You see through me. I’m like a ghost. He’s invisible to her. She’s blind to the truth.
These common phrases are insightful because they describe some painful emotion, whether it’s being ignored by another or the negative results that might arise from ignorance or denial.
Pain, like all emotions, is felt in different degrees of intensity depending on the contextual situation and individual involved. We all experience it through our lives and some of us have even studied it in great detail. Yet, the real challenge presents itself in allowing oneself to experience it fully, embracing the pain and letting it go in a psychologically healthy way, so as to remain whole on the other side. Along with this, people often attribute the undesired behaviors and words of romantic love interests onto a wider scapegoat of ‘love’ in its entirety and end up embittered, even scorning the notion of being cared for again in any attached way. This is where the blog turns a bit more psychoanalytic in perspective. Present behavior is rooted by conditions, defenses set into motion from past experiences, fears, and even more than fear – angst.
The above examples used in the first line of this post illustrates how imagery clearly describes the separation of a relationship. I am not only speaking of interpersonal relationships in this matter, but in the inability we often have of being unable to sway from the foundation of a personal perspective. There is always some type of miscommunication taking place. Irving Singer discusses appraisal (along with bestowal) in love at length in three volumes entitled The Nature of Love. Near the beginning in the first, around page 14, Singer claims that love does not consist of illusions, but in developing a whole understanding and acceptance of the beloved. The person sees his or her love in great detail and allows for inconsistencies in character, such as a solicitied action of wrongdoing, to become forgivable transgressions or even admirable traits to the lover as he or she perceives the other. The word ‘perceiving’ is used because such judgments of an individual are never without bias – the interpretation of stimuli has a similar pattern between human beings, but never contains an exact standardized formula. Besides differing between individuals, each culture and society has its own set of norms and taboos that dictate acceptable and intolerable ways of living, expectations for interacting with the self, others, and the world. This bias is merely colorful, imaginative, and on the contrary to being untruthful, can help create one of the strongest, most passionate, and beneficial conditions of the human spirit – love for someone other than oneself.
