Have you ever loved someone so much that you lost your identity , so to speak. Elizabeth Gilbert mentioned that she would automatically "morph" into the person she loved. The provebial permeable membrane.
Eat Pray Love Chapter 22
... I have boundary issues with men . Or maybe that's not fair to say . To have issues with boundaries , one must have boundaries in the first place, right?
"But I dissapear into the person I love . I am the permeable membrane. If I love you , you can have everything. You can have my time , my devotion , my money , my family , my dog , my dog's money , my dog's time - everything . If I love you , I will carry for you all your pain , I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word). I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have neve actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family . I will give you the sun and the rain , and if they are not available , I will give you a suncheck and a raincheck . I will give you all this and more , until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else ..."
I do not relay these facts about myself with pride , but this is how it's always been.
The fear of suffering , is worse than the suffering himself , Coelho wrote. But that's what we do , in relationships we cling to tightly and morph into the other person because we are so terrified to be alone otherwise ... the rest are so afraid of letting their guards down in the anticipation of some future heart break , infidelity or distance. But like Ketut said ... losing balance for love , is part of living a balanced life. I'm all for the wise words of medicine men , God bless him , but i'm sick of the close-ended statements about love , from the Bible , to canonical poets like Donne , classical poets like Ovid , Shakespeare and the rest ... If there is so much literature about it , then why do we suck at it? You wake up and the first thing you hear on the radio is ..." He did that , women are this , men do this , he didn't do this , they do that ... da da da ..." I read the paper and the living section has an article on : ten tips of keeping your man interested or something like that , it's so hard to remember those titles? Our entire society is geared to wire you to think about it at least twice a day ...
So where are we going wrong? Do we become so engrossed in the other person , or the very idea and subject or it (ah l'amour l'amour). Because it is so elusive and slippery and sometimes dangerous , we can't get enough. What is it? Where is it? When can we get it? How can we get it? Who is it? We are turning into robots not feeling the right emotions and wired by what society is telling us to expect (flowers , chocolates , wine and trips et cetera) and then add the element that we are exposed to so much sex , whether you want to access it or not , it's there ... So on one hand women or in this case Liz , wants to give you everything, but what is she offering ? What is she getting back? Is it substantial and sustainable? Or will we'll we all get exhausted and depleted that the only way we can recover is by (insert here).
