6/8/24

At some point I really should get back to my “Drive My Car” analysis and hope to find places to drop in the things on my mind in the process. But right now, I feel the need to try to take all of the writing from this week and put it back into the context of my work here, doing my best to depersonalize it and make no one feel singled out.

The best way to do this is to return to the work I began when writing about Stendhal. If you read all of the essays I’ve cobbled together closely, you can see a conflict taking shape.

First, there’s the concept of the anima and animus and the collective/spiritual nature of human connections. Jung’s concept tells us that the people who influence our lives the most are the ones who tap into something primal and shake us up in a way that changes the way we approach the world. These changes are internal, but we are often so enraptured by the positive effects these people influence in our lives that we feel drawn to them and want more.

Second, there’s Erich Fromm’s definition of love, as an activity, not an affect. Under Fromm’s construct, it doesn’t really matter how any two people are brought together, what matters is the way they devote themselves to one another. So, in other words, we don’t need these powerful primal connections in love, just a commitment to caring deeply about another’s good fortune.

Those two concepts together tie in very well with all of the out-of-control feelings Stendhal describes and that Dorothy Tennov later describes as limerence. She separates this word from love, seeing it as something unique and common in the human experience. Some later proponents of limerence theory see it as something of an addiction or even a personality disorder.

And so, taken together, it’s very easy to feel a strong sense of shame if you are caught up in feelings about someone that seem beyond your control. Jung would tell you that this person might be influencing your life very positively, but get a grip, it’s about the collective unconscious influencing you, not this person at all. Fromm would say this affect means nothing, it’s only in the day to day drudgery of coupledom that real love is found and sustained. And the limerence advocates would slap a label and say maybe you should feel ashamed … look for ways to end this as soon as possible.

But there’s a nagging strand from my project that puts all of these conclusions in a different light — and that’s Marcel Proust’s concept of the intermittences of the heart. What Proust described beautifully is why our rational consciousness is completely incapable of overruling our feelings. And that’s because everything about our consciousness, including our memories, are directly related to phenomena in our bodies and the impulses in our nervous systems.

This is why you can consciously decide to do something, make a plan, work through a decision tree … and in the moment of execution, confront a body that fully rebels against you and says no, this is not happening. The body doesn’t lie. And as Proust reminds us, the body will retrieve memories for us when it has a feeling that aligns with something from our past. What we think we know about ourselves and our motives can change in a flash when our feelings shift.

So this is why, over the past two years, when in a breakup situation with a woman where I could have quite easily worked something out, my body told me, no, let this relationship go, it isn’t what you really want.

And it’s why when I’ve gone on numerous first dates over the last two years, my body has again made it clear … you can go this far, but no farther. It’s just not happening.

When I’ve gone on dating apps, my nervous system has gone into a frenzy. When a therapist guided me towards a rational decision to create some distance, I stopped going to therapy.

And even when I’ve written about my feelings in a way that seemed too direct, my body told me to erase them and start over.

Over the past two years, only when I’ve listened to my body have I been able to return to equipoise. And the results have been extraordinarily positive. I’ve trained myself to become more comfortable with living my life for me. I’ve also discovered, to my surprise and delight, that I can be in a form of partnership with someone and not compromise my goals and values, but actually see them come to life — that a partnership can make me grow rather than shrink.

So, does this mean that the intermittence of the heart overrides the other three concepts I’ve mentioned? Over time I’ve grown to understand, no, it is not above all three concepts, it is merely a unique tool to explain them.

What I now understand is that my anima has helped me reach an understanding that I cannot live a dependent life, that I need to give priority to my own goals and direction. But in the process, I’ve discovered that it’s also possible to have a partnership that goes even beyond this. This means my relationship has transcended the anima.

As for Fromm, I have taken from him the power of unconditional love, from finding joy in giving without expectation of anything in return. Because of this, I have experienced some of the deepest joys of a romantic relationship without actually being in one.

And as for limerence, I now understand Tennov’s definition more clearly. Limerence is said to occur when one person idealizes another and becomes blind to faults. Often the person experiencing limerence barely knows the other person. This is not true in my case. If anything, I probably love my anima figure as much for her faults as her perceived strengths. I feel like I’m experiencing a form of anti-limerence.

To conclude, I see now that I wasn’t entirely successful in keeping myself (and perhaps others) fully out of this story. But that’s ok, I did the best I could and so far my body seems fine with how the story has evolved. I hope this helps contextualize all of the theory that I threw out in my Stendhal discussion, and perhaps even conclude the project in a surprising way.

It’s all a work in progress — the writing and my life. I feel like I’ve learned many things along the way, but have no clue what’s coming next or how I will feel about things tomorrow, next week or next year. But I don’t feel any shame about the way I’ve approached things the last two years, I feel at peace with my behavior, my decisions and the way I’ve treated others along the way.

Ultimately, I think that’s the best we can hope for in life.