What healthy Relationships look like

[tsuki]

 

@integral I think we’re discussing different questions.

My cancer example wasn’t meant to argue against engagement or relationships. It was meant to question whether the presence of negative emotions is a good measure of relationship quality. It was a rhetorical question to illustrate a counterexample.

[integral]

@tsuki Right what was happening was I was following the line of your position during the entire thread. So that was mixed into this separate question.

The Gottman research: stable relationships run roughly 5:1 positive-to-negative interactions; the ones that dip toward 1:1 predictably fail. So "a good relationship doesn't tend excessively toward negative emotion" is a strong predictive heuristic.

So it's a useful generalization to measure relationship health and 

2 hours ago, tsuki said:

Is a 20-year relationship with your wife that ends with her painfully dying of cancer a bad relationship?

this is to try to defeat a useful generalization with a single Counterpoint.

The Counterpoint is true but we're talking about looking at the same elephant from different perspectives.

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[integral]

4 hours ago, tsuki said:

@integral Practically speaking, I've given up on relationships with just anyone and became at ease with my own presence. After a while, I think that this is the only way to find a healthy relationship - by finding someone that really is okay by themselves. This leaves me at a strange predicament where I can only accept and give love that does not make conventional sense. Because if I'm so okay with myself, why do I want to be with someone else and why would they be with me if they are the same? Love does seem to defy reason, doesn't it?

reply

1 hour ago, integral said:

 

• Outer game = building the external life (get the hot girl)
• Inner game = the capacity to actually enjoy it
• Outer, no inner → I got everything and I'm still not happy
• Inner, no outer → peace, but nothing built
• Both → I can make the best of any situation

But There are two completely different things that look the same from the outside, both involve stepping back from people:

• Retreat into apathy → "Why engage? It's all pointless, people drain me, nothing matters." This is inner game collapsing into nihilism. It's defeat, a mask of peace.
• Being selective → "I can fully engage, I can enter play mode and enjoy people, and I'm choosing who and what is worth my energy. " This is inner game plus outer game. Fully engaging with life, you can enjoy life and play but you're directing it on purpose to what matters to you.

People can mistake apathy for enlightenment/peace. it's about the internal state masquerading as a higher one. "I just don't care anymore" gets relabeled as "I've transcended, I'm at peace, I don't need these things.". We mistake apathy as enlightenment

The deception is apathy pretending to be wisdom. "I don't care" ->  "I'm above it."

Taking a low state (not caring, no energy, given up) and reframing it as a high state (peace, presence, non-attachment, enlightenment).

I'm pointing to this because it's a possibility.

I feel the same way you do when it comes to relationships.

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[tsuki]

@integral If your framework is supposed to guard you from self-deception with regards the validity of your realization, then there's a different "danger" you're not addressing.  If you base your success on the external achievements you limit the depth of what you can accomplish by social acceptability. What if what you understand is so alien to society that they would crucify you if you really pursued what you thought was "right"? This is said with tongue in cheek, but the notion of pursuing the "hot girl" is quite funny tbh. What if it's genuinely not what you value? What if what you value puts you as a bluepill beta because some insight revitalized some value that fell out of favor?

I think there is no substitute to self-honesty and a spiritual practice grounded in truth. After all, apathy is an emotion and reclusion is a form of avoidance. You can always become conscious of what you are doing. In the end, what if you find yourself in a place where emotions no longer guide what you do? 

[integral]

2 hours ago, tsuki said:

@integral If your framework is supposed to guard you from self-deception with regards the validity of your realization, then there's a different "danger" you're not addressing.  If you base your success on the external achievements you limit the depth of what you can accomplish by social acceptability. What if what you understand is so alien to society that they would crucify you if you really pursued what you thought was "right"? This is said with tongue in cheek, but the notion of pursuing the "hot girl" is quite funny tbh. What if it's genuinely not what you value? What if what you value puts you as a bluepill beta because some insight revitalized some value that fell out of favor?

I think there is no substitute to self-honesty and a spiritual practice grounded in truth. After all, apathy is an emotion and reclusion is a form of avoidance. You can always become conscious of what you are doing. In the end, what if you find yourself in a place where emotions no longer guide what you do? 

Oh I agree, -> "you can enjoy life and play but you're directing it on purpose to what matters to you."

It doesn't need to be an achievement or a hot girl or anything socially acceptable.

It can be Sitting in a cave in solitude, this can be peace at the being level or it can be apathy. 

Normally if there's apathy the person isn't aligned with their values and something's off and if they deny it to themselves because of a spiritual ego then they are doing some kind of avoidance.

Quote

what if you find yourself in a place where emotions no longer guide what you do? 

I don't think this is possible, can you give examples?

Edited 1 hour ago by integral

[Joseph Maynor]

Unless you know someone you never know for sure what they are going through.  This is a more of a problem today with social media communication.  We don't even know who we are dealing with oftentimes or what they are going through.  We have to infer many things that are hidden.  This is a real problem.

[tsuki]

1 hour ago, integral said:

I don't think this is possible, can you give examples?

@integral It's difficult to give stories of a world without stories, but here I go.

It starts with the lack of seriousness and humor. Occasional dancing, without the need to perform. Relief and total immersion. Experiencing yourself not as a separated entity trying to guess the next step, but totality expressing itself necessarily as the continuity conventionally seen as evidence of objective existence. You fit. There's nothing else to do, but to find what's missing in the context and filling it with the best you have. Just moment to moment, without hesitation. If hesitation arises it's because it's needed. No opposition. Being grateful for fear and pain for showing me attachment and dissolving it. This is the conscious part - dissolve. The I sees the I and it chooses to go.