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| How Do We Know What’s Real? | ||
| Since I’ve been writing these erratic columns, I’ve received many emails, asking more or less the same thing. How can I let my head legislate my heart when they don't feel the same things? I know what I should do, but I don’t know how? Has she really forgiven me? Should I forgive her? In sum, how do we know what’s real? What has substance and what has danger? We give so much of ourselves to love and we often feel unsatisfied. | Has she really forgiven me? | |
| I recall sitting in a fast-food outlet of wide recognition, sharing a friend’s fries and broken heart. In a moment of manic energy and dramatic spontaneity, my friend picked up his burger and himself and declared – no, ORATED to anybody who was in range: " My love was like this burger – whilst I’m enjoying it now, later it will make me feel dirty, robbed and empty. I’m saying no to empty calories and empty relationships". With this he crushed his burger up with a flourish and made his way outside. He felt the elation of having purged himself, a feeling that I did not disturb by reporting on an elderly man’s commentary on the display, "Tosser". | ||
| How do we know what is going to be empty and what is wholesome? Friends, I know not. I have experienced many meals and relationships that both looked good and cost much more than a styrofoam contained burger but have left me empty and disappointed afterwards. I have two pieces of advice and both of them make me reflect that age and experience change you as I never thought they would - lower your expectations and cool it down. For example, take Mark. | lower your expectations and cool it down | |
| Newly single after a deeply deluded, complicated but mercifully short entanglement of a relationship, Mark went to a family wedding in the heart of the West Country. His Mother, Brother and Sister (settled, children, working on being happy) were all there. A fine affair, a genuinely happy wedding where folks from afar and diverging backgrounds seemed to set off the good points in the other rather than the contrary which is so often the case at weddings. Mark enjoyed the summer sun, the disreputable dancing, even the speeches and the company of an attractive, wonderful woman. Carmen and Mark had energy flowing between them and the scene should have been set for love to blossom in poetic counterpoint to the love being affirmed in the wedding ceremony. It was not to be, for Carmen had a husband, who was not present. | ||
| Whilst their behaviour stayed just the right side of acceptability, they met after and confirmed that it wasn’t just the drink talking. I would like to report here that Carmen was in an unhappy marriage, on the verge of parting after his many infidelities. Sadly - happily, who knows, but it wasn’t the case and love was still very much alive in their marriage. So how did Mark and Carmen deal with this situation, that Mark called ‘his perfect feeling’? Whilst discussing the possibility of sleeping together, Mark noted that it wasn’t just the act that he enjoyed, but the rolling over, spooning each other, the intimacy shared, exhausted yet complete, empty yet whole (okay, I embellish). Carmen responded by agreeing to his sentiment but added that she would rather that this feeling was not spoiled by feelings of guilt and remorse. | not spoiled by feelings of guilt and remorse | |
| Love is a feeling that towers over all the others. But it doesn’t mean that those other feelings are not valid and shouldn’t be considered. Love makes fools of us because we let it narrow our vision, we like that it simplifies our existence and so do not allow the possibility of complex, contradictory feelings. Some might say that I’m missing the point, that love should be grand, love is unreasonable, led by passion, lets you fly with the Seagulls when flight is impossible. It is not coolly weighing up the pros and cons. Yet if we learn one thing from relationships, from the stories we share here, this is a narrow definition that harms us in the long run. We exist in a world where all our decisions and choices have consequences. And as wiser man than me said, there’s the rub. | ||
| So how do we know what’s real? I don’t know, but I think we can be guided and get closer to it by allowing love to be part of the real world – to stop always trying to fly with the Seagulls. How do you know whether you really love her? How do you know if you’ve forgiven her? Acknowledge all the other feelings that surround your situation and let them guide you. And perhaps, think back to after you made love, and rolled over, was intimacy there? What was in your heart? What was in your head? | stop always trying to fly with the seagulls | |
| © Tim Towle, 2000. All rights reserved. | ||
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| Go to other articles: | ||
| How To Forget Your Ex - Sleep Around or Abstinence - The Tactics of Visual Distraction - Replacing One Addiction With Another - Stay Friends, Never See Each Other? | ||
