Eliminating sexual desire and romantic love. Permanently.

[Psilosopher?]

Every time i bring this subject people up, people have displayed concern. Fair enough, when one wishes to break free from the status quo and go against their biological impulses, people tend to class that as odd. When people ask how this line of thinking came about, i have to tell them my story. Unrequited love led me to this path. And i get the same response.

I don't want to hear how there is someone out there for me, or that we are programmed to breed. I know that i can start a romantic relationship rather easily. I just don't want to. I am just sick and tired of being a slave to my hormones. And i guess part of the reason is that i still can't get over that unrequited love. It's been 8 years, and she enters my mind every day. The worst part is her name. It's not only a common name, it's a common animal. It's a feline animal that goes "Meow". I think it's apparent what the name is. Every time i open the centrifuge at work, i see her name etched on the interior. A truncated form of "Catalogue Number". "Cat No.". It's torture. And the fact that the first DMT entity i ever saw was in the likeness of her, makes it that much worse. After that DMT experience, i kinda sent her a colossal message. Confessing everything, all of my feelings. She said "I appreciate the honesty, but i don't feel the same way". I was expecting it, i knew that she would never say yes. But it still destroyed me. After years of trying to deal with this trauma, i have become cold and apathetic towards the whims of romantic love.

The advice i keep on hearing is to meet other women, and realise that the one that got away is nothing special. A huge part of me enjoys this pain, a good reminder of how romantic relationships can lead to ruination. Suffering is the seed of growth, and i don't want to stagnate in a hen-pecked relationship. Nor do i want to develop a dependence on a single person.

As hilarious as this clip is, it also rings very, very true for me.

[youtube]

So i have searched many times on how to quell this desire. Picking up hobbies, be disciplined, refraining from sexual thoughts/stimuli. The loss of love is an amazing stimulant, so amazing, that it often cripples. I've realised that, unconsciously, one of my goals in life is to be a polymath. It drives me. But there is a very small niggling thought at the back of my head. It's almost like i want to be skilled in many things out of spite, like i want to show her what she missed out on. And that very, very small feeling of spite is eating me up on the insides. I hate it. I want to be a polymath because it's fun learning things. That feeling of spite is like deliberately dropping a tiny shit in a big bowl of exquisitely divine tea. It ruined it.

Even when i don't think about relationships or sex in my waking life, i still get horny when i wake up from sleep. Attractive women enters my subconscious during sleep. I see attractive women all the time out in the world. I can't control those external sensory inputs. And it destroys me.

Someone asked why don't i want to form an intimate relationship with a person. It doesn't have to be sexual, i have been told. I know that. But i don't want to form tethers and attachments. I want to be free, to go where i please. I want to cultivate unconditional love for all beings, not just an impulse for one. I want to travel the earth, helping people with their problems, and disappearing with the wind. I see no room for a partner in all that. And even if there was room, i highly doubt there would be any woman sane enough to travel with me on horseback through frozen tundras and blistering deserts. For decades. People want to live the easy life. I want to live the hard life.

I am not a lonely person. I form few true friendships, because it's hard keeping track of people. I like people, i like talking to them. I just don't want to be sex driven. But i can't overcome sexual desire though desiring not to desire. I don't know what i'm doing, often feels like i'm a spectator of my own life.

Apologies for the unstructured post. This is probably the only aspect of my life that brings me great pain, and like this post, it makes my life a mess.

 

[muladharma]

Even when i don't think about relationships or sex in my waking life, i still get horny when i wake up from sleep. Attractive women enters my subconscious during sleep. I see attractive women all the time out in the world. I can't control those external sensory inputs. And it destroys me.

If i may add, i think you can transmute this into another pair of eyes, a life compass. If indeed your purpose is such that it will lead to more growth, satisfaction and fulfillment by eliminating romantic attachment and sexual desire, what better way to see progress than this one, right at your footsteps?

A situation that i often see in stories is the hero of his own journey being drawn back by old demons right at the point of greatest progress. If you were to blindfold yourself to these subconscious and external stimulations how would you know, when you have naturally overcome this obstacle beyond doubt? If you knew that you had to surpass this obstacle and did not have an opportunity to observe it, doubt would creep in or even ignorance to the reality of things.

