In fact when we read a certain book with a certain and different philosophy in it get absorbed in it and it is really hard drive one out of this syndrome and that I just now got immersed in his thoughts does not mean his philosophy will carve out my future way or thought.Originally Posted by ftil
But for now I am entirely wrapped up in his thoughts, almost gripped
Yes it is exactly the search and we all want it and the way we understand love and sex misdirect us and keeps us from fulfillment
Kelby_lake expressed it well. Only a small number of people find fulfillment in relationships as they find physical, emotional, and mental connections. In fact, there were research done according to which after 15 years of marriage 90% of married couple described their marriage as empty. After 25 years of marriage the number raised to 99% . It is only 1% of people who find deep fulfillment and emotional intimacy. It is a big problem and 99% look for “the perfect one”.
Is it just understanding of love and sex that stop most people from achieving fulfillment? I wish it were that simple. There is a vast literature on marital therapy as many scholars have been looking for the answer. My favorite is Bowen family system. Bowen clearly stated that most people who enter therapy due to dissatisfaction in marriage leave therapy when the symptoms disappear. He said that only small number of couple stays for 3 years in therapy that results in long lasting changes in dynamic in relationships and deep fulfillment. So, it is not just understanding of love and sex but inner strengths and courage to change and grow. Interestingly enough, when women change the steps in relationships, men intensify their behavior as Bowen described, “change back ” behaviour. Unfortunately, many women go back to the old dynamic as a result of “change back” behaviors of their partners that involve withdrawal, emotional abuse, even physical abuse, or threat of divorce.
They can be quite creative.....not to change and grow.
Kelby_lake expressed it well. Only a small number of people find fulfillment in relationships as they find physical, emotional, and mental connections. In fact, there were research done according to which after 15 years of marriage 90% of married couple described their marriage as empty. After 25 years of marriage the number raised to 99% . It is only 1% of people who find deep fulfillment and emotional intimacy. It is a big problem and 99% look for “the perfect one”.
Is it just understanding of love and sex that stop most people from achieving fulfillment? I wish it were that simple. There is a vast literature on marital therapy as many scholars have been looking for the answer. My favorite is Bowen family system. Bowen clearly stated that most people who enter therapy due to dissatisfaction in marriage leave therapy when the symptoms disappear. He said that only small number of couple stays for 3 years in therapy that results in long lasting changes in dynamic in relationships and deep fulfillment. So, it is not just understanding of love and sex but inner strengths and courage to change and grow. Interestingly enough, when women change the steps in relationships, men intensify their behavior as Bowen described, “change back ” behaviour. Unfortunately, many women go back to the old dynamic as a result of “change back” behaviors of their partners that involve withdrawal, emotional abuse, even physical abuse, or threat of divorce.
They can be quite creative.....not to change and grow.
In fact we hardly get appropriately paired up through weddings and we make a hodgepodge of things, arrange everything beforehand to make marriage a celebration. But in a while most find their spouses in bed repulsive. There is no love but kind of kinship only, no bond of love and understanding but of values and mores, of no purity of heart but of a brief impulsive contentment. Yet we socially pretend we are a happy couple, satisfied and fulfilled and we rejuvenate the relationship thorough by hanging out together as socialites. But at the bottom we are shallowly living, faking our love, romance and fulfillment and Lawrence laid it bare though at times boldly and brazenly. He was oftentimes considered pornographic. Most of us, if not all, are kind of hungry for something and we can affiliate better with someone special crave secretly and for that matter I feel Lawrence shares our points of observation and put forth it for our view and review.
I second your idea of the "perfect one" and we are desperately seeking for that one.
If you are lucky……you will be in 1% I have only met one married couple who fit into that category.
I have asked my “spiritual” mother about them since she has known them for 2o years. They deeply cared about each other and when I met them there had been married for 23 years. I could feel genuine love in the air. Many people put a mask, pretending that they are happy. Well, they can’t hide it from those who are good observers. Many couple after getting married put pajamas or just underwear and they don’t care. But then they are upset that the partner is not interested in ……experiencing ecstasy. Second, many men expect women to clean and cook, take care of their emotional weaknesses, be the best in bed…… be successful and never tired.
I don’t know the book and the author’s solution but it sounds that he expressed his deep longing to find fulfillment. I don’t know about his life but I wouldn’t be surprised, if he didn’t find it.
