Addicted To Love...

Okay, this entry may seem pretentious or self-indeulgent or just plain rambling. If you start reading it and are repulsed, please feel free to skip this entry. It IS self-indulgent (it's a web log for heaven's sake), and -- being me -- will very likely be rambling. I wouldn't call it "pretentious" because I have no interest in impressing anyone with it.

So skip it if you like. Try back later and I may have SL pics or something ;D

But I spend a lot of my life observing and analyzing and trying to understand these peculiar things we call "Life" and "Reality" so that I can get the absolute MOST out of them! If I don't know how it works and what all it does, how am I gonna figure out how to use the bells and whistles? If I don't know the topography, how will I find the secret little hidden hot spots?

I didn't call this blog "The Wu Way" just because it sounds cool. The term is a Taoist term. According to Wikipedia.org, the word "wu" translates more or less to "not have" and the word "wei" translates more or less to "do, act, serve as" or "govern". So the concept is about knowing when to take action and when not to. Roughly. I interpret the concept as process of observation and patience, allowing the answers to come to you as your understanding allows, and taking action when an effective action presents itself.

Okay, that being said...

I'm at work, outside taking a smoke break, and I realized that I am addicted to love.

You guessed that much from the title, right?

But what the hell am I even saying? What kind of sense does THAT make? "Addicted to love"? WTF?!!

Okay, I know from experience that I have an addictive personality. You can tell from this blog that (1) I'm addicted to writing -- to expressing my thoughts through language -- and (2) I'm addicted to SecondLife. (I'm sure you can spot some other addictions if you read a few entries, but these are just a couple of really obvious ones.)

Off the top of my head I can also tell you that I'm also addicted to cigarrettes, alcohol (mainly beer) and coffee. And the nature of these addictions are what some would call "self medication". I use these things I'm addicted to to achieve a specific effect.

Whenever I'm in Creative Mode, or partaking of stimulating conversation, or just have a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head I enjoy smoking. For some reason nicotine seems to provide an immediate calming effect when I'm in any sort of excited state -- either positive or negative. It seems to provide some sort of balance that I lack otherwise.

Not recommending smoking or rationalizing it, just telling you what effect I look for when I smoke.

It seems to "take the edge off" any extremely intense emotion I might suddenly experience. That's a weak explanation, but the best I can come up with at this hour.

Alcohol also seems to take the edge off. But in a bigger way. It's a sedative (made from sugars, so you often feel a rush of energy while drinking it) and it seems to shut down large sections of conscious thought. I'm a really happy cat by nature, so a cold one (or 5) seem to simply shut down all the noise that might make me tense and allow me to focus on thoughts and emotions that make me feel joyful.

Once more, this IS NOT an endorsement of alcohol. Just an amateur analysis of the effect I go for when I drink.

By contrast, caffeine has the oposite effect: If I'd like an energy boost, or if I feel my concentration waning I'll get myself a hit (or 5) of black coffee and I feel like I'm back on top of things.

Now, our bodies can soothe us or boost us on it's own. We don't NEED drugs to calm us down or pick us up. But in order for our body to do those things we have to train it. And I don't know about you, but I'm mostly too lazy to teach my 35-year-old bod new tricks. I discovered in my mid-20s the effects of coffee, cigarrettes and beer, and I've just gotten used to turning to these things when I desire certain effects.

I've allowed myself to become addicted to these things.

So...

Love...

How am I addicted to love? (Besides in the cheesy Robert-Palmer-song way?)

Well...

Since we were able to understand language, we've been hearing all kinds of things about love. It's what princesses desire most from princes, it's what grownup men want from grownup women... There are an aweful lot of songs about them, song that start making emotional sense to us when we reach our teens. Romeo and Juliet killed themselves for lack of it. Many romantic heroes almost died to attain it, or to protect it. People desperately search for it, fight over it, fight about it, fight for it.

But what the hell IS it?

Never mind, lol. That's a whole other entry... book... SERIES of books!

