Dear Jil, no, you’re not in love, you’re in love with the idea of being in love. Everyone wants that being in love feeling. The softened glow… is how we imagine life should be. But without correspondent facts, that feeling is nothing but a hazy thought bubble – an imagination we walk and live in. Thus we see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, feel what we want to feel. We pass facts through the prism of our wishes and they split into mesmerizing psychedelic hues.And we imagine the world in a duotone haze, the edges blurred out like the photoshopped images of celebrities. We fail to see obvious incongruities in our relationship. We spoon-feed ourselves alternative facts. It’s like we have an interpreter in our heads who reinterprets facts and deposits his productivity into our hearts.
Sometimes this self-delusion comes from a desire to also want to claim ownership of an exclusive relationship. It doesn’t really matter if the quality of the relationship leaves much to be desired. We just want our own relationship. The simulacrum seems to work for us – assuages our pent up feelings and desires. And that’s how people say lies about their relationship, and others wonder about their assertions. It’s then our friends start getting worried, and start giving knowing looks as we talk. They start imagining how to deliver us from faith in our lies and imagination. But who will bell the cat!
Moreso, when we canonize a shmuck into a loving and adoring boyfriend, inventing scenarios, giving credentials to banality. The bottom line is that we believe a lie, won’t face up to facts, dodge issues and make excuses. We fob the facts, smooth them over and keep propelling our relationship with adulterated aviation fuel. It’s a relationship of assumptions and desires we have, not reality.
Yet the underlying facts don’t change. Facts are facts. But we keep reinterpreting them to fit our notions. And we begin to demand what we can’t have from our boyfriend. But he can’t give what doesn’t exist. He’ll keep making promises – gaseous promises from the fumes of the adulterated aviation fuel powering our relationship. And we’ll keep dreaming, refusing to wake, keep wanting, keep wishing.
Jil, you just want to be loved, to be needed, to be wanted. Only the ingredients are not right. The boy is not the right material and you know it. Just like you know he is using you. A girl knows when she’s being used by a boy- has intuitive capacity, and can reach that conclusion even from obscure facts. You wrote me, “I’m in a relationship with a guy who I don’t think loves me.” Why be in a relationship with someone you know doesn’t love you! Your emotional needs will never be satisfied. You’ve been having doubts, asking yourself questions. You know he won’t marry you unless circumstances compel him. Your desperate desire for marriage makes you overlook the most fundamental fact of all: love! Why marry just to marry? There’s going to be pain and anguish in a loveless marriage. Ask the historical Leah. You’ll be despised and nothing you do will suffice. And having children won’t change the fact.
You complain this guy doesn’t show you affection: no hugs, pecks or handholding… Truth is, your desires are contradictory! The guy doesn’t love you. If he holds your hand and gives you hugs and pecks, they’re just embarrassing mechanical chores. And he’ll only do all that because you force it emotionally. The “love” will be artificial, it won’t be natural. And he’s in another state from you. You’re separated by wide kilometers, skies and trees. You’re just hoping against hope.
He never tells you he loves you because he doesn’t love you. He finds it awkward and doesn’t want to tell a lie! If this relationship proceeds to marriage you’re going to cry, and it’s going to end in bitterness and divorce. And if he’s complaining about ugly girls in his locale, shouldn’t you be worried about his desires? “I feel he’s just using me by having sex with me,” you wrote. And you feel like a “side chic.” Perhaps you ought to pay attention to those feelings of yours, unless you like being used. He’s with you for sex. You don’t really need my advice. You’ve analyzed the relationship in full. You just don’t want to face up to the conclusion of your analysis. You’re edging your conclusions.
Something tells you that he has another girlfriend, his real girlfriend, you wrote. She’s hidden away by miles. If you feel this way and can’t trust this guy, why keep investing your life in the relationship? Oh, I get it! You’re worried that if you let go, you wouldn’t get another man soon. So you pursue sorrow. If a man wants you, you’ll know. But if you compel the love artificially you know you’re procuring self-delusion. It’s akin to consulting a voodoo priest to compel a man to love you and you complain of unnatural affection. The taste of artificially manufactured and compelled affection is fetid. It’s love by forceful means after all. No wonder this “love” tastes like a grey paste of malodorous indeterminate substances in your mouth.
Two simple questions you need to ask yourself: Is this the kind of man I want? Will I get the marriage I desire? If the answer to these two questions is in the negative, you know what to do. I recognize it can be hard facing up to the facts of a relationship when one has invested so much. And truth is often inconvenient. Truth can be annoying and irritable. It’s why we avoid it. But the earlier you face facts about your relationship the better. If you’re feeling used now, think of how you’ll feel five years from now when the marriage does not materialize.
It’s really up to you what you want to do. I can’t instruct on the determinate outcome of your relationship. You must take responsibility for the choices you make and the choices you don’t make. Even if you can blame everyone for your unhappiness, the fact remains that grief is a private enterprise. The beginning of a bad marriage is a bad choice of partner. We don’t pay enough attention to the beginning of relationships; we focus too much on the progression.
Your mentor, LA.
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com