Between love and commitment - my two relationships

Write at the top:

I feel a little silly about this.

I want to be as free and easy as the protagonists of new wave movies, facing my love and hate calmly. But I actually wrote it and published it, and I am more worried about being morally condemned or ridiculed, "Why did we just break up less than a month ago, and we talked about a new one, or if Hispanic is counted as white, isn't it? I can't live without a man."

So I consoled myself and said that I was only in my early 20s, so I can be forgiven for saying stupid things and doing stupid things!

Also, please forgive the mixture of Chinese and English throughout the text, which seems to have become intuitive, and I don't know how to accurately express myself in only one language.

July 24, 2021 After a year of on and off tinder, I got a boyfriend on it.

On August 11, 2022, I took a plane with my boyfriend, departed from Shanghai, said goodbye in Copenhagen, I came to New York to exchange, and he went to Dublin for graduate school.

On August 23, 2022, after a series of dramas, he (hereafter referred to as "ex-boyfriend") proposed to me to break up. This is entirely my fault, but the details will be omitted in order to avoid getting into a position of moral judgment by the reader.

The anniversary article was delayed again and again and became a breakup article.

When we just broke up, it can be said that chickens fly dogs. At that time, before school started, I had no relatives here, and I had to force myself to go out to socialize every day, otherwise I would just cry in the empty room. Later, I was so confused that I couldn’t face myself, and I sought help from the school’s psychological counseling many times. It's a dark day that I can't even laugh about today.

But fate played more than one joke on me.

Unable to contend with the emptiness and loneliness of being alone in a foreign land, I went back to the dating app again. After one day of use, I playfully counted the probability of match/chat/in-depth understanding, and decided to meet the only guy who continued to chat (hereinafter referred to as "Drew") offline on the third day (mainly during the Labor Day holiday too). boring reason). I basically spent every day with him after that. He took me to his secret spots in the city. We talked about philosophy and mathematics, religion and life. In" trilogy.

I met his family two weeks into my acquaintance, which forced me to admit the horrific fact that we became part of each other's lives - I always felt that my existence in New York was suspended, that I was in There is no root, no connection, and any pain or pleasure is temporary to me; therefore, when most of my current happy memories are related to him, I lose my sense of security. I just got out of an intimate relationship and accidentally entered a new one, how can I not be afraid of self-dissolving in others?

He said "I love you" to me in Chinese, but told me I didn't have to respond; even when we decided to log off our tinder accounts together, he told me feel free to hook up as long as you keep yourself clean. Even though I'd rather see the relationship as a phantom, I couldn't help but look for his ex-boyfriend in him. A similar conversation happened a year ago, only the ex-boyfriend didn't actually think that way.

I found that my ex-boyfriend and Drew and I had very different understandings of the relationship between love and commitment. However, their logic is self-coherent, and my value system is self-contradictory , so to speak, I am a hypocrite. I hope to find answers to my struggles.

Before entering the text, it is necessary for me to explain why English appears many times in the title and article.

Intuition tells me that some words have different connotations in Chinese and English contexts, and my cognition of love is largely constructed by sitcom. Even if real life doesn't turn out like the TV shows, with the protagonist blowing out I love you to advance the relationship, there's no denying that commitments should be serious. It seems that the use of the word "love" in Chinese is relatively vague, which can refer to both "just playing" and "talking seriously", and I tend to distinguish between dating and relationship. I can express what I mean more accurately by using English directly.

Three men, three loves

Before meeting my ex-boyfriend, I had never been in a relationship, and I didn't know what "love" was. It seemed to be raising the banner of sexual liberation, but I was ashamed to admit who I "liked". I think this lack of courage and cowardice can be traced back to the middle school days of school bullying, when I suffered from slut humiliation. Today I can't shake the pros and cons mentality: If I don't give in proportional to the return, am I going to be too stupid?

In short, love is to me what a thousand polygons are to Descartes . Descartes can "comprehend" that a lagoon is a shape made up of a thousand sides, but he can't visualize the shape of a lagoon in his mind like he "imagines" a triangle; I can "understand" love as a relationship natural emotions, but do not know exactly what "feelings" are to love and be loved.

Ex-boyfriend

——love = commitment (also tied to the validity of THE ONE)

My ex-boyfriend defined what "love" is for me, love is the only one, love = commitment .

