Part of me hoped to stick to light reading for a while. Reading two books in a few days was a nice break. Here I am though, reading The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.

J and I spent a while today talking about how my identity is its own mountain; it doesn’t change between relationships. I commented on how I used to think of myself as a social chameleon when I was a teenager because I would move between social groups.

In the introduction to The Art of Loving, Peter D. Kramer writes, “Fromm was popular precisely because, in an age of ideologies, he was not an ideologue. He took what he needed – and enthusiastically – from Judaism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and, later, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, but Fromm was finally a humanist.”

I wonder if I’ve ever really tried to join these social groups. Ultimately, I think I’ve taken what I’ve liked and left the rest. It wasn’t that I was pretending to be something I wasn’t, but rather that I approached them as an ally, and respected them even when another might argue I had little to learn from them.

Fromm begins, “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In the pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits.” I’ve made my mark on some of the paths that seem designated as noble by our culture; a good work ethic, success, upward mobility, philanthropy and volunteering. Were they to be attractive? I doubt ever. Perhaps in spits of jealousy I’ve thought about my achievements, but not a motivating factor.

Fromm continues to discuss a culture “based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange.” He defines attractive as usually meaning “a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market.” However, my struggle over the realities of “M v M” is that I have not been attracted to those holding traits of emotional stability, seasoned communication, or social popularity, that one might think I should. I’ve dated women who, by what I can only speculate I’ve gathered from my culture, should be perfectly what I’m looking for in a partner. Yet, I’m not happy with the so called best I can afford. It isn’t plainly that I measure worth differently though. The working hypothesis has been that I’ve dated women whom I should have been friends with instead of lovers.

I continued to speak with K & J about this today. K echoed a discussion of oneness that Fromm is touching on early in his book when I bought up M’s issue with my public journaling of my loneliness. J seems to be allowing me to lead myself down a path that ends with allowing my irrational desires to lead me toward what will make me happy. The intrusive thoughts of my limerance for M has long settled, and I had accepted time ago on my love being unrequited, yet I’m still uncertain of its final form. It shifts from time to time based on how I feel and I’m still unable to shake the desire to support her. I spoke at length to J about this today, about how I feel I can finally explain this as not literally being a shoulder to cry on, but quite metaphorically, still being a shoulder.

And then there’s the wonderful love of the special person whose presence makes the eyes shine and the heart beat faster, the love that binds two together and makes them both better people than either could be alone.

Perhaps I’m a pessimist these days, but having made all sorts of attempts at relationships with all sorts of wonderful people over the last couple of years, thats the only thing that matters now; finding that again and hoping its mutual this time around.

From Tycho over at Penny-Arcade,

The last time my father left, for real this time, the legal document that came to define our relationship decreed that I had to go there every other weekend. I’m not especially good at being told what to do, by anybody, and neither is he, so when I’d go to the trailer he lived in to angrily serve out my sentence he was rarely ever there.

The last time my mother left, for real that time, I would have been fourteen. As an airline pilot, my father was gone for days at a time, so by default I lived with my mother. I had the choice to move to southern Maine and live with his sister, but this would have meant leaving all of my friends as well. Interestingly enough, it would have also meant going to a high school with football. I was much less socially accepted then than people who know me might believe, but I wasn’t one for team sports either. But it always struck me funny, that they had football there. All I remember from that period is spending weekends in the country with my father. By then, most of the other kids my age had moved out of the neighborhood, and all of my friends were in Ellsworth. I distinctly recall being unable to decipher why he wanted me there, where he didn’t actually do anything with me when I was. It took me a decade to figure out he just liked having me around. As he is my old man, I now try to grant him these sundries when I can.

I don’t think about it much.