Tag Archives: relationships

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A Confession About My Romantic Notions

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I need to level with you. All of my brain energy that is left over at the end of the week, after all my responsibilities have been met, goes towards thinking about and obsessing over romance. I don’t share that with a lot of people because it makes me sound like a fourteen-year-old girl. It’s not something I’m proud of or want to continue doing. And I want you to think more of me than that. But I’m on this kick where I am trying to be a little more honest about things so we are going to work through some things today.

I don’t know the first thing about love. I have no idea. I’ve had my share of relationships. I’ve used the l-word sometimes. But I have absolutely no clue.

A while back, I decided that love was a choice – that all of these ideas about “falling” for someone are romantic fantasies. That’s not to be mean or pessimistic. I don’t think that love is any less intense because of that. I just think it’s a choice.

I also don’t think there’s one person out there for everyone. Yes, usually you are in a committed relationship with one person at a time; that does not mean that person is the only person for you. I think we construct stories about people to deal with the horrifying reality that is “till death do us part.” It’s freakin’ scary.

I was working Interview Day for my college a couple of days ago. A mother of a prospective student asked me if my college was my first choice. I grimaced. It’s not a fair question. The answer is no. It wasn’t. I didn’t get in to my first choice. And had I gotten into my first choice, I would have gone there. I tell people that it would have been a hard decision, but I know it wouldn’t have been. I would have gone in a second to the school that rejected me. But if I was given that decision again and this time I did get into my first choice and I was told exactly what my life would look like had I picked the pathI am on now, perhaps the decision would have been harder. I like where I am now. I like what I am doing with my life. I like the people I know. And so when people ask me if this school was my first choice, I usually answer that I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Because I can’t. I love it here.

So we create a narrative in which fate brought me here or destiny picks our soul-mates. Because it’s comfortable to believe that. It’s horrifying to think that we could have made the wrong choice.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a terrifying moment where my idea of love as a choice and my idea that there wasn’t one person out there for me came crashing together. How, then, do you determine the person you spend the rest of your life with? I have annoyed many of my close friends with this question over and over again. “You just know,” they say. Or as my parents like to succinctly put it, “It’ll come when you aren’t looking for it.” I think these statements are little more than tautologies. They aren’t helpful. They don’t serve as practical advice.

But then I started thinking about these statements differently. I read something recently that compared finding a significant other to finding a career, a life-mission. I thought that was stupid at first. Finding a career is easy. You just do and work until you find something you love and then you do primarily that one thing. And when I took the time to write that thought out, I realized the comparison to romantic relationships wasn’t that stupid. Because how do you explain to someone what finding something you love looks like or feels like? You can’t. It’s impossible. It just happens.

That’s the difference, then. I have always assumed I will have a career. I assumed that I was going to college. And so when it came time to make that decision, I made it with the best options that were open to me. But sometimes, I don’t assume I am going to have a family. And I wrongly think that the best way to finding my future spouse is through a string of committed relationships. Committed relationships are good, I guess, but they’re kind of like spending your adolescent years spending time at different universities until you decide to commit to one. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. You need the information from high school before you can go to college. But when it comes, you are ready to make that decision.

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God is Gestaltian

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There’s a psychological school, theory, or effect (depending on who you talk to) known as Gestalt psychology. Gestalt is a German term meaning “essence or shape of an entity’s complete form.” Pretty heavy stuff.

The basic Gestalt effect is best summarized by the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are a lot of different pictures and optical illusions that demonstrate the Gestalt effect. But here’s a relatively good one:

Instead of just seeing three Pacmen and three acute angles when looking at this picture, most people see a white triangle overlapping a black-outlined triangle and three black circles. That’s good ol’ Gestalt working hard.

The Gestalt effect, as a concept that was talked about, originated in the late 19th century. Until then, most people thought that if you studied a thing’s parts, you were studying that thing.

To the modern mind, ingrained with Gestaltian thinking, the idea that people didn’t consider the Gestalt effect seems absurd. I was pondering this absurdity when I remembered the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:20:

 For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.

And there it is. The truth of the Gestalt effect right there in the Bible. One person plus one person does not equal two people. It equals two people and God and a dynamic relationship.

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4 Thoughts on Groups

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Today, for seemingly unapparent reasons, one of my psychology professors broke us up into random groups. I haven’t been in a random group since high school. Here are some thoughts I had about groups:

1. Groups need a purpose. When you break people up into a group, they expect you to give them things to do. That task can be as simple as “get to know each other,” but there has to be one. Otherwise, it is quite possible the individuals of the group will sit in total and utter silence.

2. Determining a group leader is tricky. I am one of those people who likes leadership to be thrust on me. I dislike seeking it out for myself. The former technique appeals to my ego. Other people get to tell me how great of a leader I am and why I am important to a group or organization. I naturally assume that everyone prefers leadership to be thrust upon them. I also naturally assume that without knowing me, random strangers will see the great halo of leadership that emanates from my radiant body and will beg me to take the group leader position. Because leading things grows tiresome, sometimes I swiftly lead the hand of fate in another direction and thrust the leadership role onto someone else. Also, this allows me the chance to lie to myself and say that I want more people to have the chance to lead things. I did that today and then realized how much of a jerk move that is. All of a sudden I’ve become that guy – the group leader has reason to dislike me because I gave him more responsibility and everyone else is a little off-put by the fact that I chose the leader. Not very diplomatic. And just so you know, while this paragraph reads as over-the-top, these thoughts literally went through my mind.

3. There is always a Negative Nelly. Negative Nelly’s happen. I try not to be one. Sometimes, I try to combat Negative Nelly’s with humor. I do this by re-spinning negative thoughts into positive ones. This isn’t always effective, but it’s helpful and provides a fun past time.

4. You will never be part of the cool group. You know the one. Somehow, all of the frat guys have congregated to one corner of the room and all get put into the same group. Their group is cracking jokes within a minute of introducing themselves. You are never part of that group mostly because of the “grass is always greener” phenomenon. Believe it or not, the people in the cool group are probably envious of the group that has it all together or the group with the strong, clear leader. There’s no point in trying to be the “cool group.” Just do what you do and do it. If your group is the joke-cracking group, be the joke-cracking group, but don’t force it.

Even though I kind of dislike being assigned a random group, I’m actually kind of excited by the prospect. It’s not very often that you are forced to interact with complete strangers and build a relationship from it. It’s invigorating.