Tom's Love Quest

Dear [Mentat],

Yes. When addiction becomes so strong that it compels you to throw good sense out the window, then it must at least be better understood, if not suppressed. Unfulfilled cravings drive many to exude antisocial, counter productive behaviors. E.g. The drug user, the over eater, and the woman so addicted to love that she tolerates physical abuse, lies, and neglect to the point that she routinely puts herself into harm’s way. Her symptoms of addiction make her self-esteem appear quite low, don’t they. Hmmm. Here’s another one of those chicken-and-the-egg questions: Does low self-esteem cause addiction, or does addiction create low self-esteem? Whichever one causes the other, the two seem inexorably linked. The good news is that if one can be improved, then the other will likely improve also. Doing things to raise self-esteem reduces depression and associated addiction. Likewise, when a person stops doing badness to himself because of addiction, this victory can raise his self-esteem. If one believes that he craves too much, he might do things, as you have, that raise self-esteem. Not simple, I know. But it is sound philosophy, and one that you already know well I’m sure.

But consider. Excessive addictions may not be your problem when it comes to women. Think for a moment about all those relationships gone sour in your life, which you attribute to obsession. Do you think any of these would have succeeded had you craved less? It’s certainly possible. But I’ve never known you to be “needy” and have never heard any woman complain about your privation.

Another question: How have your excessive cravings negatively influenced the way you treat women? Were you ever markedly possessive, controlling, temperamental, or clingy? Did any woman (except for  [First Love]) ever break up with you because she thought you were too addicted to the relationship? If not, then perhaps you weren’t as destructively addictive as you think. I say this not to argue. But I worry that if you succeed in ridding yourself of addiction, that you’ll also lose the ability to enjoy a romance beyond an intellectual level, and that the pleasures of the flesh would be lost to you. That would be sad. More on that below.

It’s true that blind passion, as induced by addiction, can lead one into undesirable affairs with dysfunctional ladies. Indeed, some of those scenarios can be so harmful that it’s no wonder people so quickly zero in on the underlying passion as the culprit. It’s easy to recognize and can be managed with things like RET [Rational Emotive Therapy], hypnosis, and drugs. Literature is chalk full of bad ends that its authors link to irrational passion.

But as I see it, the pitfalls of craving by no means justify vanquishing it. Like you, I’ve experienced the bad ends to which senseless cravings can lead (Snuff, overeating, overspending, reckless pursuits, et al). In my twenties for example, virgin curiosity along with rampant hormones, ushered me to the beds of several bottom-notch females. However, consider that it’s not passion itself that did this, but rather, blind passion – passion ungoverned by wisdom. Blind passion is one type of craving that we _should_ purge from our souls. That’s true. But not all passion. Not like the Vulcans. Craving in different circumstances is good, and should therefore be retained and enhanced to help keep life interesting. Nothing at all wrong with enlightened passion.

Looking back, I see that while my initial passions for those [twos] in my twenties were misguided, and that ridiculous passion coaxed me into going too far with them, I still can’t blame the passion itself for the resulting folly. Ignorance was the more-guilty defendant. In those days, the vision of my dream girl was unclear and muddled. While I knew that some women turned me on and others did not, I had not yet learned “the formula,” and thus could not accurately predict ahead of the bedroom which ones would and would not be exciting. I was more experimental as many college people are. Unfortunately though, with experimentation comes many, bitter failures. It’s inevitable. Yet along the way, we learn how to do it better the next time, and it’s craving that keeps us coming back for more. Where issues of the heart are concerned, craving provides the fuel we need to travel the road to wisdom.

Again, longing makes enjoyment possible. Though in the beginning, it lead me distasteful positions, it also forced me to acknowledge its usefulness nonetheless. The very cravings that regrettably drove me to [Peggy Sue’s] bed, also got me into   [First Love's],   a spot where I’ve never known more complete joy and satisfaction. The fact is, we need strong desire in order to reap pleasure. Now I enjoy the thrill of drinking a cold glass of water when I’m thirsty, just as I like eating a filling meal when I’m hungry. And I love going to bed with a women when my cravings for intimacy are especially strong. In these cases, passion is the required precursor to the enjoyment. And I don’t see how I could continue enjoying them if I were to purge my passions. For me, the flesh pleasures are dear. I would not therefore, want to give them up even though they might make me appear too vulnerable to some women. I wouldn’t make a very good Buddhist, would I. Yes, getting love cravings fulfilled in a timely fashion is often difficult, but well worth it to me. So, I attribute my poor judgment of women while attending Connelley, not to the overpowering nature of the craving, but to ignorance – unawareness that experience has since washed away.

