Enemy of Entropy

Poetry: Michael Blumenthal

29 January 2008, 11:30 pm. 5 Comments. Filed under Poetry, Reading, Relationships.

For my Sam

A Mar­riage
You are hold­ing up a ceil­ing
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, ter­ri­bly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceil­ing
will soon collapse.

But then,
unex­pect­edly,
some­thing won­der­ful hap­pens:
Some­one,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arm up
to the ceil­ing beside you.

So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flow­ing back
to your fin­gers and arms.
And when your partner’s arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
with­out the house falling.

From Against Romance: Poems by Michael Blu­men­thal, Pen­guin Books, 1988

Romance and Roleplaying

12 January 2008, 11:53 pm. 5 Comments. Filed under Family, Fun, Geekery, RPGs, Relationships.

Sam has talked about this sub­ject in sev­eral of his pod­casts, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried to address it. I may fail mis­er­ably, but I’ll try.

Sam and I had one of our twice-​​weekly “date nights” tonight. That means that from about 7pm ’til we go to bed, we do noth­ing but have fun with each other. The girl amuses her­self oth­er­wise, or goes out, and we do what­ever we like. Usu­ally, that means we spend some time gam­ing.
Read on…

The Three Love Systems From Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

27 November 2007, 11:44 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Reading, Relationships, Sex.

From today’s Delancey Place newsletter:

In the ter­rain of the human heart, sci­en­tists tell us, at least three inde­pen­dent but inter­re­lated brain sys­tems are at play, all mov­ing us in their own way. To untan­gle love’s mys­ter­ies, neu­ro­science dis­tin­guishes between neural net­works for attach­ment, for care­giv­ing, and for sex. Each is fueled by a dif­fer­ing set of brain chem­i­cals and hor­mones, and each runs through a dis­parate neu­ronal cir­cuit. Each adds its own chem­i­cal spice to the many vari­eties of love.

Social Intelligence by Daniel GolemanAttach­ment deter­mines who we turn to for suc­cor; these are the peo­ple we miss the most when they are absent. Care­giv­ing gives us the urge to nur­ture the peo­ple for whom we feel most con­cern. When we are attached, we cling; when we are care­giv­ing we pro­vide. And sex is, well, sex. …

The forces of affec­tion that bind us to each other pre­ceded the rise of the ratio­nal brain. Love’s rea­sons have always been sub­cor­ti­cal, though love’s
exe­cu­tion may require care­ful plot­ting. … The three major sys­tems for loving—attachment, care­giv­ing, and sexuality—all fol­low their own com­plex rules. At a given moment any one of these three can be ascendant—say, as a cou­ple feels a warm togeth­er­ness, or when they cud­dle their own baby, or while they make love. When all three of these love sys­tems are oper­at­ing, they feed romance at its rich­est: a relaxed, affec­tion­ate, and sen­sual con­nec­tion where rap­port blossoms. …

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Jaak Pansepp…finds a neural corol­lary between the dynam­ics of opi­ate addic­tion and the depen­dence on the peo­ple for whom we feel our strongest attach­ments. All pos­i­tive inter­ac­tions with peo­ple, he pro­poses, owe [at least] part of their plea­sure to the opi­oid sys­tem, the very cir­cuitry that links with heroin and other addic­tive sub­stances. … Even ani­mals, he finds, pre­fer to spend time with those in whose pres­ence they have secreted oxy­tocin and nat­ural opi­oids, which induce a relaxed serenity—suggesting that these brain chem­i­cals cement our fam­ily ties and friend­ships as well as our love relationships.

Daniel Gole­man, Social Intel­li­gence: The New Sci­ence of Human Rela­tion­ships, Ban­tam, © 2006 by Daniel Gole­man, pp. 18

Def­i­nitely a book that I intend to read! I found Emo­tional Intel­li­gence quite good, but had some­how missed this newer book.

I strongly rec­om­mend the newslet­ter, which brings inter­est­ing excerpts from an incred­i­ble vari­ety of books to your mail­box every day.