In fact we wear a mask of society and that cripples our emotional appeals. We have to wed and live together in society and in a few days most become fed up with their spouses and they look ugly and unappealing and yet they sleep under the same roof and pretend to be lovers whereas their minds fly somewhere and with someone and that is why people have lovers , mistresses and a few of this stark realty is filmed and we watch on TV serials but most of the events go never recorded.If you are lucky……you will be in 1% I have only met one married couple who fit into that category.
I have asked my “spiritual” mother about them since she has known them for 2o years. They deeply cared about each other and when I met them there had been married for 23 years. I could feel genuine love in the air. Many people put a mask, pretending that they are happy. Well, they can’t hide it from those who are good observers. Many couple after getting married put pajamas or just underwear and they don’t care. But then they are upset that the partner is not interested in ……experiencing ecstasy. Second, many men expect women to clean and cook, take care of their emotional weaknesses, be the best in bed…… be successful and never tired.
I don’t know the book and the author’s solution but it sounds that he expressed his deep longing to find fulfillment. I don’t know about his life but I wouldn’t be surprised, if he didn’t find it.
And a few writers are blatantly doing justice to their observations, unearthing the reality that is there and Lawrence has done this magnificently
I think that it is a deeper problem than that. We got a very wrong idea about relationships. Many still believe that Cinderella met a prince and they were living happily ever after. Nobody says that perhaps Cinderella had a compulsive and addictive disorder and……..was busy cleaning the palace 24/7.
Relationship requires work. But we haven’t beentold that, have we? It is easier to dream or have a lover then do a job. Sadly, as people get older, particularly men as they reach dreadful 40’s and their sexual prowess is disappearing with a speed of light…….they are left only with … dreams.
Yes, absolutely so, and we have, in fact most, not only got a wring idea but wrong relationships and we keep up it since we fear seclusion and in society we have to swallow frustrations and humiliations. And men reaching the 40s become the repulsive lots, and their wives get noting from them and may look else where for something really more vital and sweeter and lovelier and yet they dread the criticisms of their neighbors, relatives and the like and they have to shrink cocooning in their communal, familial cossets. They want a powerful, sensuously appealing touch something that salivates them and give them the feel of the body and soul; they want to intertwine bodily and mentally and get the thrill of oneness and feel the fusion of something between them and it is sex and that rarely happens between the couples.I think that it is a deeper problem than that. We got a very wrong idea about relationships. Many still believe that Cinderella met a prince and they were living happily ever after. Nobody says that perhaps Cinderella had a compulsive and addictive disorder and……..was busy cleaning the palace 24/7.
Relationship requires work. But we haven’t beentold that, have we? It is easier to dream or have a lover then do a job. Sadly, as people get older, particularly men as they reach dreadful 40’s and their sexual prowess is disappearing with a speed of light…….they are left only with … dreams.
I wouldn’t say that people stay in wrong relationships because they fear seclusion. It may be a part of the problem. But I think that many fear to be alone. Economic reasons also play a role so that they deliberately choose misery.
I agree that people want to feel fully alive and to have deep emotional, physical, and mental connections. Women need emotional intimacy and understanding. Men who don’t take an effort to listen and try to understand women without giving any advice kill relationships and passions. I was laughing when I was reading Rosenberg’s book where he was teaching married couples to listen. A husband who finally got what it meant to listen was shocked to learn that his wife was happy and fulfilled and he didn’t need to do anything.LOL! He couldn’t believe that it was all he needed to do. I don’t know from where men got the idea that if a woman expresses her feelings and needs, they feel obliged to solve her problems. Nothing else can make women angry.
Relationships can bring the best in us but it can be a source of pain and frustrations. Socrates has his idea about marriage.
"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
You have a wonderful quote of Socrates and in fact it is really significant and is in fact true. People are together as husband and wife sheer for economic reasons, social reasons and not for a personal reason. Men just want a powerful sex and women want something passional, emotional, and once man satisfy his urges he does not care about his wife and she becomes hormonal since she has not satisfied herself sexually and become depressed and yet she sticks to him and this is how society goes on and on and on infinitely. I have seen some societies in which sex for women mean only for spawning babies and not for enjoyment and men on the other hand always makes the most of it. That is why this institution of marriage fails and Lawrence saw it vividly and I can feel it in his novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover and I have finished it recentlyI wouldn’t say that people stay in wrong relationships because they fear seclusion. It may be a part of the problem. But I think that many fear to be alone. Economic reasons also play a role so that they deliberately choose misery.