I'll cut to what it is I get from love. And this is kind of new to me, as I've never really been "clinical" in my observations of my feelings when I was in a relationship. I always just leaped, face-first, into the deep end (or... what I HOPED was the deep end).

I get a number of things from a romantic relationship including a sense of deep and profound connection, a sense of unconditional acceptance for who I am, a sense of being sexually attractive and desirable, someone to share very personal experiences with, a sex partner, someone with whom I can be all mushy and romantic.

That's a rough list, but I think it hits most of the highlights.

Okay, now for the last 9 years I've had to either get all the above listed stuff from other sources or I had to, in most cases, provide them for myself. Or do without.

And over all, it's been a deeply enriching and gratifying and even empowering 9 years!!! I discovered that I already possess most of what I want out of a relationship within myself (If I nurture it and remove some psychological crap that was only getting in the way, anyway)! And most of the rest of it I possess in my platonic relationship!

First and foremost, I discovered that if I provide a sense of unconditional acceptance for who I am for myself, it really doesn't matter who else accepts me. Once I got rid of guilt about who I HAVE BEEN and was able to appreciate the decent job I was now doing with my life now, other people's insults seemed to lose their power over me, my self-esteem or my self-image.

(Consider yourself lucky... I just wrote 5 paragraphs about HOW I became able to accept myself unconditionally, flaws and all, but then I realized just how amazingly off-topic I was straying and deleted them. You just BARELY missed THAT bullet, buddy!)

Next, when I got good with myself I suddenly lost interest in fair-weather friends. I discovered that there were plenty of people in my life that GENIUNELY care about me, and whom I genuinely care about. Where before the number of people I could call "friend" used to be important, now I discovered that QUALITY was much more gratifying than quantity.

And they provided me with sense of deep and profound connection AND someone to share very personal experiences with. I mean, no... Day-tripping to El Salado isn't the same as spedning the weekend there in a bed-and-breakfast with your girlfriend! But... It's still a quality experience, something that can pop up in stories at parties for the rest of your life!

Now, I still lacked someone with whom I can be all mushy and romantic. I have female best friends that sort of partially fulfill that need... And really, if that's all that you've got, that's NOT BAD!!!

A sex partner... That one hurts. And that one's kind of impossible to replace. Particularly in my situation, because the reason I stopped dating is that I agreed with myself not to merely settle. If I dated someone just so I could get sex, that would have been settling. (Unless we had an up-front agreement and she was only with me for the same reason... But that only happens in movies, I think.) Also, paying for sex is out of the question because... Well, I don't make enough ;P

But other than the romantic thing and the sex partner thing, the one that I ABSOLUTELY was not able to provide for myself in ANY way/shape/form/fashion is a sense of being sexually attractive and desirable. I can think good and possitive things about myself all day long, 24/7, and I STILL can't provide that one. Moreover, my female friends who TRY to provide that for me can't come close either (despite what I tell them when they say "No, you ARE sexy! Really!"). (If I really were, then why didn't THEY want to do me? Seriosuly, you can fake an orgasm but you just can't fake that one.)

Getting back to the original point: Over 9 years I have learned to provide most of what I required for an emotionally and psychologically enriched life. I didn't have romantic love, but I have learned to provide for myself.

And then I met my SL gf...

And I realized that I had become an ADDICT!!!

Now, that might sound romantic, but hear me out: I had learned to provide myself with emotional gratification... And then, after I came to trust that this person would take care of me emotionally -- gratify me emotionally, make me feel all valid and accepted and appreciated and worthwhile -- I STOPPED DOING IT FOR MYSELF!!!

We started having little problems... And I have only recently realized that I AM THE REASON for the problems! She's like emotional Crack for me. I started RELYING on her to make me feel great. (This is a little understandable because she was able to make me feel MUCH better about myself than I have been able to in 9 years of exploration and evolution... But still...) Like she got me to this emotional high I haven't felt... Ever... And then when I felt the abscence of that emotional high I would go back to my dealer for another hit.