You know, I’m befuddled while reading the profiles of eighteen to twenty-four year old women on match.com. So many are painfully specific and uncompromising about what they’re looking for. They want men to be at least a certain height and an exact weight, who makes at least a specific amount of money, and who has accomplished some very explicit career objectives. Now don’t get me wrong. I think people need to be very precise in their understanding of what excites them in love. But it took me years of trial and error to develop mine, (the formula). And I couldn’t have done it without experiencing many types of women. Now I know that an eighteen year-old clearly doesn’t have my experience, yet they’re so certain that one type of man works better for them than another. How could they know, for example, that black men don’t excite them unless they actually go out with one a few times? In my case, it was only after over a decade of trial and error that I came to the realization that fat women just don’t do it for me, and that the slender, quiet, meek, gentle, and introverted females I way prefer to the boisterous, outgoing, laughy, party types. Yet I’ve dated both types. Had to, in order to reach this self-awareness.

As a young adult, I rejected very few women, though in retrospect, if I knew then what I know now, I would have rejected practically all of them. The older I grow, the picker I become. The cravings at McKee Place stemmed primarily from curiosity of the unknown. I didn’t know how to judge good and bad then, so just about all women were fair game. As indicated, ignorance in my mind was as wild as the hormones in my blood. But since then, I’ve learned what it’s like to bed with the ugliest, prettiest, and a slew in the middle, and which of those groups yield the highest pleasure. Yep. You guessed it. I like the prettiest ones.     History proves it. Not prejudice. Not guesswork. Not unfounded childhood fantasy. But hard core experience is what most effectively governs my passions, and yours probably.

I’m not curious anymore, so that source of craving is gone. Today, because of what I know, I will not bed with a woman who doesn’t fit the formula, because experiences with [Lenee], [Shanee], [Hannah], and many others, repeatedly show the futility of such off-point dating. I’ve yet to meet a woman who at the outset is unattractive, but becomes very beautiful after knowing her for some years. Some people, especially women, swear that this happens routinely. So I do not say that it’s impossible. But I’ve never seen it. As a result, along with ignorance, all craving for such off-point women is all but gone. On those rare occasions when it does appear, it is easily suppressed by remembering the pains of off-point dating. In this way, knowledge helps suppress undesired craving.

In my case, the less I knew about life, the more I blindly craved. It is said that the best way to overcome an addiction is to succumb to it, to do what it demands. While I’m not convinced that intentionally overindulging in snuff would have released me from its bonds, with women at least, a bit of experience making bad selections did get rid of craving for those types. Allow it to drag you through the gutter for a time. If there is indeed a badness to reap, then experiencing that badness could retard that addiction. While I’ve learned not to crave most women as my tastes have grown more refined, there are those few out there that it’s so right to crave. And I’m going to crave ‘em ‘til I get ‘em.      I’m glad I didn’t abandon my passions, for I’ll need them to fully appreciate a true love if I ever find her. Thank goodness my desires haven’t lessened over the years. They’ve just gotten more specific.

You say that craving has led you to compromise your standards. But if you’re like me, those “standards” were far less detailed during the McKee Place years. Today, with two decades of adult dating experience under our belts, we both know implicitly that settling produces only heartache and regret. Our standards are very exacting, and we’re more insistent on them being met before starting a new relationship. The degree of conviction I have on this point, which has grown with each dating experience between then and now, keeps me on the right road. It keeps me from dating less than what I see as the best. I see this for you too. You’re a smart man. Well read with some true-to-life experience. I suspect that craving could not overpower you today as it has in the past, because now, you’re seasoned. You are far less likely today, as am I, to be blinded by your passions. You’re at a point now where you can embrace passion with courage. Indulge it with the confidence that you have the good sense to pull out if you discover badness in it.

