Something to make you feel this world is real or not real

She is not a charming girl to everyone, the aspect of that I like her is especially from many times, people surrounding her frequently chose not to care her, even including her husband.

Yes, she is pregnant, but many people surrounding her didn't take care of her.

I found I'm this kind of man: I never can be attracted by super beauty who can obsess almost everyone more or less, I always love a girl who is in a helpless and vulnerable situation. I like her so much because her husband seems not caring about her.

And I dread her husband will not love her and accompany her in her arduous future. Namely I dread her husband will discard her in some time. So my love to her generated from this stand point, a longing sympathy. In my eyes, her defects are all adorable, far more adorable than the perfect popular star or super attractive celebrities.

I don't want to have romance with her. I want to escort her, help her, make her happy, and I don't want her husband to discard her or treat her badly.

I'm so helpless, I care about her happiness even more than herself. Of course I have no right to say this, because I didn't sacrifice a lot for her. But in case her husband didn't sacrifice a lot, and even leeched from her? It seems to me that her husband really doesn't love her so much.

I love a girl because she is in a disadvantage and perhaps piteous. This is not all a romance. But yeah romance yearning helplessly rose from this. Like my heart is stupidly soft I want to have a story in which I saved a girl in need then she also likes me so she want and need my love.

I don't want to waste my love to someone who is in such an advantage situation where she would find it to be a joke that my love would ever be needed.

I always want to love someone who is in need of them. She doesn't need my love, but she needs my help. A subtle and tormenting case, twisting and sorrowful both to her and to me.

Your feelings are completely understandable... there's a reason that all over the earth stories are told and re-told of the dragon holding captive the virgin and the knight heroically charging in to slay the dragon and save the virgin. It is very deep within a man's nature to want to rescue the helpless "pure" (as he sees her in the early stages of romance) girl from the captivity of the villain.

There is a danger however in superimposing these archetypes too rigidly over your situation: nothing always fits perfectly and entirely into the archetypal story. She is not as pure and helpless as she seems. You are not as heroic as you seem. The husband is not as much a dragon as he seems. Real life is more complicated than a story and while at times real life is a manifestation of these elements of story, every real life story is unique and constantly changing. Although you see the husband as the dragon holding her captive in an emotionally dismal dank dungeon, perhaps the husband would see the situation as Odysseus returning from a long heroic journey to find his wife surrounded by threatening suitors and is wondering whether she will be faithful to him?

And let's say the situation eventually progresses and you become the husband... there will be times where you manifest the emotionally cold dragon too and there will be times when she manifests the emotionally cold dragon imprisoning you. There will be many times when you are incapable of fulfilling her emotional needs and then what happens? Does she go searching for her needs elsewhere like she seems to be doing right now? Is this a pattern of behavior with her?

I'm not trying to tell you what you should do exactly... well okay I am telling you exactly that you should get away from her as long as she is married. The last thing a married person needs to do is take pity on a single lonely young person of the opposite sex and develop an emotional connection to that person. That is unfaithful and unwise. Doesn't matter if the person he/she is married to seems to be a brute. And if a new relationship is founded while still in a marriage that sows some bad seeds of distrust and dishonesty and they will bear bad fruit in the future.

If she gets divorced of her own free will and without your influence, then go pursue her, but beware that if her husband really is a thoroughly mean heartless brute, then she probably needs about 5 years or more to work out some emotional traumas and she will take that out on you at times. You'll be walking through a minefield and not understand what the hell happened when you step on an emotional bomb connected to her past. And a big part of the problem will be you because there are things about yourself that you had no idea were a problem until she provides the mirror you needed to see yourself truthfully. If her current husband is not really a thoroughly mean heartless brute deserving of divorce, then it casts doubt on her faithfulness: will she divorce on a whim because she doesn't feel her needs are met just precisely the way she wants? And then you'll always feel like you have to compete with others to keep her and that is miserable.

So ideally you'd give her a few years after divorce for her to figure out who she really is, but I know asking for that much patience is completely unrealistic and she's likely to accept one of the first suitors that comes along as soon as she's single again because she needs emotional connection, so go ahead and be the hero and jump right in there (after divorce; IF there is a divorce).

