Tala Hotyk
05-29-2005, 04:00 PM
Erotic love is often confused with the explosive experience of "falling in love", the sudden collapse of the barriers which existed until that moment between two strangers. This experience of sudden intimacy is by its very nature short-lived. After the stranger has become an intimately known person there are no more barriers to be overcome, there is no more sudden closeness to be achieved. If there were more depth in the experience of the other person, if one could experience the infiniteness of their personality, the other person would never be so familiar. The miracle of overcoming the barriers might occur every day anew. For most people, others as people are soon explored and soon exhausted. For them intimacy is established basically through sexual contact. Since they experience the separateness of the other person primarily as physical separateness, physical union means to them overcoming the separateness.
There are other factors which to many people of this nature are considered the overcoming of separateness. To speak of one's own personal life, one's hopes and anxieties, to show the childlike aspects of oneself, to establish a common interest regarding how one views the World are all taken as overcoming separateness. Even to show one's anger, or hate, or complete lack of inhibition is taken for intimacy. And this may explain the perverted attraction couples often have for each other, who seem intimate only when they are in bed or when they give vent to mutual hate or rage. The consequence is often that one seeks love with a new stranger. Thus, the illusion begins over again and the new love ends up being no different from the earlier ones. The illusions are greatly assisted by the deceptive character of sexual desire.
Sexual desire aims at fusion but it is not merely a physical appetite for the relief of painful tension. Sexual desire can be stimulated by the anxiety of aloneness, by the wish to conquer or be conquerred, by vanity, by the wish to hurt another, as much as it can be stimulated by love. Because sexual desire is coupled in the minds of most people with the idea of love, they are easily misled to conclude that they love each other when they want each other physically. Love can inspire the need for sexual union and hence the physical relationship could lack greed and blend with tenderness. Tenderness is the direct outcome of brotherly love. If the desire for physical union is not stimulated by love, requiring that it also encompasses brotherly love, it never leads to union in more than an orgiastic sense. Sexual attraction creates the illusion of union, but without love this "union" leaves strangers as far apart as they were before. Sometimes it brings on shame of each other, or hate for one another, because when the illusion has gone they feel their estrangement even more markedly than before.
Frequently the exclusiveness of erotic love (lacking in brotherly love or motherly love) is misinterpreted as meaning possessive attachment. It is exclusive only in the sense that one can only fuse themself fully and intensely with one person. But it does not mean that in the attachment the other person is a possession. One can often find two people "in love" with each other who feel no love for anybody else. Erotic love excludes the love for others only in the sense of erotic fusion, making it a full commitment in all aspects of life.
Erotic love, when it is love, has one premise. That I love from the essence of my being and experience the other person in the essence of his or her being. Since all people are the same in essence, it should not make any difference whom we love. Erotic love should be essentially an act of will, of decision to commit my life completely to that of one other person. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling. It is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision? It is the act of will that should guarantee the continuation of the love. Both of the views, that erotic love is a completely individual attraction and is an act of will are true. Hence the idea of a relationship which can easily be dissolved if one is not successful with it is as much a mistake as the idea that under no circumstances must the relationship be dissolved.
There are other factors which to many people of this nature are considered the overcoming of separateness. To speak of one's own personal life, one's hopes and anxieties, to show the childlike aspects of oneself, to establish a common interest regarding how one views the World are all taken as overcoming separateness. Even to show one's anger, or hate, or complete lack of inhibition is taken for intimacy. And this may explain the perverted attraction couples often have for each other, who seem intimate only when they are in bed or when they give vent to mutual hate or rage. The consequence is often that one seeks love with a new stranger. Thus, the illusion begins over again and the new love ends up being no different from the earlier ones. The illusions are greatly assisted by the deceptive character of sexual desire.
Sexual desire aims at fusion but it is not merely a physical appetite for the relief of painful tension. Sexual desire can be stimulated by the anxiety of aloneness, by the wish to conquer or be conquerred, by vanity, by the wish to hurt another, as much as it can be stimulated by love. Because sexual desire is coupled in the minds of most people with the idea of love, they are easily misled to conclude that they love each other when they want each other physically. Love can inspire the need for sexual union and hence the physical relationship could lack greed and blend with tenderness. Tenderness is the direct outcome of brotherly love. If the desire for physical union is not stimulated by love, requiring that it also encompasses brotherly love, it never leads to union in more than an orgiastic sense. Sexual attraction creates the illusion of union, but without love this "union" leaves strangers as far apart as they were before. Sometimes it brings on shame of each other, or hate for one another, because when the illusion has gone they feel their estrangement even more markedly than before.
Frequently the exclusiveness of erotic love (lacking in brotherly love or motherly love) is misinterpreted as meaning possessive attachment. It is exclusive only in the sense that one can only fuse themself fully and intensely with one person. But it does not mean that in the attachment the other person is a possession. One can often find two people "in love" with each other who feel no love for anybody else. Erotic love excludes the love for others only in the sense of erotic fusion, making it a full commitment in all aspects of life.
Erotic love, when it is love, has one premise. That I love from the essence of my being and experience the other person in the essence of his or her being. Since all people are the same in essence, it should not make any difference whom we love. Erotic love should be essentially an act of will, of decision to commit my life completely to that of one other person. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling. It is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision? It is the act of will that should guarantee the continuation of the love. Both of the views, that erotic love is a completely individual attraction and is an act of will are true. Hence the idea of a relationship which can easily be dissolved if one is not successful with it is as much a mistake as the idea that under no circumstances must the relationship be dissolved.