Marina Tsvetayeva, my favorite Modernist poet, used to ask everybody she knew this question, “Do you prefer to love or to be loved?”
The answer “Both” was always rejected by her as conventional and boring. The answer “To be loved” she greeted with contempt. Only if one said “To love” did the poet reward that person with a handful of her silver rings. Tsvetayeva was poor to the point of near starvation, mostly because she didn’t understand the value of material objects and got rid of them the moment she got them.
I would have gotten a bunch of the poet’s rings for sure because my answer is also “To love.” Of course, it is very important to me that N loves me. However, when I met him, I was already 31 and I had been loved a lot. To be loved was not a very novel feeling. Besides, when you are loved by somebody you don’t love, the only feeling that produces is anger and envy at not being capable of feeling anything of the kind.
But, oh, how much I wanted to love! It was a dream of mine to experience this feeling. Nobody was good enough, though. Even the best people I met all had some small defect here and there. It is impossible to love somebody imperfect, somebody whose every gesture is not absolutely ideal. This is why I still perceive as a miracle this opportunity to love somebody fully and completely.
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I guess that makes me conventional and boring. As someone that has never been loved and has never loved, but wanted both, ideally they will go together. As you say being loved by someone you don’t love breeds anger. I get the feeling that loving someone that doesn’t love you would breed pain (and possibly anger).
I’ll just be conventional and boring.
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Love for somebody who doesn’t love you isn’t love. It’s a neurosis.
And nobody has to accept the opinions of Modernist poets as gospel. They did like to shock. 🙂
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Love for somebody who doesn’t love you isn’t love. It’s a neurosis.
Whatever you call it I bet it doesn’t end well.
And nobody has to accept the opinions of Modernist poets as gospel. They did like to shock.
Oh of course I wouldn’t take it as gospel. Just sharing how my thoughts would fare in that shocking quiz.
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“It is impossible to love somebody imperfect, somebody whose every gesture is not absolutely ideal.”
Actually, I find that people who appear to be ‘perfect’ are highly irritating, mainly because I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and their ‘never doing anything wrong’ reflects back on me like a smack in the face. So I search out resolutely imperfect people to be my friends. 🙂
Everyone has their own little foibles and it’s whether you find them adorable or annoying that will determine whether you love that person or not.
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“Everyone has their own little foibles and it’s whether you find them adorable or annoying that will determine whether you love that person or not.”
Yes, it’s not that someone is objectively perfect (or tries to be in a snooty, holier-than-thou way). It’s that they’re perfect for you.
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Since I’m not known for being capable of caring about the opinions of others, this, of course, meant perfect for me. 🙂
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God exists!
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I would never love God. As someone who have been neurosed by nobody but having some neurosis for one woman who is not God but the best imperfection that I know, I would like to be neurosed by someone one day.
I don’t believe love exists, I believe this is all neurosis.
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“I don’t believe love exists, I believe this is all neurosis.”
– This belief is neurotic. 🙂 🙂
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Or at least 99% of those alleged “love relationships” are real neurosis.
And there is always someone that loves more the other…
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“Or at least 99% of those alleged “love relationships” are real neurosis.
And there is always someone that loves more the other…”
– Wow, did you conduct a research project? 🙂
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Or at least 99% of those alleged “love relationships” are real neurosis.
And there is always someone who loves more the other…
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