Oh, and on your comment about cultivating patience and reducing craving in the hopes that this will bring longer-lasting, healthier relationships to you. Yes, that could be. But consider that when a lady’s heart really resonates for you, when she’s instinctually drawn to you by that electrical magnetism of romance, then you  will not  put her off, even if you’re moderately impatient. The smitten find impatience in their lovers flattering so long as it doesn’t turn into chronic demands that they don’t feel comfortable meeting. It’s especially important not to demand too early. But it’s amazing how tolerant of imperfection people who are in love can be. I hate to disagree with you again. But I just don’t see you as the overly impatient type. You have things that you want from a mate and you’re well within your rights to ask for them. Now women may call you impatient, as   [First Love]   often did me. But that isn’t necessarily because you’re  truly  impatient. It may simply mean that [she's] not in love with you. Nothing wrong with you in this case. Nothing wrong with them either, though they’ll tend to make it sound as though you’re the one at fault. Don’t buy that though. For a right woman, you’ll be tops as you are. You’ll be good enough for her.

Now, to your second paragraph [in your note]. Yes, it’d be foolish to waste time pursuing women we know for sure to be questionable. I agree. But how often do we  really  know this for sure,  before  we begin pursuing? Now that we’re older, and presumably wiser, we very often can know. But the inexperienced (like us when we lived on Mckee Place) don’t really know what they want much less how to recognize it, as I’ve tried to show above. So it’s natural that they make many mistakes, which, in hindsight, might seem very stupid. Now hindsight is always 20 X 20. But foresight is usually legally blind. In fact, it is totally blind in the undeveloped minds of teens and those new to adulthood.

However, the road to wisdom runs through experiencing inexperience, if you will. In order to grow wise, we must, for a period, be willing to shoulder the humilities of being green, and to endure the hardships of that greenness. One cannot dodge the adversity of inexperience if he wants to learn how to best improve his own condition. He must go through it himself. Among those hardships is having to live for a time with poor choices in mates, until we learn how to recognize potential problems from a distance – both physical and emotional distance. Advice from others just doesn’t cut it when it comes to how to choose the best mate for us. True wisdom comes from both good and bad experience, not from fairytales.

It makes no sense to blame ourselves once enlightened, for the poor choices we made while ignorant. This is pointless regret. I doubt that today, you would go after anyone you knew to be questionable, would you? You probably pursued such uncertainty as a kid, as did I. But now, I only pursue those who, in my best possible estimation, are unquestionably good for me. Consider, that pursuing questionable women in our younger years, is a necessary step toward knowing who’s questionable, and who is right for us. Thus, there’s a good side to questionable pursuits, especially when one learns from them.

Now to your point about pursuing ‘other’ accomplishments (besides questionable ladies) making us more attractive to women. Well, again I agree, but only to a degree. Only insofar as that women invariably say that they want a successful man. And perhaps, we men hear this so much that we internalize it as “the” manly goal to have. It seems right and just to want to do this, and we feel unworthy when we don’t (or can’t). However, I suggest that ladies’ motivation has less to do with his specific accomplishments per se, and more to do with the fact that he’s accomplished something at all. How many women for example, do you think would find the undertakings of a renowned physicist intriguing? Could most of them even really understand his work, unless they themselves were physicists? Probably not, right? In fact, there’s a pervasive downside to dating the ‘accomplished’ man. And that is that he tends to be away at work too much, and makes too little time for his family. Women complain about this time and time again. The ballerina I dated last fall talked of dating a multi-millionaire ophthalmologist. What intrigued her about him, according to her, was not the fact that he was a doctor. She didn’t care if he saw 5 patients a day or 50, and hated the fact that he was always on call. Rather, it was his wealth that caught her eye. How he made the money was unimportant to her, so long as he made it, and did so honestly.

In the end, however, she left him because, as she put it, he was too career-oriented, and overly protective of his material goods. The example she gave was of a thick glass coffee table he had in his living room. While they watched a movie one night, she put her stocking feet on this table so she could recline, and he angrily snapped at her. Such rich people are often high-strung she told me, and she seems to have dated many of them. So I trust her opinion on this. As I see it, women don’t care about the specifics of men’s accomplishments so long as whatever those are, they make him wealthy. He could sit home all day picking his nose. But if he can afford to wine and dine them, hey, all the better.