From personal experience, all that i have left to add is that fighting sexual desire and stimulation tends to complicate things, because it is a very passionately moving energy. I find that what works best is awareness of your desires and letting them fall naturally, rather than opposing them by force, fear and discomfort which stirs them even more. Distracting oneself can be great, but it has to be a neutral distraction, which when performed is done so harmoniously, not as if one were running from something.

 

[Northerner]

Like it or not you are an animal and you will have animal instincts your whole life. Fawning over this chick you can't have for 8 years is just doing yourself in, and to be frank, quite naive emotionally. Build a bridge, get over it and stop being such a victim of your own illusion. Time to move on sunshine.

Go get laid already, before your testicles explode.

 

[Valmar]

"But it still destroyed me. After years of trying to deal with this trauma, i have become cold and apathetic towards the whims of romantic love."

There's the true cause of your repression ~ it would seem to me that you're repressing your true, hidden desires for a rewarding loving relationship with an intimate sexual element... sexuality can leave us at our most vulnerable, and from where the deepest forms of love can bloom... and if that love is denied... well... you know.

These aspects of yourself need to be overcome, not through repression, but through expressing them in a positive, healing manner. I don't know how these would manifest for you, but a start is to realize that none of that was your fault ~ feel yourself emotionally with Self-Love, forgive yourself, forgive her, that is, your mental representation of her, and let her go ~ it won't be easy at first, but if you dig deep enough within yourself, if you can let her go, you can move forward, and start to see past the pain that wasn't your fault.

Eventually, you will naturally desire for love of some kind ~ whatever is appropriate for what you really need at the time.

 

[332211]

coolidge effect

karezza

cupid's poisoned arrow

have fun exploring psilo

 

[AstraLex]

Hey Psilosopher?,

Unrequited love is a subject way too familiar for me. Like 6 years ago, I wouldn’t even write a reply to this kind of topic, for it hurt too much, but now I have dealt with this issue and can, hopefully, provide my feedback to others suffering from this disease. Don’t get me wrong, even though it has been 9 years since I felt in love with that girl (Melissa), I still have, occasionally, uncontrollable thoughts about her penetrating my mind (but the frequency of that penetration has dropped substantially). Particularly in times of troubles, when most people would start swearing, I keep saying out loud her name instead: “Melissa! Melissa!!! Melissa!!!!!” So, I am not providing any quick fix or solution on how to forget your unrequited love and move on, for I don’t have any. But I have still found a way in dealing and overcoming that trauma. However, it is quite hard to put it in a few words, for I would need to tell you quite a lot about my experiences in the past 9 years, of which not all will be relevant for you personally. So, let me first reflect on your post and then draw a conclusion based on my own experience.

Every time i bring this subject people up, people have displayed concern. Fair enough, when one wishes to break free from the status quo and go against their biological impulses, people tend to class that as odd. When people ask how this line of thinking came about, i have to tell them my story. Unrequited love led me to this path. And i get the same response.

It’s hard isn’t it? People who have not felt this pathological unrequited love feeling, will not understand how such a small thing can have such a dramatic impact on somebody’s life. If you have read or watched Harry Potter movies, you can probably remember the character Severus Snape. He felt in love with Lily (the future mother of Harry Potter), but she chose James Potter instead of him. So, Severus became a cynical, cold-as-stone man, never starting another relationship again. He became very adept at hiding his true feelings (making him an outstanding double-agent) because of this, for he kept loving Lily unconditionally through all these years, but didn’t want anybody to know it.

Needless to say that Severus was my absolute hero for many, many years. I loved that character, how he remained true to his one and only true love through all these years. However, as I have made progress in dealing with my own unrequited love trauma, I started to lose my adoration for Severus. I started to see him for what he really was – a bitter old man, forever captured by his own childhood/teenager/adolescent trauma, unable to go on with his life. He became a very adept magician, but still lacked such basic things like real friends and romantic partner, because he completely shut down his feelings of love and attachment. At first, I wanted to be just like him, I adored the way he shut down his feelings, but now I realize that it made him a very miserable old man.

I don't want to hear how there is someone out there for me, or that we are programmed to breed.

There is someone out there for you and you are programmed to breed All jokes aside, I know that you don’t feel that way, but this are true words nevertheless. But you will only realize this after you have met your second-half and start breeding. However, in order to find your true love, you have to deal with your unrequited love trauma first. Even though some people suggested me that I will overcome my own trauma once I meet my true love, my personal experience showed me that I had to make a considerable progress in dealing with my trauma first, and then would my heart start to un-freeze and allow me to love again. So, dealing with the trauma comes first, and all other things follow later, kind of automatically.

