have spoken about this before in previous blog posts. From my point of view, a relationship is an agreement between two people, from whatever sex, to call each other boy- and/or girlfriend. That is basically it. That is the theoretical framework which forms a relationship and all the rest which come with that concept are ‘extras’. I just call it extras, but I want it to be perceived as a neutral term, so please keep that in mind. These extras can come about in several ways and are in no way inherent to the concept of a relationship. It might be that these extras are there because of assumptions connoted to the concept of a relationship, but to make things easier I will take an example of such an extra. I will keep it simple and I will take sex as my example.

Whenever I endeavor in a relationship I more or less expect that I will continue to have sex with this person. Actually this is a bad example, because I never start out a relationship with someone I have not had sex with yet. Let’s take a hypothetical example then. Assume that someone starts out a relationship with someone else, called person A and B respectively. Would it be illogical that person A expects to have sex with person B? It might be perceived as being logical, but it actually isn’t for the following reason: no one is someone else’s property. This is a very fundamental given, which many agree with I hope. From this fundamental given follows the following argument; person A cannot decide for person B whether person B wants sex with him or her on a factual basis. This decision is based on assumptions. Even if person A asks person B whether person B wants to have sex with person A, person A must still assume that the person B speaks the truth.

There are many more extras which could pass the revue, but in general I think they all go through the process mentioned above. Sex is a practical thing in which it is pretty easily made clear whether one wants to have it or not, but it becomes more complicated with more abstract notions: notions as commitment, the idea of love and reliance for example. These can only be made clear through a verbal process from both parties wherein equality in a relationship plays a very important role I think. If this equality is disturbed, I think it is very likely that the truth value of the utterances made by both parties concerning these abstract notions will be disturbed as well as a consequence. This will probably lead to wrong assumptions and thus to a misunderstanding of each other when it comes to these, in my opinion, very essential notions.

I will now turn to the concept of love. I first of all want to make a distinction with falling in love, in order to avoid misunderstanding. Falling in love and actual love have little or even nothing to do with each other. It may be the case that one falls in love with a person and eventually will feel real love for this person, but one thing does not necessarily lead to another. Falling in love might be best described as a trick of nature, which enables a person to emotionally bind a person temporarily to another person in order for nature to do its work. Real love however is, unlike falling in love, a construction. On the on-line dictionary it is stated that love is: “a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person”, but I do not agree with that. The makers of the dictionary assume it to be that way, but that does not make it that way. First of all, you can also love yourself, so the “for another person” should be replace with “for a person”, I think. Furthermore does love necessarily express itself in affection?

I do not think so. I think love can be expressed in many ways, because being affected by someone is merely a feeling. Now I will commence in what I think love should be in a greater sense, so I will enter the realm of my assumptions here. I think love is a repetition of expressions of appreciation towards another person and the recognition of the reception thereof. That sentence was a mouthful perhaps, but I will accompany it with some explanations. Expressions of appreciation can take many forms and under these may fall the dictionary definition, namely passionate affection. I rather do it with words. I do not mean the literal utterance of “I love you” every now and then, but I am rather referring to non-literal things. If I write texts about things in order to share my opinions and views on a certain topic with a certain person or a certain people, that is an expression of appreciation from me towards he or she or them. That, however, is not yet love. Or at least it may be categorized as being blind love. Only until a reaction in whatever sort of way is received, by which the sender can recognize that the sharing of view has come across, true love is reached I think.

In that way I view myself actually only as physically heterosexual, because I love a lot of men as well. This might actually be a practical way to clarify the distinction between the activity of sex and the definition of love. My mother once told me that she would not be surprised if I showed up with a man one day at my parents’ house. I may certainly hope so, because I have done so several times, but she should just not expect me to have sex with that man.

I wrote this particular text for a particular reason, even though I think I am perfectly capable of defining how I view these concepts, I am not able, and even unwilling, to shove my views down anyone’s throat. The reason is actually to make these concepts clearer for myself and to persuade people to think about the assumptions they make when regarding such essential concepts. I have shared my views and opinions and this was my expression of appreciation towards you dear reader. Remember though that I do not necessarily love you. This can only follow from your reaction and my evaluation and possible appreciation thereof, but I usually assume that these are written with the best of intentions.

Now about the role of love in a relationship, or at least what I think what role love should have in a relationship. The description I have given of love should be the core of any good relationship you have with another human-being. If there is no appreciation from and towards the other person with whom you have the relationship with, then it does not make much sense to continue having this particular relationship. I want to stress at this point that appreciation is not the same as agreement. I often disagree with other people, but that does not mean that I do not appreciate their input. This is an essential difference. I usually appreciate it when people do not agree with me, because that gives me more inspiration usually. Love does not have to be more than that, yet that is already a lot. All the rest, the possible extras, such as sex and commitment in whatever degree, are not self evident, but assumed. If these assumptions happen to be exactly the same from the perspective of both parties, then there is no problem, at least not on the basis of these notions. On the other hand if these assumptions are not the same, then a problem is bound to show up. This can only be resolved in two ways; either ignoring the problem or resolving the problem. I prefer the latter one more and more and therefore I like to choose the path of words.

Ik kleed je uit.

