Human relationship trajectories...

[erosman]

Most relationships are moments in time. Some continue for a spell, while others are memories in the blink of an eye. Being open to what the relationship will naturally produce is difficult at times. We tend to project our ego/desires into a quasi-sales approach, and then we bitch when the moment passes. The older I get, the more I see time as an ally...not the enemy.

Me is the enemy.


What do you think?

 

[MissTaken]

What do I think?

I have to be honest. Given my current circumstances, you have given me good reason for thought. I will return to this thread after pondering your comments.



I do believe time is a friend...

or at least I hope so!

 

[riff]

I think I know what you feel. Or are at least trying to say. It is kind of sad in a way, but it is beautiful in a way. Too often I allow the sadness to mar the beauty of it.

Someone in my examination approached this idea. Eros, I really wish you would participate in this discussion if you haven't:

http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75013

Any anyone else who is interested too.

 

[erosman]

Someone in my examination approached this idea. Eros, I really wish you would participate in this discussion if you haven't:

Thanks riff for the invite. I'll check it out.

 

[erosman]

Projecting expectations into relationships is like feeding them poison. Even positive ones will foster a growing pretense, while negative thinking and doubts will suffocate hope. Will sheer determination empower a person to grow beyond their emotional baggage, and learn to cultivate the moment, and what is in the present? Where's the beef?

Peeling the alternating, sedimentary layers of hope and disappointment back, perhaps with practice, one could nurture a peace into the present...learn to enjoy and be enjoyed in the moment.

 

[alexandraaah]

I like to think that people come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

 

[erosman]

I would agree, Alex.

It is so normal to project yesterday's experiences onto today's opportunities, and miss the freshness of the moment...the new harvest of the new season.

 

[bluemuse]

Eloquent bullshit......????

Projecting expectations into relationships is like feeding them poison. Even positive ones will foster a growing pretense, while negative thinking and doubts will suffocate hope. Will sheer determination empower a person to grow beyond their emotional baggage, and learn to cultivate the moment, and what is in the present? Where's the beef?

Peeling the alternating, sedimentary layers of hope and disappointment back, perhaps with practice, one could nurture a peace into the present...learn to enjoy and be enjoyed in the moment.

Hmmmmm....We are human beings, not androids. Every experience, good and bad shapes who we are and how we deal with our relationships. Most of us aren't self-aware enough to turn off the voices in our heads and just let things happen. And is that so bad, really?

If we always approached relationships with no expectations (what others call "hope") , only living in the present.....we'd never truly grow. We'd sit around with goofy smiles waiting for the next wonderful moment to cultivate.....instead of taking a chance....making soemthing happen.

Relationships can be a series of little expectations (hopes, wishes, desires)....they build on eachother...they are traded back and forth. This is life...this is natural.

Ummmm....did I miss your point?



bluemuse

 

[freescorfr]

Overall, erosman, I feel I have had the tendency in life, to put what happens in life straight into my head. So, if something doesn't work, it doesn't work because........ Reason is the master of all our life, safe, true and certain.


What I now believe is very different. When something happens to me, I listen to myself. What is going on in me when my dad dies, or my child has a bad report from school? What am I feeling?

And where do those feelings come from? I can often tell that too now. Then my thoughts about the event and the people in it are very different - and above all, I know where I stand and can hold my position.


These intermediate stages between an event and my thoughts about the event, stages which pass through the pit of my stomach and my heart, the whole deposit of life's experiences, not rationally, but as felt, are stages I had blotted out for years.

So I had no emotional framework to live in. And that's where human relationships find their highways.

 

[erosman]

It is interesting, freescorfr, how we - fellow humans - can seek the same objective, but each of us has our own path to find. I feel I can relate to your evolutionary stages, even though, my own stages are perhaps quite opposite.
You relate that your primary way of processing experiences was intellectual and reasoning based, and that you have moved towards a more whole process of feeling and reasoning.
My own path has been one of primarily processing with feelings, and then, learning to step aside of the emotional flood and listen to the interjecting reasons and basis for the events or circumstances at hand.
Even today I was able to stand beside elements that felt as though they were summoning emotional torrents, and resist the flood and embrace the calmness of reason. It felt good. It felt satisfying...to know that the emotions could be held at bay. Not dismissed, but weighed...selected perhaps.
I know that everyone doesn't pass the same way. Some hold hope with reason, while others of us hold our hopes and disappointments with emotion and fiery passions. For those of us who feel so intensely, our trek up our side of the mountain needs less emotional intensity and a greater ration of calm reason.

My comments regarding projecting old experiences onto new ones, should be more appropriately described as projecting old, familiar feelings onto new situations - where we don't know yet how we will feel.
Just as you have learned to move through stages inside your cognitive experience...listening and feeling; I am seeing progress by checking the current of emotions, and observing the facts and reasons.

I am not suggesting, bluemuse, that we should behave with robotic precision. I am really seeking balance. It's a search for me. Rambling here makes the path a little clearer. Thanks for the responses.

 

[Ice Cold]

Well my trajectory lately has been crashed, burned and left in the dessert.

I keep my emotions at bay, and just kind of observe the habits of others. Just marvelling sometimes at their actions and reactions to relationships. Knowing which triggers are setting them off. Wondering fi they even have a clue as to why they are doing these things.

Wondering how many patterns did I fall into myself, without even realizing it. Looking at these patterns, in my opinions most of them I find to be circular in nature. The people involved may change in the relationship, but the behavior is still strikingly similar.

 

[erosman]

Wouldn't it be great...

to be able to get off the carousel and watch it take a few turns while you're observing, instead of experiencing?

Is that what chillin' out is all about?

 

[heterotic]

Re: Wouldn't it be great...

to be able to get off the carousel and watch it take a few turns while you're observing, instead of experiencing?

Is that what chillin' out is all about?

Yes, but the process of dismounting is usually painful, and almost everyone tries to avoid it once they're on. I hear what you're saying about the expectations: If I want things to happen a certain way, or even "just know" they'll happen that way; my actions and reactions aren't going to be based on what's really happening, but on a very flawed perception of it.

Take a buddhist approach to a relationship and release your attachments to preconceptions, plans for the future, and even the person you're with? It would be odd. You couldn't be hurt by anything that happened in the relationship, ol' gautama was right about that much. But would it be the most fulfilling relationship possible?