When the "one you want" becomes the "one you want to be with"

A couple of months ago, I started one of my usual mornings with a cup of coffee and one of the videos from TED (www.ted.com). For some reason, I typed "love" in the "search" box. I thought it would be a nice way to start off a day. I was absently sipping my coffee and looking at the laptop monitor when among search results popped a lecture from Helen Fisher "Why we love, why we cheat?". Intrigued by its title, I instantly knew had to watch it. What was it about? Well, Helen Fisher presented her own findings about three brain centers which regulate the feeling of attachment, romantic love and familiar to everybody, the sex drive. She described attachment as the sense of calm and security you can feel for long term partners; romantic love as the obsession of early love and the sex drive as the intolerable nervous itch. Despite having different functions, they are all connected through the neurotransmitter dopamine. When its level in brain rises during  sexual excitement and orgasms as its culmination, it activates the other two centers- the one of romantic love and attachment. That is why sometimes we can quickly evolve from not feeling anything but excitement towards feeling in love. That's why we sometimes tend to have passion and love all mixed up and impossible to differentiate. Of course, the moment we fall in love with a person, we become very sensitive towards who is he/she being with. It then becomes an intense craving to be with that person, not only sexually but emotionally as well.

Why have I started my blog post by sharing this quite an informative video? :) Well, I was wondering how do we manage to stop that mechanism? Can the "one we want" stay "the one we want" and not the "one we desperately crave to be with"? 

I guess that all of us have at some point crossed the line. And probably, got hurt for the feelings have not been mutual. Is it possible to stay on the surface and never dive in and explore? I am the type of person who always looks for a hint...for a smile, a look, a tender word... anything that could indicate that there might be something more than what a person intentionally tries to show you. A great friend of mine told me not to be afraid to show what I feel as well. "You get what you give", she said. But what if I mess everything up by doing what I feel that I need to do?

We all have our own visions of fairy tales even though it can sometimes seem like some people just aren't capable of creating one of their own. Those people you may identify as cold-blooded, always indifferent towards love who promiscuously experiment as if they never can get emotionally attached to anything but their own impulses and thoughts. The way we construe our fairy tales are, however different.

What I always try to do is to understand the way somebody else construes a fairy tale. Maybe we are both looking for the same present, just put in different boxes and decorated with different bows. Once we unpack what we want, we might figure out what we want from a relationship with that person.

Society puts an enormous pressure on how our relationships should look like. It is, in a way, "normal" to have certain obligations towards the one you are with. It would be weird to talk to someone every day and to have the most amazing conversations, to kiss and hug whenever you see each other (if not even something more), to always look forward to seeing him/her and yet, not to accept being in a relationship with him/her. It is as if  entering relationship meant accepting imprisonment. What became so terrifying about being in a relationship? It is as if we can no longer have fun without that pressure of not knowing where we are going with that kind of a relationship.

What I do agree with though, is that this sort of fun can be a minefield. When someone else takes our place in the life of the person that we used to have fun with and when we start feeling replaced it might be THEN that we'll realize that all we needed was to hold on to that person and don't let her/him go. We'll feel sad, disappointed and hurt.

And we'll realize that there was more to it than just fun. 

Then we will be ready to accept the fear and move on. We'll than realize that we care much more than we fear. 

When it comes to the "one you want", you should ask yourself what is it that you can get from that person? Don't let the dopamine do its thing :) If you see that you are no longer floating on the surface- take a dive of faith :) Explore. Discover. Don't miss the chance.

Thank God that we are so complicated. Otherwise my profession wouldn't make sense.

But sometimes, I wish things were just... simple.

Order. Control. And other illusions.

My mind has been in a chaotic state lately.

Don't worry, I am not cracking up, I have just been so busy that I started to cherish every ounce of free time available. 

I remember clearly what a friend of mine told me many years ago when my mom was heavily criticizing me for not tidying up my room. "A tidy room is a reflection of a chaotic mind."

Other then using this quote as a defense guard against the attacks of all the invaders of my creative chaos (aka mom and dad), I never really thought it was true. I was lazy to put everything on its place and honestly, whenever I had free time, I felt like it is so much better to use it on something more productive, like reading, painting, playing basketball, going out etc. That was pretty much it. 

However, this morning I woke up and felt completely overwhelmed by all of those things written down in my schedule for today. And suddenly, I felt like cleaning my room. It was chaotic. Just like my mind was. So, I started with making the bed, putting clothes back in the closets, stashing books which were on a pile on the chair, back in the drawers where they actually belong... 

Suddenly, what used to feel like nuisance felt like a sedative.

When I was finally done, I sat and wondered: What was it in cleaning that made me feel so at ease? I stared at my perfectly clean room ....And then .....it hit me- what I have been craving for days now is nothing else but- control... A feeling that something I am doing is completely under my control. Dependent upon my will. That I was the one pulling the strings.

  Right, control, that's it!

Everything I had planned for today threatened to come with a certain level of uncertainty that it would be unsuccessfully finished, if finished at all. The undefined outcome of what I needed to do today still wasn't changing the fact that things need to be done. And doing something without a clear idea whether it will succeed or not for me was tough to handle. There were too many things that I had out of my control. So what I needed is - control.

That made me think about OCD, a disorder we hear so much about as future psychologists. I remembered that compulsive behaviour that they manifest is also a way to keep things in order. To control. To be in control. If you insist on putting a fork exactly 2 cm away from a plate, it's not like fork is going to stand and oppose to being treated so rigidly. :) So- the whole thing is about control.

Apparently, it is not just those with OCD that have a problem with control.

We run towards certainty in our own individual ways. Someone tides the room, someone jogs, someone draws, someone smokes, someone works. Someone writes blog posts. Someone studies, someone slacks persistently. And we all try to demonstrate to ourselves how IT IS POSSIBLE to have something under control. Consciously or unconsciously.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Funny is how hard it is for us to float in instability.

One of the basic things we have learned in Developmental Psych course is that humans are born with just  two basic fears: with a fear of loud noises and a fear of falling. Since the day we are born, we crave to be with both feet on the ground. Physically, but symbolically as well. We need a support from beneath. Something firm enough to stick on, stick to, something that keeps us from falling and getting injured. We crave to posses something that ensures our stability.
Of course, such thing is unattainable in life.

However, there are two things we can do: 

1. we can create illusions of order and control, and 
2. we can let our perception be fooled by them.

After all.... Illusion is the first of all pleasures. :)