The first time we met, he said "I love you" to me, and I was terrified by the sudden confession, expressing my myth of love on Weibo trumpet. At that time, I wrote this sentence, "'I love you', these three words are like a magic spell. Every time I say this, I strengthen this concept in my heart. We are all devout believers in love. When we say reunion and make love to the climax, in the end we don't know if the love we say is the same as the first love. Love becomes a habit, love becomes muscle memory, love becomes a part of life, and there is no other choice to love each other, Is that still love? "

Gradually, I discovered that there was no point in looking for the nature of love, and instead believed in intuitive perception. This conversation between us before going abroad was recorded in the diary: I said, let’s have an open relationship, but you can’t sleep with one person more than five times//I said, even if I sleep with someone else, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you/ / I said again, at least at this moment I love you, we are happy together, only perception is real!

That's not love, I'm all wrong.

I realized that the breakdown after a breakup was like a drug withdrawal, that I had become hopelessly addicted to intimacy, that I had fallen in love with the phantom of absolute love. I went from a fear of love to an attachment to commitment to the point that I finally lost the initiative completely. I live by his love for me, so when he says he doesn't love me anymore, it's like I've fallen into the abyss of nothingness, miserable, lost, the unique aura of being loved on me is gone forever, along with it the whole meaning of my existence.

My problem is that I'm always passively waiting to be loved, and I'm ashamed to admit my love for someone else unless it's fully confirmed that they love me. This is probably because I love myself too much! How can a person who is extremely selfish take the initiative to entrust his love to others and give him the right to cherish or ravage it? It's no big deal to choose not to love, it takes courage to choose to love. Too bad I figured it out too late. At the same time, I am well aware that my friends pointed out to me that whether it is my casual date in the past or the relationship I have invested too much in, there are two sides to the same thing. I either enjoy the power of manipulating others, or I am addicted to being The love of others dominates, and in essence, I rely on my own value on people - how ridiculous, this is contrary to the purpose of my self-love, in the final analysis, a soul that is not strong enough leads to a series of fatalistic tragedies. I lost the initiative in this relationship, and I lost myself.

uncle hungarian

——just a fling of love, no commitment involved

I never thought that the day after the breakup, I would meet the second man who said "love me".

After almost crying all night, I forced myself to go to the Metropolitan Museum to relax. I saw the Hungarian uncle who was also holding a camera and asked him to take a few pictures of me. I didn't notice his enthusiasm at the time. head. Until the second week when he asked me to be his model and went to take pictures in Times Square, he said to me "you are my angel, my muse, my goddess" in an exaggerated tone, and used the fake physical contact of a greasy middle-aged man. Only to recognize the situation, quickly refused. If I was still at an age where I lacked love and insecurity, I might cherish this "love", and now I just want to run. This kind of worthless love is not worth it.

DREW

——love >> commitment and there are many ONES, it's all about your choice.

After meeting Drew, my "THE ONE theory" has changed .

In sitcom "how I met your mother", the protagonist Ted always faces every date and girlfriend with the mentality of "she is the one and only one in my life". For a long time, I also believed that there is a real son in my life, and I need to wait patiently for him to come. This is probably the simple and beautiful expectation of people who have no experience in love for love.

Therefore, when my ex-boyfriend and I talked about life planning on the first date, we found that we both hated the domestic environment, wanted to run, and hated the child's plan Dink. We thought we had met THE ONE, which laid a shadow for future quarrels and struggles. Every time I lose my temper because he doesn't reply to my messages in time / He can't stand my emotions and the "crazy words" I say will leave a permanent psychological shadow on him / He hates taking pictures of me with a camera and seeing my dissatisfied face / He also hates to accompany me on a city walk for a long time / He hates my use of him, we all seem to be stuck in this cycle; he said that these contradictions are rooted in the fundamental differences in our nature and are unsolvable problems. In other words, the conflict between me and him will always exist, we have been in a state of temporary truce rather than permanent peace like North Korea and South Korea for a long time, and maintaining the state of truce depends on his loving "tolerance" for me . There were two times when he didn't want to "endure" me anymore and proposed to break up, but the uniqueness of THE ONE and the sacredness of our lifetime commitment made me still believe that our relationship is worth continuing, maybe I should reflect more on myself.