I'm mainly trying to dispel the myth that your happiness depends on rescuing and attaining this girl. It is true that if you have a few foundational necessities (mutual attraction, similar intelligence, a few similar interests, not radically different worldviews, commitment, and some tools for dealing with conflict) you can eventually build a happy relationship after years of hard work and self-sacrifice. But the chances are very high if not 100% that within a few days or weeks or months after starting a relationship with her you might find yourself wondering what the hell happened and waffling on whether or not to get out of it now before any more misery is inflicted. But I understand... I was told the same thing, and I said, "What, a challenge?? Challenge accepted!! All the more opportunity to be heroic!" (I am now recently and happily married, but I've been in the same relationship for about 6 years so it took quite a while to get here! And I wouldn't have made it here and we wouldn't have made it through what we've made it through if we didn't have the psychological tools to find happiness independently of circumstances)
 
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And I dread her husband will not love her and accompany her in her arduous future. Namely I dread her husband will discard her in some time. So my love to her generated from this stand point, a longing sympathy.


Ingredients for this not-so-yummy recipe ;) :
event: woman friend with husband who treats her in a certain way
add:
mental interpretation (1st layer of suffering): this is dreadful
add:
emotional reaction (2nd layer of suffering): longing sympathy, suffering love

mix well, stir:
result: egoic (unawakened) mind construction. Ready to enjoy!
 
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Even if feeling dreadful doesn't provide substantial help and is useless. Isn't it just naturally dreadful?

I dread. I wish her husband could love her no less than I love her.
IMO: no, it isn't dreadful, it just is. Like rain outside isn't dreadful, it just is. "Dreadful" is how you or others label the situation.

If she finds herself in a situation that she finds "dreadful", then it seems to me it's her challenge and her path, to either change the situation or accept it.

And no, I wouldn't be able to tell you're Chinese, only that by your writing that English isn't your first language.
 
It's cruel, very very very cruel. I want no such a kind of "spiritual path". It is a lab rat experiment rather than a spiritual path.

Many NDErs said "love", this makes me laugh a whole day, even if I'm in anguish every single milliseconds.
NDEs and a whole bunch of other afterlife data tell us we're here to grow, which of course is through facing challenges, big and small. Are you saying we should just be here to have all our desires and fears well attended to, like small children, be comfortable all the time, and not grow?

What if you are the light being who is designing this "experiment" for your own growth? Lots of afterlife data would point that way as well.
 
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To say this world is all about "love" is too viciously misleading. My experiences are a living proof.
Some people have said they were told in an NDE that the only reason we are here is to learn to love. Not everyone is at the same point in this journey. Perhaps the things we see in other people may be a reflection of what we ourselves might have done in the past, or might do in the future.
 
This thread is going cuckoo and a firm answer would be required. Tarantula, if you were in any way familiar with Buddhism which you so readily demonize without adequate investigation, specifically Chan Buddhism, you would recognize that all this claptrap about dark forces, unrequited love etc. is you simply projecting meaning, interpretation and mystical intentionality to a rather banal commonplace encounter between a frustrated male and a neglected wife, there is nothing inherently meaningful about the whole situation, except the one you bring in. My advice, drop the matter completely and get on with your life, that woman is not your responsibility.
 
Now, I will leave silently because I don't want to disgust you.
I have no attachment about this, it is simply purely correct and reasonable.
You aren't likely to 'disgust' any us - many of whom are older, and been through all these things.

Frankly, I doubt if you really disgust her, but women obviously have a problem in the workplace because they are meeting men about work and also potentially about romance - and there are plenty of opportunities for misunderstanding.

Rather than discuss this in an open thread, I suggest you start a PM and invite anyone you think might be helpful, and see if someone can come up with some good ideas for you.

David
 
Dear David, you say what then it should be what, this will be the last post in open thread in this forum I talk about this.

I'm very sorry for have brought you trouble. Many posts I can't understand so I started one that I can understand and I'm hot on concerning about.

Thank you for your leniency and solace. If in your country there is friend of yours who is in agony and extreme suffering, please tell him or her that he or she is not alone. I'm a Chinese having different sclera color but I share the same emotions as yours and am crawling the same path as they are passing. I'm together with you, my friends.
There is absolutely no need to leave the forum, and you haven't caused me any trouble :)

David
 
Dreams are recently bringing back to me the phantoms of old longings and their corresponding love objects that are powerful enough to get me in their grip when I awake, after years of not feeling them, as if suddenly decades of time were wiped away in an instant - just as I've been getting these past months into meditation, cultivating stillness, and feeling a lot more serene. Which has made me think again of tarantulanebula's plight.