I agree that people want to feel fully alive and to have deep emotional, physical, and mental connections. Women need emotional intimacy and understanding. Men who don’t take an effort to listen and try to understand women without giving any advice kill relationships and passions. I was laughing when I was reading Rosenberg’s book where he was teaching married couples to listen. A husband who finally got what it meant to listen was shocked to learn that his wife was happy and fulfilled and he didn’t need to do anything.LOL! He couldn’t believe that it was all he needed to do. I don’t know from where men got the idea that if a woman expresses her feelings and needs, they feel obliged to solve her problems. Nothing else can make women angry.
Relationships can bring the best in us but it can be a source of pain and frustrations. Socrates has his idea about marriage.
"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
Okay. The institution of marriage fails for many people. I don’t know this book but Hoggart said that they built relationship very slowly and it was based upon tenderness, physical passion, and mutual respect. I think that is extremely import aspect of having fulfilling relationship. Many people fall in love but they mistakenly take a strong physical attraction as love. After all, love is blind, isn’t it?
But they don’t take time to get to know each other to be sure that they emotionally or mentally match. Many women fall in love with ……..potential and they spend their energy to change a partner to fit her image of him. But most likely it is only her dream about him. LOL! Others may get together for very wrong reasons in the first place. They feel incomplete and look for a person to make them a whole and complete. A perfect prescription for a disaster.
We go back again to the very wrong ideas people have about relationships.
But there is a small percentage of people who enjoy the deep and fulfilling relationships with success in all ares of their lives.
Yes the few who succeed enjoy the relationships to the fullest extent. And what binds them together is understanding and this is not infatuation and it is a sense of togetherness. I have read a Greek legend in which there was a being that split up and got turned into two beings: male and female. They again wanted to regain their old unity since they have been by accident two beings. That is how sex has happened since they become intertwined and this sense of sex is the feeling of togetherness and today few want this kind of kinship. They have some urges, that rise up inside their bodies through some chemical reactions, sex hormones and once they satisfy themselves everything is over. But in real love they become one and intimately and integrally one and feel the eternal joy of sex and unity and this is what I felt in his novel. Now I am reading his other novel Sons and Lovers which I had read in my school days and now as a matured man I read it differently and I find a different meaning here, a different philosophy since in those days my impotency or immaturity barred me from comprehending this great literature
Right now I understand you. I agree that in real love people feel the depth and sexual act is one of the way to express it. Alexander Lowen beautifully talked about that kind of love and sex. He said that those who feel deep love reach ecstasy where they merge with each other and merge with entire universe. He expressed it better but it is the idea of feeling deep connection with the partner and whole universe. However, according to his 40 + experience of working with people, not that many people know that experience and most people are not capable of it due to emotional blockages. The problem is that many people don’t have a passionate nature as they control their feelings. Passionate nature requires giving in to body and its feelings that need to be fully expressed. It is simple, yet difficult for many.
You are close to the idea I hold strongly and in fact when we are really in love we do not feel our individuality and this is how love happens in its essence the way a rivulet meets a river and flow together to an ocean of ecstasy and there is no self and get merged as you have felt and a sensation flows, a deep undercurrent between the two and this is rapture and this is rarely possible in most relationships and when two lovers can unknot their prejudices, preoccupations and can feel they are on this planet to enjoy the company of each other. In this perfect relationship the femaleness of her wakes to its fullness and the maleness wraps her up in its eternal lap and arms and they become eternal one. Hardly the model of marriage can help them to reach that stage, perfect unity
Yes, I agree that in deep love people transcend their ego. I wouldn’t say that they don’t feel their individuality. They definitely don’t while making love but they have to have a strong sense of self to feel deep love. When people have a strong self of self, they are relatively free from defenses and can fully give in to their feelings. It is a key since there is no space for prejudice or any limiting beliefs. Dance is not that powerful as love but people transcend the ego boundaries and many times they feel love.
I agree that that kind of depth of experience is not possible for most people. Sad, indeed, as many try to find fulfillment in many wrong ways that leave them empty.
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