During our first week with Drew, we also talked about immigration and Dink. As I got deeper, I discovered that although our ontology (the position on moral absolutism or relativism is to me just a wordplay by a philosopher who values the absoluteness of right and wrong as important), But at a practical level, similar conclusions are drawn. What surprised me even more was that he took the initiative to share his life with me / My emotions were justified without being stigmatized by the patriarchal narrative as irrational / Although we quarreled more fiercely but soon after the reconciliation move on would not Hold grudges/We're all obsessed with wandering New York/He doesn't mind that I've got something to do with him, and my "fundamental conflict" with my ex-boyfriend doesn't seem to be a problem on his side.

But I met him less than two weeks after we broke up, which is too coincidental! This makes me question the legitimacy of the concept of the one. He is regarded as the predecessor of the one by me because of similar life goals, and his various actions are somewhat PUA (or gaslight, that is, "you have many shortcomings, but because I love you, I am willing to tolerate you, and only I am willing", potentially self-deprecating) , my teachers and close friends reminded me, I didn't believe it at the time, but it's not too late to wake up.

Love&commitment should be cherished, but should not be held to the altar, the concept of the one should be disenchanted and deconstructed. The encounter with Drew made me believe that there is no the one in the world, on the contrary there are many the ones. In other words, it's all about choice, and if this ONE doesn't work, there will always be better ONES. It is worth adjusting in a relationship, but you should never ever get stuck in ONE if he makes you painful.

My appearance also reassured him that he has not lost the ability to truly love and care for a person. His last relationship was five years ago.

I still remember that one night after we met more than half a month ago, he said " I love you " to me for the first time, still using some broken Chinese. My first reaction to this sudden confession was aphasia, subconsciously saying I'm sorry I can't say it back . After all, "love" is serious, there is no doubt about that. He told me it was okay, that his love for me was unconditional, a blessing in the broad sense of " wanting her to thrive " like a family, which was beyond my comprehension.

He further explained that the specific logic of his love is, he wants what I want. That is, if I want to be "dating or relationship" with him, he is happy; even if I don't want to, he will do what he can to help me; his only requirement is my honesty, if the choice is the former , it needs to be out of sincerity rather than the original intention of settle down, at least I want to be happy. According to my understanding, for him love >> commitment, or this commitment is one-dimensional to me, I don't need to do the same ; his offering is guaranteed, but I should never abuse his generosity.

(I always feel that this paragraph is not smooth, because what I do is to translate what he said to me, and even I can restore the subordinate structure of the original sentence in my mind)

Regarding the commitment, my answer

My ex-boyfriend asked me and said he had nothing good, why would I want to be with him? My answer is that he is my " best of all options " (much like Leibniz's argument for the existence of God, ie: even if the world is not perfect, it is not enough to threaten the assertion that God exists, because The world we live in today is the best of all possible worlds).

Drew asked me the same question, he said he doesn't deserve me, why I'm willing to be committed to him instead of exploring all types of men in this city, which is an understandable goal when studying abroad? I gave the same answer.

But the two commits are fundamentally different.

In my last relationship, I often felt that my subjective desires were in conflict with objective norms of morality . On the one hand, I sometimes suspect that he is not my best choice, and there will be a natural urge to cheat; on the other hand, I am in awe of the moral law of commitment. I finally chose to stick to the latter, but ethics cannot be internalized into my behavioral tendencies (I don't know much about metaethics, so I don't know if this "internalization" I'm talking about is really possible, and whether I should resort to technology. help to achieve, which in turn extends to the category of technology ethics), and the result is my endless pain and struggle . Because the only reasonable explanation to keep me from cheating is that my ex-boyfriend is the only THE ONE in my life; in the face of all kinds of unhappiness, I can only brainwash myself so that I must love him, and self-morally condemn other thoughts (it can be said that , internalizing that gaslighting rather than morality).

I don't have that struggle with Drew. This just proves: the best way to solve a problem is not to catch up, but to not treat it as a problem, like Zen, "there is nothing to cause dust". We agree: maybe I can find better, but I am happy about where I am and how things are----it is my CHOICE, it is FALLIBLE, but I am willing to shoulder the responsibility of all the possible outcomes. Willing to live happily in the present, the uncertainty of the future is also its charm.

This is my answer to the contradiction between love and commitment.

last of the last.

If my ex-boyfriend is still looking at my matters, you can call me hypocrisy, hypocrisy is embedded into the human nature.

But today, I can finally say with all my heart, I wish you all the best.

Kindness and resentment, old love is difficult to continue;

The ups and downs of the world, why sigh the past and present.