I know that i can start a romantic relationship rather easily. I just don't want to.

Have you ever talked to drugs addicts who haven’t gone to rehab yet? Most of them would tell you that they can easily stop doing drugs, but they just don’t want to. Only after hitting the bottom and going to a rehab, they realize that they have indeed been addicted to drugs (just like everybody told them), but they could not see it themselves. “They have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear” easily comes to mind here. Unrequited love is an addiction, much like drugs. It has that craving feeling, an urgency to be near or talk to your love object, the thoughts of which constantly invade your mind. You will, most likely, not believe me now, but once you make progress in dealing with your trauma, you will see how much it resembles a drugs addiction, and how getting over it and starting an another relationship “rather easily” is an illusion.

I am just sick and tired of being a slave to my hormones. And i guess part of the reason is that i still can't get over that unrequited love. It's been 8 years, and she enters my mind every day.

You are a slave to your hormones right, as we speak. That entering of your mind is dopamine mediated process, like it is the case with any addictive drugs actually. Only by dealing with you trauma, “getting over it” (this sound hard, I know, but this is the only way), will you be free from this enslavement. And then you will have your freedom back and can choose, for example, to love an another girl. Without getting rid of your unrequited love addiction, you freedom will be heavily limited and even though it would seem to you that it was your own decision to never love again, it is actually just an automatic consequence of your current addiction.

The worst part is her name. It's not only a common name, it's a common animal. It's a feline animal that goes "Meow". I think it's apparent what the name is. Every time i open the centrifuge at work, i see her name etched on the interior. A truncated form of "Catalogue Number". "Cat No.". It's torture.

Oh yeah, I know this feeling. For example, there is a tea in my local grocery store containing melissa officinalis, with the word “Melissa” printed on top of the package. Every time I was at the grocery store, my attention would always be drawn to this word. In daily conversations, on television, on the internet, my attention was completely captured by this word. I was immediately interested in any topic, any discussion, that would have a link to that word. I think this was a way for my addicted mind to gratify the addiction, for every mention of her name gave me a small relief at first, but even worse withdrawal symptoms (torture) after.

And the fact that the first DMT entity i ever saw was in the likeness of her, makes it that much worse.

To use Harry Potter reference again, DMT experience is akin to the Mirror of Erised (Mirror of Desire): “The mirror shows the most desperate desire of a person's heart, a vision that has been known to drive men mad. Men have wasted away before it, not knowing if what they have seen is real, or even possible. Many have wasted their lives before the mirror, losing track of reality as they are deluded by what they see. Some are even driven mad by seeing their most desperate desire, unable to achieve what they are witnessing.”

After that DMT experience, i kinda sent her a colossal message. Confessing everything, all of my feelings. She said "I appreciate the honesty, but i don't feel the same way". I was expecting it, i knew that she would never say yes. But it still destroyed me. After years of trying to deal with this trauma, i have become cold and apathetic towards the whims of romantic love.

I think we have arrived here at a very important topic, which I call “emotional maturity”. When I felt in love with Melissa, I was emotionally immature, unable to express my feelings in an appropriate way. I thought that giving her vague hints and allusions, liking her photo’s on Facebook, and just be near her would be enough and self-evident of my love. I thought I was acting like a true romantic person. I spent many, many hours walking near her home and train station where she took the train sometimes. Most of the time I didn’t saw here, but once in a while a got a glimpse of her and my heart would start racing. And sometimes I would even walk near her so I could drop a casual “Hallo” and upon hearing “Hallo” back, my heart would almost explode from joy (do you see the addictive properties here?). At some point she realized that I am, in fact, stalking her. So, at one day, she didn’t say anything back at my desperate “Hallo” and didn’t even look at me. The feeling of hopelessness, desperation and sorrow I experienced upon this was unimaginable. I don’t think I have ever felt such a hurt in my entire life. I think this is how a heroin addict must be feeling upon a sudden denial of heroin.

