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 22 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 22 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 19 hours 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. 

[integral]

3 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Unless you know someone you never know for sure what they are going through.

I agree, I'm always trying to figure that part out, the blind spot

Edited 14 hours ago by integral

[Natasha Tori Maru]

I dunno. I don't think you can ever know someone. You can, at best, have an idea. And be able to predict some behaviours and choices around what you predict.

But in the end people will surprise you. They will do things you can never expect.

I agree that online interaction is a false sense of intimacy. A compartmentalization and avatar of the human. A simulacrum.

Edited 14 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Joseph Maynor]

You need to meet people at least in Zoom.  That is a minimum.

[Jirh]

11 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I dunno. I don't think you can ever know someone. You can, at best, have an idea. And be able to predict some behaviours and choices around what you predict.

But in the end people will surprise you. They will do things you can never expect.

We hardly know ourselves these days with life moving so fast! It's really tough.

[Jirh]

5 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

You need to meet people at least in Zoom.  That is a minimum.

Many people nowadays would rather scroll IG mindlessly than put their phones down to talk to you in person.

It's crazy if you think about it. Human connection and intimacy replaced with dopamine addiction.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

5 minutes ago, Jirh said:

We hardly know ourselves these days with life moving so fast! It's really tough.

100% 

In some ways, I really enjoyed the slower pace of the lockdowns that rolled through during the pandemic. I went through a huge amount of spiritual learning and personal growth \ wisdom during that time. It also bolstered my closest relationships. 

Now everything has to be instant. No delay, no excuse. Emails, texts, messages, WhatsApp - on tap and connected 24 / 7 action,  expedience as a basic expectation... 

[Jirh]

@Natasha Tori Maru Honestly, that's unacceptable.

You should feel safe enough to reply on your own terms at the timing that feels right for you. I think anything or anyone that demands more than that should be reconsidered.

You have a life. You have things to do, hobbies to explore, emotions to manage, chores to take care of, etc... Please don't let anyone make you feel like that's too much or secondary to keeping a connection with them. They should respect you enough to let you feel comfortable living your own life. Otherwise, they're bordering on abuse, and that's unacceptable.

However, my point was a bit different, even though I agree with you on the benefits of lockdown.

I was observing the general pace of development in life. Like there are new things every second nowadays. And you kinda have to keep up with everything if you want to stay relevant. It's tough and exhausting. Life used to be slower and more stable before the AI revolution, and more so before the internet, and more so before TV, etc... It just keeps accelerating in development, and it's hard to keep up with everything. I feel like each of us will eventually be forced into some narrow area of interests that then makes people into different species that can hardly recognize and connect with one another.

My point was mainly about identity change. We are approaching post-modern identity, but we barely got used to the modern identity in the first place. It's just too much change in too little time.

Edited 2 hours ago by Jirh

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Jirh Transhumanism is beginning... 

How do you think this will project into the future? Do you think there will be a split between humans who embrace more and more information, and those who reject and opt for more disconnection and  more thorough critical thinking? 

I view the information overload as far surpassing our ability to filter it, leading to beliefs, bias and fallacious logic structures that weaken us as humans. With possibly terrible implications.

Others have a much more optimistic outlook. 

Bit if a sidetrack on the topic, more me rubbing your brainz for juice lol

Edited 2 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[integral]

7 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

You need to meet people at least in Zoom.  That is a minimum.

I don't think it's realistic, when it comes to the revealing your face thread, there's options how to respond and the safe option of course is to respond in a way that's not personal, but thats not how having fun with friends is like. Being playful when you don't really know the person comes at a risk of offending them but the alternative isn't really better.

The problem is to be overly cautious can cause a lot of issues and how we engage with life, we can't make everyone happy or avoid offending people.

The people that we Vibe with are going to stick around and the ones that don't are going to naturally find the people that they Vibe with and that's not us. It's a filtering system.

It's possible to have a life coaching Persona that's sadGuru level that offense no one, but that's not how most people are and it's better to set yourself free and be in ones natural higher state of play. That doesn't mean we can't learn and grow with every interaction, but the starting point is to take the risk.

Edited 38 minutes ago by integral