Monthly Archives: September 2003

The Experience of the First Classification

People in rela­tion­ships can be divid­ed into two cat­e­gories; those who love the self and those who love the oth­er. Every rela­tion­ship is dif­fer­ent, not just in the sense of a dif­fer­ent pair of peo­ple, but also in the idea of the same per­son with a dif­fer­ent girl­friend or boyfriend. Although some­one may be of a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry through one rela­tion­ship, they may fall into the oth­er cat­e­go­ry in anoth­er. Even cross­ing cat­e­gories through the same rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble, depend­ing on the dynam­ic of a cou­ple.

The lovers of the self care about the oth­er per­son, but only inso­faras their own vest­ed inter­ests are con­cerned. When the desire of this type of lover begins to out­grow what the rela­tion­ship can offer, the bond weak­ens and often breaks. The main con­cern of this type is what they are get­ting out of the rela­tion­ship.

The lovers of the oth­er are lovers in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. These are the peo­ple with an hon­est love, the ones who care most about whether or not the oth­er per­son is hap­py. This type of lover is the one least will­ing to break a rela­tion­ship, the one who is more will­ing to sac­ri­fice or com­pro­mise.

Relationships are based on match­ings of these two types. A rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the self will last as long as there is no con­flict involved. Once a dis­agree­ment is reached, nei­ther par­ty cares enough to make the rela­tion­ship work. On the oth­er hand, a rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the oth­er is the ide­al match, and gen­er­al­ly the longest last­ing. Both peo­ple are com­mit­ted and will­ing to work out any prob­lems that may arise. Usually, the only break in the rela­tion­ship may be from base con­flicts (dis­agree­ment on issues which are too basic to work out or com­pro­mise about, such as adop­tion).

The most com­mon type of match, how­ev­er, is with one lover of the self and one lover of the oth­er. At the end of such a rela­tion­ship one is left unaf­fect­ed while the oth­er is bro­ken-heart­ed, and the end of such a thing, in my expe­ri­ence, is inevitable. In cas­es like this, I’ve found myself on both sides of the coin.

And regret­ting noth­ing of either.

Best LAN Ever

I feel most­ly recov­ered today after the gam­ing marathon Nick and I host­ed over the weekend.It start­ed Friday after­noon and end­ed on Monday morn­ing, with a few sleep breaks and food/Family Guy/Mr. Show breaks in between. Trolley and Wheaties lugged their com­put­ers over, includ­ing a spare mon­i­tor for Aaron. Jacques brought his entire set­up by cab, that’s how hard­core he is.

We were able to play same Quake 3 and Serious Sam 2, but the bulk of our time was spent on try­ing to com­plete Diablo 2 with new char­ac­ters. We man­aged to get to the end of Act III, but the week­end ran out. At one point, we found our­selves sur­round­ed at a vital way­point, and start­ed doing drag­ging runs to fight small­er groups of mon­sters.

All in all, the best LAN ever.

Janus

Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ent­ly each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing peri­od. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­ri­ty and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nite­ly more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I would­n’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pid­ly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll nev­er stop chang­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynam­ic of two peo­ple.

He Remembered

After six months, Joe remem­bered my request for a red­head poster. It’s a Joico prod­uct place­ment for col­or endurance styling, fea­tur­ing a blue-eyed mod­el with a rather frumpy, bangy hair­style. Even though I’ve since lost the zeal in my six-year red­head propen­si­ty, I still love this poster. I offered to give Joe some­thing for it, but he was too nice to accept.

Retail Therapy, Halloween Costumes, Etc.

Another exhaust­ing day. It feels good to be tired again, to feel like my eyes are made of lead when I lie down. Most of the sum­mer was stay­ing at home, bare­ly mov­ing, feel­ing rest­less.

Aaron and I went to the Unicentre to do some table ten­nis, and some cocky prick was mouthing off (rather loud­ly) to his friends about how he so eas­i­ly beat them all twice. When Aaron heard enough he sug­gest­ed a part­ner swap, just so I’d shut him up. I man­aged to beat the guy 21–3 (pre-2001 ITTF rules) and he prompt­ly had to go.

I cracked and bought F‑Zero GX and sea­sons one and two of Mr. Show on DVD. I must be crazy depressed.

A Halloween par­ty is loom­ing on the hori­zon, and Aaron and I are look­ing for cos­tume ideas. If we can find enough good uni­forms, we’ll be going as Super Troopers, hope­ful­ly with the both of us along with Trolley, Wheaties, and Nick. Other ideas were going as Bob and David, or as a white guy and a Chinese guy.

Speaking of Super Troopers, while Nick was swap­ping his burn­er at Future Shop with Stacey, Aaron and I went around the store pulling off the repeater, see­ing how long we could go before the sales­men fig­ured it out or got pissed off. We end­ed up being the ones pissed off though, astound­ed by how igno­rant the sales­men were and even­tu­al­ly we’d both ditch the same sales­man with looks of dis­be­lief on our faces, one after the oth­er.