The war begins: the duel of egos

The war begins: the duel of egos, 01-08-2010

Assumptions
1. By default, love is a war because strong feelings and being hurt can lead to feelings of revenge
2. People are unable to fully love a person that doesn’t respect themselves
3. Perfect state of equilibrium is not easy among humans, either we are mean or generous, etc, we swing from one way to another rather than be perfectly in the middle

Now when you have feelings for someone, there will be many occasions for you to test whether the feeling you have for someone is stronger than your own pride and love of yourself. Always, you have a choice, you choose the feelings and the person or your ego. People have noticed that often men love bitches and women love bastards. Being a bastard or a bitch is more metaphorical here, they put themselves first, they show their ego is more important than their feelings to that person and ultimately that person for them. In the society govern by free will, the most humble way of despising someone is not wanting to meet them and spend time with them. Effect is similar to those less humble ways, it is just subtle.

Now imagine that both people have strong ego, this is a tricky situation because one person’s feelings need to be stronger than their ego to reconcile. In priest’s [always believe in merciful love] eyes the person that sort of “gives up” is a winner, but human beings perceive it differently. It appears as a weakness and no one likes weakness. Not on this world anyway, not in the world controlled by evolutionary forces. The person that has feelings stronger than their ego is almost in a defeated position. When hard time comes they will be the ones that will suffer more. It is almost like in such a potentially beautiful and over glorified thing like love - the one that loves more is a loser rather than a winner. Spiritually, in principle, he/she is a winner but practically a loser.

Historically, this was solved by inequality of women and men. A guy’s ego was always supposed to be stronger and woman was supposed to be submissive to a guy. Guy’s commitment was sought - not woman’s. That did leave guy in privileged position and often he did have affairs on a side because he knew the wife would always be there for him. It did not mean he would have to have affairs though.

When someone leaves us, we have a choice - shall we fight for that person or not. If we fight, then we devote our ego for feelings for that person. The person sees that and thinks.. ah, so you love me, they are happy by this initially but then they realize, they hey if you love me more than your feelings, that what about your ego and self-respect? This is when they may reach a conclusion that we don’t respect ourselves and actually this will cause them to stop loving us.
It is often the case, that people who actually love each other are apart. It does not mean they love each other equally or on fact need to spend time together. The worse is to threat someone you want to kill yourself, even though you may actually think your existence is futile and pointless. It does really feel this way, those are your thoughts, emotions. People commit suicide after a broken heart, this is not an illusion. They can leap from a bridge into the water, potentially fatal dip. Threatening to commit suicide doesn’t help to be loved back, in fact it has worse effect, we are completely not loved back in such case.

There are many tutorials on the Internet, how you should be horrible to a woman and to a man to be loved. If you start doing it consciously, it starts to be a concept of who will harm whom more. It starts to be sick. How could it be something you can desire? The problem is that like I wrote in the past, people cannot consciously control how bastardy their are or how horrible they are in the long term. That is why sometimes a good boy is a with a bad girl and a bad girl is with a good boy. Then they have kids and the boy is so bad that they actually cannot handle this anymore - they split. The father is hailed as a dickhead. There were many good guy - suitors - before the bad father. They were sent off, they were given a brush off, because they were not challenging, because they were too nice, because they were too good or because they pheromones were not right - meaning they smelled inappropriately! In a sense, we pay the price for our own choices. We pay the price of the way evolutionary biology works. When I like you, you like me but you smell badly for me sorry! If we only paid it, that wouldn't be too bad, children may pay it, and that is much worse. Those innocent children, at least they have a potential to fix in the future what we are unable to handle. Will they? Will they fix love? At the moment I very much doubt it, because in principle the way human brain operates would have to be altered.

In evolutionary sense this being bad is hard to explain, why would evolution favour bastards and bitches? After all, the probability for a bitch and a bastard to have a child is higher, probability for someone that is behaving badly and is gratified by an evolutionary privileged to pass on genes is somewhat strange to me. This is even scary. Often thank God, society and actually good principles bring up that child and a father or a mother are loosing the importance. It does raise concerns for the future of this, if psychologically, in principle and and on high level, this is flawed so much. This also leaves room for artificial insemination as a way to fix a flawed nature. Very shocking idea. Jennifer Aniston has been trying this recently...

Love is a loosing game
This is a song by Amy Winehouse and it is so much true, it ends up being a game, a war, a duel - initially, because there is always an ego - your ego against your feelings to that person. Both people keep trying themselves over days, months, years and check their level of feelings vs ego to other person. Eventually, naturally one person looses, because by a tiny bit they loose interest in that person. That tiny bit often means - I mean fine without you, if you leave me - I don’t care anymore. The older people are the more prepared they are to live on their own but with dignity and respect - with their ego in a good shape.

What are the factors to win the war naturally without being too horrible?
Natural factors are your natural charm abilities, being able to smile, being able to deceive your real emotions, being Yellow and green person - in case of a woman or a man, they are usually models, most sought after women - alpha females or males, being fit, being pretty [symmetrical shapes] and last but not least being smart.

Free will in love is flawed for equality of love
You can read more about freedom in love in one of my previous entries:
http://matiwinnetou.blogspot.com/2010/08/freedom-in-life-and-relationships-is-it.html

Possible combinations of feelings and ego between two people:
Both egos - version 1 Ego follows another ego through their feelings
When one person and their ego is weaker than their feelings to another person, they will follow or chase that person. The other person notices it and may stop to respect that person. This is because that means they have stronger feelings then their own ego. They may let the person to humiliate their ego for the feelings that they have.
In this situation another person will be with another person only as long as they are not fed up with them really. The follower is at mercy of the person that is followed.

Both egos - version 2 two egos go separate ways
When both egos are stronger than the feelings that they have to their partners, they may choose to go their own separate ways. Both people realize that their egos are stronger, thus it means they value themselves more than the person they have feelings for. This is sort of a pride and prejudice scenario - where both lovers love themselves but they won’t be together due to pride and strong ego that they have. In this situation they may actually reconcile and get back again and they most probably are going to miss each other although with somewhat different intensity. When the time passes, things change, feelings change and they may start missing again. This will be the case up to a moment when they will have a fight, disagreement or whatever reason that will hurt either of the egos, when the previous reason they had split comes back.

Equilibrium in love is very hard, so hard that I doubt it is even possible. There are people that are rich and the ones that are poor, we often moan about it. We dream of equality. Somehow, we think love and relationships is exempt from inequality and that perfect imaginary equilibrium can be achieved. It may appear this way, this is because feelings cannot be easily measured. There is no scale to put feelings, commitment on and check levels. It is not countable. If there was such a thing, I very much doubt that both people would ever end up equally committed and loving each other.

Why is this so hard to see? You may ask. Initially, the fighting is invisible, you talk about stuff, exchange ideas, it appears equal - actually for both people it is equal. It can feel amazing from day one. Over time, however, subtleties come out, missed expectations, wrong assumptions and projections we had stand a test of time. Thus, the only perfect love is an imaginary love, love of dreams, because in dreams unlike in reality everything is possible. As a Software Engineer by profession, I only believe in working things and equality of feelings doesn’t work in real life in love.

Praying to God or any other external force will not help you to be loved back equally what it may change if you are religious is the commitment of the person that doesn't need you as much as you do.

So why people believe in often ridiculous and impossible ideas like perfect and pure love? This is because believing in a notion of something perfect will shield them from the cruelty of existence. It is better to live in a dream than in cruel reality. Living in a cruel reality removes all sensitivity that you may have. Dreams are better :)