What do you think? Is it all about the opi­ates? Do you have, or have you had, a romance in which all three sys­tems were go?

The ManDiet

28 June 2006, 3:01 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Relationships.

I have referred to The Man Diet sev­eral times as some­thing I have done and rec­om­mend. After explain­ing it sev­eral times, I’ve decided to write it up here and just refer peo­ple to the article.

I call it the Man Diet, but that’s really a mis­nomer. It should be an SO Diet or Rela­tion­ship Diet or some­thing like that. It just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, so just take it as given that I’m refer­ring to women, men or who­ever you would nor­mally have romantic/​sexual rela­tion­ships with.

There was a time when I went from one rela­tion­ship to the next. If I didn’t have one or more SOs, I felt incom­plete. I didn’t have incred­i­bly healthy rela­tion­ships, but I was sel­dom alone! I derived much of my self-​​esteem from being in rela­tion­ships with others.

Unfor­tu­nately, that led to “set­tling” for peo­ple who didn’t really meet the stan­dards I thought I wanted in sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and often to accept­ing treat­ment that ranged from unpleas­ant to down­right abusive.

Right now, I do not truly remem­ber what trig­gered the real­iza­tion that I’d never have a truly healthy rela­tion­ship if I felt that I absolutely had to have a rela­tion­ship with some­one other than myself — that, in fact, cul­ti­vat­ing a healthy rela­tion­ship with myself, being com­plete in myself, was vital.

I didn’t think all that out so clearly at the begin­ning. I was just tired of the crap. I was tired of going from one rela­tion­ship to the next and hav­ing the same crap come up over and over again. I was tired of the merry-​​go-​​round. I didn’t hon­estly count on hav­ing any more sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers. I just decided that I was done. I swore off men for a year.

At the begin­ning of that period, I felt anx­ious. I felt lonely. I felt more than a lit­tle des­per­ate, because hon­estly, I have never been alone unless I chose to be that way. I’d spent my life using rela­tion­ships to avoid hav­ing to deal with my own issues in a deep way. If I hadn’t told sev­eral friends what I was doing and asked them to help keep me hon­est, I don’t think I would have stuck with it.

In the next few months, I seemed to meet poten­tial SOs every time I turned around. It was truly rain­ing men! That was dif­fi­cult. It was really tempt­ing to just make a lit­tle excep­tion, because hey, he was just so nice! Or so smart, or funny, or what­ever. But there’s noth­ing like true friends to kick your butt when you need it.

To be hon­est, I’ve never had a prob­lem deal­ing with most prac­ti­cal things — bal­anc­ing check­books, basic home repairs, even sim­ple auto main­te­nance. I didn’t need a man to take care of any of that. No, I looked to SOs to keep me com­pany, to keep me occu­pied, to suck up lots of energy. I felt beau­ti­ful because they said I was, because they wanted to be with me.

So I found other ways to use my time and my energy. I went out with friends as friends. I devel­oped new friend­ships that were much bet­ter because I wasn’t putting any­thing into won­der­ing whether or not the rela­tion­ship would move into other areas. If nobody else wanted to go see a par­tic­u­lar music event, I went alone.

I finally faced up to some of the issues I was avoid­ing when most of my energy was going into inter­ac­tions with an SO — like why did I need a man around to feel worth­while? Why did I accept treat­ment that I wouldn’t want any of my friends to accept — that I had, in fact, told other peo­ple to walk away from? Why wasn’t I hold­ing out for the kind of per­son I wanted? Hell, why hadn’t I sim­ply become the per­son I wanted?

While I was really count­ing the days at first, by the end of that year I didn’t even real­ized it was done. I didn’t think about it until a cou­ple of months later when a friend men­tioned it. Hey, it was over! I real­ized that I didn’t feel an urge to run out and start any­thing new. I was just fine with being me, with­out a man.