There really is something especially strong and powerful about the "love sickness". Which, perhaps like a lot of manias, can raise all kinds of spiritual questions. Are forms of "insanity", despite their imbalanced nature and destructive potential, manifestations of a spiritual energy that is worth investigating?

Is Love a Disease?
Mature love, some insist, is a broadening, deepening experience. [But] theclaim that love promotes maturity is unpersuasive without some indication that the individual would not have matured just as readily in the absence of love. Indeed, to the extent that love fosters dependency, it may be viewed as a deterrent to maturity.

I am not asserting that the effects of love always border on the pathological. I am saying that the person who seeks love in order to obtain security will become, like the alcoholic, increasingly dependent on this source of illusory well-being. The secure person who seeks love would probably not trap himself in this way. But would the secure person seek love at all?
--from "This Thing Called Love Is Pathological" by Lawrence Casler, December 1969.

And then this:
Are You a Pathological Lover?
(Researchers) found that individuals who had this disorder had several seemingly conflictual personality characteristics. Their potentially negative attributes were that they were more impulsive, had a “Mania” love style - meaning that they loved in dependent and possessive ways, and their relationships were plagued by anxious and ambivalent attachments. As a result, they were very unhappy with their romantic relationships but continued to maintain them despite knowing that these relationships were damaging to themselves. However, these individuals also had greater levels of selfless benevolent love (“Agape” love style) and they scored higher on a scale that measured self-transcendence. Thus, their unhappiness seemed to be related to being less self-directed.

(...) The authors talked about this syndrome as a type of addiction giving rise to temporary pleasure at the expense of the long-term consequences.It is sad to me that such benevolence can be associated with suffering, yet this benevolence may be considered an attempt at transcending the ego, which always leads to suffering due to the anxious storm arising when the ego is threatened. The problem with this is that such people usually attract predators with whom they form a symbiotic union. (...)

At another level though, why is this approach to relationships any worse than relationships with both partners exhibiting “secure attachment”. Is the stable ego of the securely attached person a sign of spiritual paralysis? Is the “healthy romance” a delusion about the nature of human need and a hiding place for those who are unwilling to explore their limitations in loving? Is this kind of secure attachment more about being “satisfied” with the implicit contract that neither partner will challenge the other to explore their deepest needs? Is something being lost in this security?

Perhaps the tragedy of selfless love occurs when it is stuck in the quest for romance. Perhaps romance is an entry point to the evolution of other kinds of love, and that the pathological lover is blissfully unaware that in their discovery of the futilities of attachment, they are one step closer to a transcendent consciousness. What if the suffering of the pathological lover was a more advanced state of consciousness that would open the door to life beyond romance?

Even if it were, how does one let go of the ideal of romance and settle for the theory of spiritual bliss? Or does one actually let go? Perhaps the suffering forces one to seek alternatives outside of romance and one has no choice.
 
I was talking about the love mania as experienced as a youth (starting very, very young, at age 6 to be precise) to someone recently and one of the ways I used to describe it was that it "transfigured the real". (She said she had experienced something similar with certain friendships.) The quality of life became wondrous, alive, enchanted, so that normal, "loveless"-life (if you want to call it love) seemed completely drab and empty afterwards (school, your parents, friends, your activities... except maybe music that connected you vicariously to that quasi-numinous experience) - and you felt therefore that other kids/youths who didn't experience this were like a completely other, alien species.

Of course that in itself brings the shadow side of it: you become incredibly unhappy and unsatisfied with everything else, or if/when the connection to the love object is threatened or unestablishable. My experience has been that in the long run the pain wins out in duration, though, yes, I wouldn't have not wanted to experience that.

Makes me think of NDErs (who no doubt, many of them, experience an even more powerful experience) who become depressed when they come back to the limited-consciousness world.
 
I don't know if I ever really completely bought this theory, but it it is, well... beautiful. And I like the idea of not dismissing infatuation with a person's beauty and the kernel of mystical truth it may contain.

 
After so many years honing my English language skill, I still find I'm a toddler when fathoming the beautiful English sentences which are full of meaningful wisdom, thought provoking, and really help make a soul elevation.

Dear Ian Gordon, your words above are full of fresh nouveau knowledge to me, which ignite my mood which is originally sullen. Sadly I can't chew them and fully understand them tonight.

Tonight I probably can only chew several key words like "drab".

The word "drab" totally precisely strikes my heart. Yeah, when I like a female, mignon, tender, feminine, delicate, or hot, voluptuous, sexy, coquettish, I have many unrealizable fantasy about her, some are "vicarious" and with extremely jealouy. I really feel the life path, the fate without having her, is really "drab", like an illusion, not matter how wonderful the other aspects of the life could be.

