2009 July 17 | Intimate O(pi)nions

You can make it look like love, but you can’t make it look like like.

July 17th, 2009 |

You can't make it look like like, can you?

There are certain elements that trigger the feeling of love. Some of them are entirely natural, like the love parents feel for their offspring, even if they wouldn’t like their kids. Take my mom for example, she loves me, I know she does, but I don’t think she likes me very much. If I was someone else’s kid, she’d be saying what a horrible scatter brain I am, completely unorganized, impractical, head-in-the-clouds-dreamer, who will never amount to anything and who is very lucky to have found a man who took her as his cross to bear. I know she thinks along these lines about me, but she still loves me. I know you might wonder what that has to do with anything, but it just shows you the difference of “love” and “like”, in case you’re wondering what I’m on about.

When it comes to romantic love though, some people are excellent at manipulating it. There are even personality disorders that are based on the ability to manipulate love, namely the narcissistic personality disorder. The reason why narcissists are so dangerous is the fact that they can MAKE you love them, even if you really didn’t like the person at all. Then they make you feel like you want them to love you back, and they offer you the love you want only to take it away again, and force you to want to be validated again and again by their love for you.

The same spell is cast over you when you find that one person who you just can’t have. You don’t have to like him or her, but when he/she seems to ignore your best traits, you just want to prove that you’re worth of love. As long as they deny you their love, you’ll be coming back begging for it. It’s just a very common response to being ignored, especially if you’re not used to it. Sadly, the more admirers you have the more likely you are to fall right into this trap, because you think that if that person won’t love me, he/she must be really special, and you just have to have them.

One of the most obvious situations where you can see love manipulation is reality TV. You put 20 beautiful girls who have never heard “not interested” in their lives in the same house with a guy. Any guy would do really, as long as he’s even remotely interesting. Stick him in there, and see what happens. The girls first announce that they are not the least bit interested in this guy, and a few episodes later they are confessing their undying love for this same guy. One of the girls get the guy, being head over heels in love with the bloke but a few months later they get separated, and he starts to wonder maybe he chose the wrong girl. He didn’t, he could have picked any one of them and the result would have been much the same, unless he got really lucky.

Love is like the super glue that fixes what is broken. It fills out the blanks. It is a very useful emotion, but can be very misleading at times. Like is a lot tougher to fool. Even if you’re madly in love, you can still list a few things you really don’t like about your special someone.

They say you can’t choose who you love, but that is not entirely true. What you can do, is reprogram yourself to recognize the destructive type of love, and once you recognize it, it is a lot easier to see right through the spell. You have to ask yourself if you like this person. If you say “yes”, ask yourself what is it that you like about him or her. You will have to come up with a tangible list of qualities that you admire and appreciate about him. Not just “I like the way he walks” or “I like the way she looks at me”. Those are bullshit things to like, and you know it, don’t you? If you can say something like “I love the way he studies things. How he concentrates to find the answer.” THAT is a good thing, but not necessarily enough by itself. You’ll need more than that. How does she or he make you feel? If you say you like the way he or she makes you feel, would you say they make you feel comfortable or uneasy? Comfortable is good, uneasy is usually more pleasurable, but not good in the long run. If you feel very relaxed and comfortable, but still aware that you’re with the opposite sex, you’ve got a winner. And yes, you should feel comfortable pretty much from the get go. Unfortunately no matter how much you want that hunky guy who makes your legs feel like jelly be able to make you comfortable once you get to know him.. Nah, probably not going to happen. You can try of course, and when you give up, remember I told you so.