crush, unrequited

“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself." - Carson McCullers

"sound like anyone you know?" I asked myself with the internal dialogue version of an arched eyebrow and knowing smile.

I have an unfortunate history of falling for the self-contained, somewhat-detached. loving's not the problem for me--I just can't get anyone to take it (it doesn't help when you're looking within a subculture within a subculture within a subculture). as a friend told me, "you need to stop going after introverts with the hopes of converting them [to extroverts]." 

--

love considered

my first piece of advice about love is to find someone who believes the same things about it as you do. 

for myself, I esteem a love of commitment, of choice, of the doing-ness/performance of loving things--beyond infatuation and romantic sentiment. (if there be romance, then all the better). I want a family, domesticity, mutual give-and-take love--and all of the constructive happiness that inheres therein. it's my hope to find another who believes the same. 

it's difficult when you go for someone and you're rejected or, worse, when you're broken-up with. especially for me (and other 'lovers' I assume) who are trying--who have, it's hoped, given 90% to 110% and who feel flexible and mutable, willing to cater to the needs and demands of another and his or her personality. when the rejection comes, it's not a matter of "what I did" but a matter of "who I am." so the question is not "what can I do better?" but "am I not the type of person I should be?" this has been poignant: the realization that someone doesn't like me. so I wonder,  "where have I gone wrong? what defect of personality or character sunk my chances? am I loveable?" I'm not quite so self-dramatizing to answer the last question in the negative...but it takes time before you stop wondering why that particular crush didn't bother finding out or why that partner said, "ehh, I can do better."

I move on, I learn, and I try to get the cliche mistakes out of the way with my mind set both on choosing better and "becoming" the person I need to be.