Now I know that this isn’t true in all cases. Clearly the man who pursues one thing obsessively, whether it’s women, or careers, or recreation, is probably less attractive than the more well-rounded individual. So again, there’s a ring of truth in what you say. But in all my experience, I never had a woman say to me, “Gee Tom, you really turn me on because you’re so good at computers.” Yet they have said, “Gee, Tom, you really turn me on because you’re so understanding and knowledgeable, and you listen.” So to be empathetic, a trait women love, it pays to be well-rounded, a condition difficult to attain if one is too focused on any single activity. In that sense, you’re correct, because the more diverse and numerous our accomplishments, the more likely we are to understand the plights of women, and this makes us more attractive to them. Onward.

You seem to be suggesting that passion is a force that  necessarily opposes  or clouds good judgment, as certainly as gravity causes a rock to fall. It appears that you live by the credo that the more craving there is, the greater the possibility that good judgment will be impaired, and that choices we make as a response to craving would very likely be bad ones. So, in classic Buddhist style, your mission appears to be to rid yourself of all craving, so that you can maximize the quality of your judgment, and therefore your choices. I agree with this, but only partly.

True, blind passion often does corrupt even the soundest mind as is the case with commonly uncontrolled lusts (like those for power, money, drugs, and love), in which insanity is the frequent result. But on the flip side, well-channeled craving helps animate the human spirit and places us way above mere automatons on the scale of evolution. Specifically, a healthy libido need not always preempt rational thinking, especially in the seasoned, mature mind, where the id and ego are more evenly matched, and the superego, drawing on the wisdom of experience, can properly suppress harmful desire while allowing healthful yearnings to be expressed and realized.

There are appropriate (and necessary) times for seeking the satiation of passion. Without frequent doses of the resulting pleasure, life loses its color, and depression becomes a constant companion. In short, not all craving is detrimental to healthy thinking. In fact, we need a certain amount of longing to help us understand our purpose here, and to figure out how to best achieve that purpose. In my view, we don’t master craving simply by purging ourselves of it, but by developing our superegos through learning which cravings are good for us and which are not, and then learning how to satisfy the good ones while getting rid of the bad.

One could argue that for the experienced man, passions are  products  of his good judgment and not impairing forces to it. In the interests of his own gratification as well as the perpetuation of the species, he should not treat his desires as wrongful lusting, but rather as cues to possible great joy. Evolutionary psychology would probably take this view and claim that the mating instincts are not irrational passions at all. I measure the probable success of a future relationship by determining how passionately I’m drawn to a woman. The stronger the attraction, the higher the chances of happiness. This assumes of course, that she returns the feelings in kind, which admittedly, does not usually happen. But when it does, for as long as it does, wow! It’s wonderful. Passion makes it easier to forgive a multitude of sins and to overlook a vast array of imperfections. There is a rational side to passion, and we need to keep that in mind when choosing which of our passions to purge.

Finally, to your last point, that being less absorbed with what we can get from the relationship might make us more attractive. Yes. Women say that they generally adore the less selfish man more than the self-absorbed, arrogant one (if you can believe what they say. But as we’ve discussed in the past, they often don’t say what really excites them. Many don’t even really know). If we’re too concerned about satisfying our own needs, and as a result, fail to consider hers, you’re correct, this is a very unattractive, obsessive way to exist. But again, the degree of our passions need not make us selfish. I’d even go so far as to say that craving is by no means inexorably linked to, nor directly results in  any  destructive behaviors. Specifically, it’d be hard to prove that excessive craving is what makes people overly selfish (and therefore, unattractive). Yet some claim this. In my view, the negative effects of passion have been greatly exaggerated throughout history. Too much badness in our world gets wrongfully attributed to it. And the whole concept of the so-called ‘needy’ man is likely far less a point of reality than it is the musing of some feminist who, rather than owning up to her own lacking passions, invented the neediness thing to exalt herself and blame the man for her problems. As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m a passion advocate, arguing more for its discovery and resolution rather than blanket extinguishment of all of it.

Later,
Tom Hesley

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 1:06 am and is filed under Advice, Attraction, Ballerina, Beauty, Compromise, Concepts, Dating Venues, Desparation, First Love, Giving Rejection, Gripes, Heightism, Honesty, Lenee, Letters, Lust, Obesity, Obsession, Online Dating, Physical Attraction, Rejection, Self Esteem, Shanee, Special Ladies, Therapy, Trust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.