The point I want to make here is that my lack of emotional maturity played a big role in how my unrequited love addiction came into place. I didn’t dare to express my true feelings to her, partly because I was afraid of being rejected, but in the end this made me look and act like a raving lunatic, a desperate stalker, a loser, and zeroing my chances of actually getting her. Another consequence of my lack of emotional maturity was the creation of a fantasy world in which I started to live, gradually replacing the reality. I dreamed about her every day, in my fantasy we could be together, I made good chances to be with her, only if she would see what a great person I am and how much I love her. I even learned how to lucid dream, only to be with her in my dreams.

It took many years before I started talking to my friends and family about Melissa and my feelings for her. I got feedback and compassion, and this was a start of a very long way to recovery. The more I talked about this feeling to others, the more I grew emotionally, I started to see the feeling for what it really is: a silly fantasy, completely removed from reality, a psychological addiction of sorts. I saw that my behavior and expression of feelings was wrong at that time, and that I actually hurt my love object with my unrequited love. I think this is what people call “processing of your trauma”. It took many years to process, and even now, 9 years later, I have not fully processed it, but the progress is undeniable.

The advice i keep on hearing is to meet other women, and realise that the one that got away is nothing special. A huge part of me enjoys this pain, a good reminder of how romantic relationships can lead to ruination. Suffering is the seed of growth, and i don't want to stagnate in a hen-pecked relationship. Nor do i want to develop a dependence on a single person.

This advice of meeting other women will not work for you before you process your trauma and get rid of your “Cat” addiction. It is like hearing an advice: “to get rid of your drugs addiction, you have to find a hobby”, while it is completely the other way around: by getting rid of your drugs addiction, will you create a space in your life for other hobbies.

Suffering is not the seed of growth, the overcoming of your problems that created the suffering in the first place is the actual growth. You already have a dependence on a single person, for 8 years. The first step towards a recovery is to admit and accept this. From this point you can start building your life in which you will be in control and it will be up to you to decide whether you want a relationship or not. Right now, your free will is bound by your unrequited love addiction.

As hilarious as this clip is, it also rings very, very true for me.

At one point in my life I liked to listen to stand-up comedians like Louis CK, but now I realize that most of them are bitter old men, with much of their bitterness coming from the assumption that the death is the end of everything, while I believe now that the death is just the beginning of a true life. The more progress you will make in dealing with your trauma, the less will be people like Louis CK striking a chord with you. I think you can even use it as an indicator of your growth: the less you will like the cynicism spit out by Louis CK, the more progress you make.

So i have searched many times on how to quell this desire. Picking up hobbies, be disciplined, refraining from sexual thoughts/stimuli. The loss of love is an amazing stimulant, so amazing, that it often cripples. I've realised that, unconsciously, one of my goals in life is to be a polymath. It drives me. But there is a very small niggling thought at the back of my head. It's almost like i want to be skilled in many things out of spite, like i want to show her what she missed out on. And that very, very small feeling of spite is eating me up on the insides. I hate it. I want to be a polymath because it's fun learning things. That feeling of spite is like deliberately dropping a tiny shit in a big bowl of exquisitely divine tea. It ruined it.

Well, there is nothing wrong with a man wanting to do things in order to please his woman. Many scientific discoveries were made, and great art was created, by men who wanted to impress their loved ones, to prove them their worth. A true love can be an amazing motivator, a muse, for a man to live his life the fullest and realize all of his potential.

In your case, however, the problem is that your loved one is a silly fantasy (sorry for the hard words!), not based on reality. The way you see her and imagine her to be has probably nothing to do with how she really feels and acts. So, doing things for her will accomplish nothing. Even if you find a cure against all forms of cancer and every person on the planet would know your name, and she will be confronted with your name everywhere she goes, this will not win her for you. There is absolutely nothing you can do to win her, believing otherwise, after 8 years of fruitless waiting, is an illusion and the faster you get rid of this illusion, the faster you will be able to shut down that nagging voice and move on with your life, doing things for people who actually want your love.

Even when i don't think about relationships or sex in my waking life, i still get horny when i wake up from sleep. Attractive women enters my subconscious during sleep. I see attractive women all the time out in the world. I can't control those external sensory inputs. And it destroys me.

Remember I told you a few paragraphs ago that you are made to love and have sex? Well, this is true, but now you have an unrequited love addiction standing in the way of your biological destiny. Getting rid of the addiction will let your love energy move freely through your body, turning the pain you experience now into pleasure.

Someone asked why don't i want to form an intimate relationship with a person. It doesn't have to be sexual, i have been told. I know that. But i don't want to form tethers and attachments. I want to be free, to go where i please.