Nothing can save me from this "drab" which renders everything as illusory and totally dull.

But one thing, overthrows my previous yearning into the "illusory mirror world" and makes me yearn for another reality (which is again unrealizable). This thing is that another girl appears in my life.

Not every girl, pretty or not, can bring me this overthrowing power, she must to "appear very special" to me.

But funnily, the new girl who could save me from yearning for the previous one, the intensity of her overthrowing power, needs to be expressed and manifested, partially, by how desperate that I felt when I mistakenly thought that there could not be any other girl in any possibility, who could drag me out of this mire. More precisely, it is not "her" or "her motive will" which wishes to help me, but her unbelievable prettiness or loveliness or "special" which invalidates the previous yearning.

Through my experience, I know one thing, very very intriguing and intricate, that I must to have unmistakably believed that "I was desperate" and "there won't be any girl in any possibility who can replace the position of the previous girl in my heart", could I really sense the full blooming of the power of the new girl's "special" attractiveness to me.

In other words, my suffering are all "very very necessary", to see my suffering be overwhelmed by some girl more pretty, more wondrous, more miraculously fantastic lovely, more special and spirit igniting.

Some girls give me a "not that thorough" replacement of the previous yearning. But some, make me feel that the previous yearning, if could ever be realized, would be a burden and a stain, rather than a delightful satisfaction or a collectible souvenir or a memorable reminiscence.

The pregnant woman I previously like, I recently left my original company and entered a new one, for some other reasons which are very complicated. So I also said bye bye to her, with a very friendly salute of "take care" to each other. She later realized that how earnestly that I helped her in her first three months pregnant status, how many troubles I removed for her, without a selfish purpose.

And I no longer attach any unsuitable yearning to her, because I met super hyper beauty in this new company, and yeah, not plainly pretty beautiful but makes me feel as if I had yearned this kind of girl for a primordial reflection of time. Bad of me. But I mean no hurt to any girl, never ever. And another super hyper adorable mignon in this new company.

Sounds funny, really funny, but the power adorable feeling they give me, is not something by my wishful imagination, as if I consciously want them to appear beautiful to me for helping me to forget someone? No, yearning is yearning, it is something which is already itself before you or your animal subconsciousness ever take participate in this affair. My yearning to any girl previously appeared in my life couldn't save me from yearning this super beauty, noble, exquisite, delicate and graceful.

But without the excruciating suffering I had undergone when I had never had this beauty anywhere in my memories, I couldn't realize the powerfulness of her attraction and "special" subtlety when she enters in my life.

I only wish I suffered more to find now that I succumb to her power. My bad. I'm a pig, hog, boar, swine. But I'm happy because I know I'm not forever trapped in a single pit. Funnily humorous.
 
I regret a bit that I obliterated many posts of mine, I originally thought that they disgust and disturb many people.

But believe me, no matter how funny a person I seem, no matter how good a pig, hog, boar, swine I'm able to be, I mean no evil purpose to another human being who could sense the emotions of a human being. The others save me from the oblivion of completely loneliness, the pretty girls save me from forever trapped with the yearning for the previous pretty girls appeared in my life. I feel grateful to them even if they spit on me. Ha ha.
 
I realize I'm late here, but the conversation, and what I take was said in the erased parts made me think of something that happened to me a long time ago:

I was on a train and noticed a girl with very white (untanned) skin, red hair, glasses, and, of all things, camo pants on . . . kind of just my type. I went into the bar part of the train and got a drink. She came in shortly after and I started talking to her. We talked till she got off in Fresno. Unbelievably, I still remember her name. While I certainly didn't obsess over her, she stuck with me: I liked her. This was in August, I believe. The following May I met a girl with red hair, white (untanned) skin, who wore glasses and had camo pants that she would sometimes wear (not because she hunted or moved in circles of those that do, but I suppose as a somewhat quirky thing to do). We ended up together for five years.

I think a key element to life growing those subconsciously planted seeds is the letting go part, which in this case I did without effort.

It's also striking that normally when these strange planned or unplanned manifestations occur, it can take a while before you even remember the original seed planting event (or prayer or whatever).

Edit: what I'm partially trying to say is that, while the strangeness of my example is rather extreme, life will often give us what we want in a slightly different package than we initially desired . . . I don't really think that's all too rare at all.
 
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