Ik ga naar de w.c. Ik kleed me uit. Ik ben naakt. Ik kleed je uit en schil alles van je af. Ik trek je aan. In jou vind ik vele slierten en geuren. Het moest er van komen. Het moest gebeuren. Ik trek je uit. Trek maar niets van mij aan. Je wilt niet weten wat je er zult vinden. Ik heb al mijn kinderen vermoord. De babyziektes zijn er uit en de volwassenen zijn er in gekropen. Het is een ware zonde. Ik heb het niet verzonnen. Ik durf het niet te verklaren, maar diep van binnen zit het in ons allen. Ik wil mijn leven niet vergallen, maar het is te vergeefs. Er heeft nooit iemand in een lege huls geleefd. Dat zal het ook nooit doen. Geef je hart, je ziel en je poen. Je bent mijn bezit en ik niet die van jou. Alleen als ik in je kruip. Je slierten ontaarden zich in empathie, maar dat kan ik niet aan. Ik wil alleen maar mezelf zijn. Geen deel van mij mag zich onderscheiden. Het zou eeuwig zonde zijn. Ik hou vast aan de dingen die ik heb. Ik ben een materialist pur sang. Haal me op en neem me en neem alle kinderen van me af. Ik zou er toch geen raar mee weten. Je pakt me vast en slaat me neer. Het kan zo maar gebeuren. Ik heb het wel vaker mee gemaakt. Het slaat nergens op. Behalve op mij. Ik kan er niet veel mee, maar ik heb dan ook nooit bestaan. Alles gaat toch op een keer ergens naar toe. Ontken het maar niet. Ik kan in je ziel kijken, in je huid kruipen en al je slierten ontrafelen, want wij zijn eigenlijk helemaal niet zo anders dan we eigenlijk op dit moment denken. Ik denk als jou, maar toch net even iets anders. Ietsjes beter waarschijnlijk. Relatief gezien maakt het niet uit. Ik exploiteer jou toch wel, net als jij mij. Ik mag het graag zo zien. Zuig maar aan me. Heus het doet geen pijn. Ik zal er van genieten en je krijgt er een hoop voor terug. Aandacht. Of liefde. Kies maar. Maar je mag niet allebei kiezen. Het ene sluit het andere wel uit. Ik verlang naar dingen die ik niet kan krijgen. Een snoeptrommel boven op de kast. Ik ben te klein. Te klein om het te kunnen bevatten. Om van alle snoepjes te kunnen eten. Dan wordt je toch veels te dik. Ik ben reeds een ontzettende papzak. De dokter is heel boos op me en ik op hem. Het is een gore klootzak en hij moet zich niet mijn zaken bemoeien. Als ik weelderig wil sterven mag ik dat zelf bepalen. Alles moet maar in leven gehouden worden, wanneer mag er weer eens gestorven worden? Ik maak al mijn kinderen dood. De dokter had een doktersverklaring en ik had de mijne. Ik had ook het laatste woord. Had hij niet van terug. Ik liep weg en kwam nooit meer terug. Ik pakte een trapje en at van alle snoepjes. Ik was slim genoeg om te krijgen wat ik wilde, maar was niet slim genoeg om te beseffen waarom ik het wilde. Alle snoepjes hebben me uiteindelijk niets opgeleverd. Oh ja, toch wel. Ik zou de kaars ook aan twee kanten moeten branden, maar dat doe ik niet. Of toch wel. Alleen kan ik dat alleen bepalen in retrospect. Dat zei de dokter ook. Als je er op terug kijkt zul je er vast wel heel slecht over voelen. Dat doe ik ook. Want ik heb vreselijke honger en ik net zo goed niet naar de lul kunnen luisteren en meteen naar de Burger King kunnen gaan. Ik steek mijn hoofd in al jouw zonden en al je wonden en je laat me alles zien. Je bent een goedkope slet van tien. Ik heb je vader en mijn kinderen vermoord. Ik had een keer niets te doen en ik had honger en je moet toch wat op je vrije dag. Lekker een AOW trekken omdat ik niet kan werken. Ik kan niet werken omdat ik zo’n luie papzak ben. Kan ik ook niet veel aan doen. Ik zeg altijd maar dat ik een nare ziekte heb. Waar ik heel geil van wordt. Vinden ze leuk. Snappen ze niet. Echt waar? Ja, echt waar. Ik weet alleen niet of het door de ziekte komt. Ik ben het gewoon. Neuken? Nee. Ok. Andere keer misschien? Nee. Ok. Dan kunnen we toch ten minste hand in hand lopen door het park. Ik liep en liep en uiteindelijk was ik veertig kilo afgevallen. Dat was een opluchting. Ik at snel nog wat, om me minder leeg te vullen. Je hield me niet tegen. Ik was mezelf. Jij trouwens ook. Ik had zin om in je te kruipen en me te wikkelen in al je slierten. Ik zou me gevangen voelen, maar ook warm, soms althans. Ik weet het niet. Ik kan het niet. Ik verdrijf alles wat dicht bij komt en je tralies op mijn huid voelen heel koud aan. Wat wil je nu van me? Je wilt me onvoorwaardelijk. Dat kan helaas niet, want zo zijn we niet getrouwd. Niet dat we ooit getrouwd zijn, maar zo zegt men dat nu eenmaal. Kijk maar eens in het woordenboek. Leer je vast nog wel eens iets van. Je kunt me maar beter niet vertrouwen overigens. Ik ben een klootzak. Ik ben een moordenaar. Ik heb al mijn kinderen vermoord. Ik word niet graag gestoord. Ik ontplooi mezelf en daar heb ik anderen voor nodig? Ik weet het niet. Ik kan me er geen raad uit.