The problem you have now is that you are not free, you are a slave to your unrequited love. This is why you don’t want to start a relationship, because starting a new relationship would mean that the fantasy girl you constantly think about now, should have to move out of your heart, which is very painful. You have attached yourself so much to the image of that girl, to her name, that it seems to you that you will never be able to ever get rid of this penetrating thought and that all relationships are like that. To the contrary, a normal relationship is not nearly as toxic as the one you experience now. In a normal relationship, people do not get addicted to each other, and let each other be free and independent, despite sharing the same house, sleeping in the same bed and having sex. Once you get rid of your toxic addiction and get a taste of a true, mutual love, you wouldn’t want to be single ever again, trust me.

I want cultivate unconditional love for all beings, not just an impulse for one.

Having an unconditional love for “all others” is an abstract concept, an illusion much like the unrequited love you experience. Loving others whom you have never met, or interacted with, is very easy. The more you get to know somebody and interact with him/her, the more irritability and anger you will experience. You will discover lots of characteristics you dislike about that person: how he/she eats, smells, talks, acts and whatnot. That’s why forming a true, deep relationship is very difficult, you need to put a lot of effort in shutting down your ego in order to form such a lasting relationship. While “unconditional love for all others” is easy, it is only until you actually start to know somebody of those “all others” and all of a sudden, your “unconditional love” is gone and irritability has kicked in. My point here is: break yourself, break your ego and start to form a truly unconditional loving relationship with your partner and then will you have a chance to love other people as well, unconditionally, even your enemies.

I want to travel the earth, helping people with their problems, and disappearing with the wind. I see no room for a partner in all that. And even if there was room, i highly doubt there would be any woman sane enough to travel with me on horseback through frozen tundras and blistering deserts. For decades. People want to live the easy life. I want to live the hard life.

Do you really think there are no women who, like you, want to help people with their problems, and disappear with the wind, travelling through frozen tundras and blistering deserts? There are many women who do just that, as the saying goes: “every Jack has his Jill”. But only after you get rid of your unrequited love addiction, will you realize this and meet your true love.

I am not a lonely person. I form few true friendships, because it's hard keeping track of people. I like people, i like talking to them. I just don't want to be sex driven. But i can't overcome sexual desire though desiring not to desire. I don't know what i'm doing, often feels like i'm a spectator of my own life.

Well, in order to overcome addiction, you will need to build up lots of willpower, the power to exercise your free will. Initially, you will try to attain the willpower in order to get rid of your addiction, but this is the same power you use to accomplish any goal-directed action. So, the more progress you make with kicking your fantasy about your unrequited love, the more willpower you will be amassing, the more you will become an active actor in your life and not a mere observer. In this way, you will even become grateful that you have had this addiction, because overcoming it will make you a strong, vigorous man: “Quod me non necat fortiorem facit” (That which does not kill me makes me stronger).

Apologies for the unstructured post. This is probably the only aspect of my life that brings me great pain, and like this post, it makes my life a mess.

No problem. I am quite a chaotic person myself, always lacking the willpower to clean up my room. Maybe, this lack of willpower is what makes one susceptible to addictions?

Concluding remarks
It has been 9 years since I got addicted to Melissa, developing a pathological unrequited love condition. Through talking to others, processing the accompanying feelings and thoughts, and exercising a mental effort to tackle the expression of the addiction (like constantly looking up her, and her friends and her friend friends on Facebook), I gradually started to recover. It took many years to free my heart from her. The only left-over symptoms of my psychopathology right now are occasional thoughts about her (which are easy to shut down) and occasional swearing with her name (using Melissa instead of shit, for example). Nine month ago I started a romantic relationship with another girl and our mutually loving relationship is getting stronger every day. This new-found love is an important milestone in my personal recovery and lacks the addictive properties my pathological unrequited love had.

I wish you, Psilosopher?, all the best. I really do, for I have come from the same hell. I hope that my post was of any help to you. If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them.

With kind regards,
A.

 

[dreamer042]

^^^ That is an excellent post. Thank you for sharing that AstraLex. :thumb_up:

I just have an old zen story that has been helpful in my own life when I find myself carrying on long after it's appropriate to do so.

Two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, traveling on pilgrimage, came to a muddy river crossing. There they saw a lovely young woman dressed in her kimono and finery, obviously not knowing how to cross the river without ruining her clothes.