I won’t pre­tend that I’m all past all of that stuff. It comes back at times, but not nearly as strongly. It’s much eas­ier to insist on the kind of treat­ment I deserve from an SO, because I don’t fear being alone. I can be alone, and be happy. Not a problem.

I think spend­ing at least a year alone as a truly inde­pen­dent adult is a good idea for absolutely any­one. If pos­si­ble, live alone. Be solely respon­si­ble for your­self finan­cially. Develop a healthy social life that has noth­ing to do with whether or not you have an SO. Do any­thing you’ve been putting off. Were you wait­ing to take a vaca­tion until you had some­one to go with? Go now. Go back to school. Change jobs. Vol­un­teer. Learn to dance. Just do it, and enjoy it.

Dur­ing that year, prac­tice celibacy. That means not only do you not have SOs, but you don’t have “friends with ben­e­fits” or one-​​night stands. Just be with your­self. Honor your­self. Love your­self. Treat your­self as you would some­one you truly treasure.

Tell some­body what you’re doing. Tell peo­ple you can trust to help you con­tinue on to your goal. If some­one isn’t sup­port­ive, dis­tance your­self from that per­son. I don’t care if that per­son is an imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­ber. You need to main­tain bound­aries, and you don’t need any­one tear­ing you down. Seek out new friend­ships with peo­ple who are supportive.

It may take some peo­ple longer than a year to get past the “ohmigod I’m gonna get old and be ALONE!” panic. That’s fine. Take what­ever time you need. I promise that you will be health­ier and hap­pier for it. The world, and all the men and women in it, will still be there when you’re ready.

What I learned from my past relationships

9 May 2006, 1:05 am. 13 Comments. Filed under Relationships.

So I actu­ally heard from some­one via Orkut. I can’t remem­ber if that’s ever hap­pened to me before or not.

Any­way, I went to check out this person’s pro­file, and real­ized mine was way out of date. Some­day, I swear, I’m going to repro­duce all the ques­tions all those dif­fer­ent places ask right here on my own site, keep that up to date, and refuse to fill out any other profiles.

Any­way, one of the fields was “From my past rela­tion­ships I learned…” I found the ques­tion more inter­est­ing that most, so I’m repro­duc­ing my answer here, expanded a bit.
from my past rela­tion­ships i learned: Some­thing dif­fer­ent every time :-) A few of them:

Hon­esty is the only way to relate that’s worth both­er­ing with.
Love isn’t enough.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is priceless.

Rela­tion­ships take lots of work from every­one, and some­times they just aren’t sustainable.

Sex is often the canary in the rela­tion­ship mine. Bar­ring health issues that make sex impos­si­ble or unlikely, a decrease in sex­ual inti­macy is usu­ally due to a decrease in over­all inti­macy, which is Bad.

There’s no under­stand­ing crazy. Just walk away with as much of your san­ity intact as possible.

Nobody deserves abuse.

Stay­ing together is sel­dom “best for the kids.” In fact, I’ve yet to see a sit­u­a­tion in which it was best for anyone.

There’s no way one (sane) per­son in a cou­ple or other group­ing is happy if the other is miserable.

If some­one changes in a big way right after you get mar­ried, start try­ing to get an annul­ment. He isn’t the per­son you thought you knew.

While an adult can lie to you eas­ily, his kids can’t. Nei­ther can his pets. If either doesn’t behave con­sis­tently with what she says, or she doesn’t treat them the way she says she believes in rais­ing kids or pets or what­ever, she’s a liar. Leave before you get any closer.

Some things are worth the pos­si­bil­ity of a bro­ken heart.

“If you really loved me you’d…” means that the speaker is an abu­sive ass­hole try­ing to get you to do some­thing that’s unhealthy for you.

Play­ing together is essen­tial. So is work­ing together.

Peo­ple are not projects.

Knights are noto­ri­ous for set­ting up new tow­ers with you inside them. The only safe “res­cue” is the DIY ver­sion, where you just walk out of the prison

What are yours?

 

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