And if she COULDN'T provide that hit for me at the moment I asked for it... All of a sudden SHE's the Bad Guy!!!

I'm exaggerating, of course, to make the point but...

...I hope I'm exaggerating...

...yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm exaggerating. At least, I KNOW she would tell you I'm exaggerating. (But she's a reall sweety that way!) But the point is that I believe I actually became ADDICTED to love -- or, more specifically, to the bennifits I receive from the person with whom I share what feels like love.

See, in 9 years alone, one tends to really examine relationships and ask a lot of tough questions like "Where did this particular relationship go wrong?" and "Did I play some part in the downfall of that relationship?" Questions you simply don't feel the need to ask if you're in a relationship that's working out.

And the fact is that I have observed a tendency in myself to get "lazy" in relationships.

And I'm certain I'm not the only one.

During this soul-searching period, I also got to hear about how my friends' relationships were going. Some friends were in several relationships during the last 9 years.

And you know what I heard a lot of? From the guys "We just don't have sex any more" and from the girls "He's just not romantic anymore."

Oddly enough, if the guys were romanic again they could have had sex, and if the girls were still interested in sex the guys would have felt more romantic.

A whimsical and over-simplified way to say that both parties had kind of gotten lazy... But really, both parties had become ADDICTED to what the other was now providing.

See, the human body is naturally self-balance, until something is introduced that regularly provides a specific effect. A non-smoker has hormones and chemicals and stuff that balance hi/her moods, and that a smoker doesn't have... Because the smoker is regularly introducing a chemical that does that work for the body. The human body is pretty darned efficient, so it's not gonna waste resources producing chemicals to do a job that is already being done.

Likewise, I think the human psyche is -- more or less -- a self-balancing system as well. And from my recent experience I can look back at past relationships, as well as the relationships of many others, and see that we provide for ourselves what we need to be as emotionally healthy and happy as we need to be... Until someone comes along a begins to provide it FOR US on a regular basis!

Then we, like, forget that we once were SOLEY responsible for our validation and happiness! We treat ownership of our own happiness like it was a bag of rabid tree weasles! We carry it for ourselves as long as we have to, but THE MOMENT someone says "Would you like a hand with that?" we toss it to them and say "Glad I don't have to deal with THAT anymore!"

And the person we burden with our rabid tree weasles is the ONE person who we cherrish and adore THE MOST!

What's THAT about?

I say "we" but I'm sure that some reading this are actually in a mature relationship. So I'm really just talking about myself here. ("We" just takes the burden off me a bit. SEE? Now I'm trying to saddle YOU with my tree weasles! How sick am I?!!)

But here's the thing: Ownership of my own happiness isn't a burden. I've been custodian of it for 9 years now, and I've had a really groovy time! What drove me into a life of abstainence is the fact that I WANTED my tree weasles back! My last long-term relationship didn't allow me to be a version of me that I had fun being.

See, one of the main sources of self-fulfillment I have had (and lacked in my last long-term relationship) is the ability to pursue my 14- (and counting) year mission to live the lifestyle I want, to write and make movies and GET PAID to write and make movies! The reason I don't have the money to date is that I remain at a job that doesn't pay much because it allows me the time and mental/emotional energy I need to write and make films on the side. And the reason I don't have a social life is because when I'm not at work (or in SL... yesIknowshutup) I'm writing or making films.

So why would I give away my tree weasles? Those little critters have been great buddies for me on my lonely sojourns. They're half of all that I want out of life!

Why don't I, instead, continue to be the keeper of my own happiness, and simply appreciate the extra set of hands that sometimes helps me carry the bag?

This all makes sense, right? I mean, I've stumbled onto some profound sliver of the Human Contition, right? Or are these the punch-drunk ramblings of a dude getting used to an overnight shift after 3 or 5 years of merely quasi-vampiric hours?

Blah.

Okay, I should go to bed now.

Give your rabid tree weasles a kiss on the snout from me ;P