Without further ado, Tanzan graciously picked her up, held her close to him, and carried her across the muddy river, placing her onto the dry ground. Then he and Ekido continued on their way. Hours later they found themselves at a lodging temple.

And here Ekido could no longer restrain himself and gushed forth his complaints: “Surely, it is against the rules what you did back there…. Touching a woman is simply not allowed…. How could you have done that? … And to have such close contact with her! … This is a violation of all monastic protocol…” Thus he went on with his verbiage. Tanzan listened patiently to the accusations.

Finally, during a pause, he said, “Look, I set that girl down back at the crossing. Are you still carrying her?”

 

[PlantTraveller]

All the wisdom that's already been said! And a big heaping dose of sympathy for the suffering you're feeling.

My 2 cents: I strongly recommend reading Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan.

It's a fun read anyway and goes into all manner of interesting stuff, and might help put things in perspective a bit.

How much of our desire for romantic love is conditioning and how much of it is animal instinct?

I think it is absolutely natural to love, to want to love, to want to be loved. We are also basically wired to have quite a lot of intimate relationships - more than we get to have in this modern world. We evolved in tribes of 30 - 50 people whom we would have known inside and out. I don't know if we get to know *anyone* that well in this day and age, and I think the lack of this leaves a vast, gaping hole inside many of us. It's damned hard to be a human in the 21st century even though technology and everything is supposed to make it so easy and great now. I don't have answers but I surmise the answer lies in community, whether there's sexual relationships involved or not...

 

[Psilosopher?]

Hey Psilosopher?,

Unrequited love is a subject way too familiar for me. Like 6 years ago, I wouldn’t even write a reply to this kind of topic, for it hurt too much, but now I have dealt with this issue and can, hopefully, provide my feedback to others suffering from this disease. Don’t get me wrong, even though it has been 9 years since I felt in love with that girl (Melissa), I still have, occasionally, uncontrollable thoughts about her penetrating my mind (but the frequency of that penetration has dropped substantially). Particularly in times of troubles, when most people would start swearing, I keep saying out loud her name instead: “Melissa! Melissa!!! Melissa!!!!!” So, I am not providing any quick fix or solution on how to forget your unrequited love and move on, for I don’t have any. But I have still found a way in dealing and overcoming that trauma. However, it is quite hard to put it in a few words, for I would need to tell you quite a lot about my experiences in the past 9 years, of which not all will be relevant for you personally. So, let me first reflect on your post and then draw a conclusion based on my own experience.

I'd like to preface this response by saying that i plan to read your post every day, until it sinks in. I can't thank you enough for sharing your wisdom and experience.

It’s hard isn’t it? People who have not felt this pathological unrequited love feeling, will not understand how such a small thing can have such a dramatic impact on somebody’s life. If you have read or watched Harry Potter movies, you can probably remember the character Severus Snape. He felt in love with Lily (the future mother of Harry Potter), but she chose James Potter instead of him. So, Severus became a cynical, cold-as-stone man, never starting another relationship again. He became very adept at hiding his true feelings (making him an outstanding double-agent) because of this, for he kept loving Lily unconditionally through all these years, but didn’t want anybody to know it.

Needless to say that Severus was my absolute hero for many, many years. I loved that character, how he remained true to his one and only true love through all these years. However, as I have made progress in dealing with my own unrequited love trauma, I started to lose my adoration for Severus. I started to see him for what he really was – a bitter old man, forever captured by his own childhood/teenager/adolescent trauma, unable to go on with his life. He became a very adept magician, but still lacked such basic things like real friends and romantic partner, because he completely shut down his feelings of love and attachment. At first, I wanted to be just like him, I adored the way he shut down his feelings, but now I realize that it made him a very miserable old man.

It's true, i am living in the past. I guess i am becoming like Severus. But instead of being a magician, i feel the call of the monk.

There is someone out there for you and you are programmed to breed All jokes aside, I know that you don’t feel that way, but this are true words nevertheless. But you will only realize this after you have met your second-half and start breeding. However, in order to find your true love, you have to deal with your unrequited love trauma first. Even though some people suggested me that I will overcome my own trauma once I meet my true love, my personal experience showed me that I had to make a considerable progress in dealing with my trauma first, and then would my heart start to un-freeze and allow me to love again. So, dealing with the trauma comes first, and all other things follow later, kind of automatically.

That term. "Second-half". I don't like it. Sounds like one cannot attain completion on their own, and must be attained with the assistance of one other person. I want to attain completion, or at least strive to attain it, on my own. When i say "on my own", i don't mean that in the literal sense. I want to learn from others, ruminate on their teachings, give my thanks/help in return and then be on my way. The life of the monk appeals to me. Dharma, Buddha and Sangha.

Have you ever talked to drugs addicts who haven’t gone to rehab yet? Most of them would tell you that they can easily stop doing drugs, but they just don’t want to. Only after hitting the bottom and going to a rehab, they realize that they have indeed been addicted to drugs (just like everybody told them), but they could not see it themselves. “They have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear” easily comes to mind here. Unrequited love is an addiction, much like drugs. It has that craving feeling, an urgency to be near or talk to your love object, the thoughts of which constantly invade your mind. You will, most likely, not believe me now, but once you make progress in dealing with your trauma, you will see how much it resembles a drugs addiction, and how getting over it and starting an another relationship “rather easily” is an illusion.

It is a drug, this sickness of mine. It's a cheap dopamine hit, that leaves me feeling empty. The number of times where i would insert her into any given situation is astounding. Seeing her at a party, out on the street or the worst, joining my place of employment. And every "hypothetical" simulation i think of, i have the same response to her. I dismiss her. I don't interact with her. I make it painfully obvious that i was hurt, and that i want nothing to do with her. That was my way of coping. It's almost like my mind was mentally preparing for seeing her when i least expected it. For a while, the only way i could function was to delude myself into thinking she was dead. Yeaaaaah, word of advice for fellow weak and pathetic people, don't do that. It creates more of a cancer, that is only filled with regret and grief for not making it right between us.

You are a slave to your hormones right, as we speak. That entering of your mind is dopamine mediated process, like it is the case with any addictive drugs actually. Only by dealing with you trauma, “getting over it” (this sound hard, I know, but this is the only way), will you be free from this enslavement. And then you will have your freedom back and can choose, for example, to love an another girl. Without getting rid of your unrequited love addiction, you freedom will be heavily limited and even though it would seem to you that it was your own decision to never love again, it is actually just an automatic consequence of your current addiction.

Like i said in the previous line, i couldn't stop inserting her into everyday situations. Living in a delusion, fueled by an insatiable desire to end it. Ironic, innit? I just wanted her gone, so my very sensible rational brain decides to add her, EVERYWHERE.

Oh yeah, I know this feeling. For example, there is a tea in my local grocery store containing melissa officinalis, with the word “Melissa” printed on top of the package. Every time I was at the grocery store, my attention would always be drawn to this word. In daily conversations, on television, on the internet, my attention was completely captured by this word. I was immediately interested in any topic, any discussion, that would have a link to that word. I think this was a way for my addicted mind to gratify the addiction, for every mention of her name gave me a small relief at first, but even worse withdrawal symptoms (torture) after.

I could not think of a worse name than "Cat" for someone to fall over. It's brutal, how common that word is. What were her parents thinking?

To use Harry Potter reference again, DMT experience is akin to the Mirror of Erised (Mirror of Desire): “The mirror shows the most desperate desire of a person's heart, a vision that has been known to drive men mad. Men have wasted away before it, not knowing if what they have seen is real, or even possible. Many have wasted their lives before the mirror, losing track of reality as they are deluded by what they see. Some are even driven mad by seeing their most desperate desire, unable to achieve what they are witnessing.”

I guess my brain is that Mirror. I guess it needs to be shattered.

I think we have arrived here at a very important topic, which I call “emotional maturity”. When I felt in love with Melissa, I was emotionally immature, unable to express my feelings in an appropriate way. I thought that giving her vague hints and allusions, liking her photo’s on Facebook, and just be near her would be enough and self-evident of my love. I thought I was acting like a true romantic person. I spent many, many hours walking near her home and train station where she took the train sometimes. Most of the time I didn’t saw here, but once in a while a got a glimpse of her and my heart would start racing. And sometimes I would even walk near her so I could drop a casual “Hallo” and upon hearing “Hallo” back, my heart would almost explode from joy (do you see the addictive properties here?). At some point she realized that I am, in fact, stalking her. So, at one day, she didn’t say anything back at my desperate “Hallo” and didn’t even look at me. The feeling of hopelessness, desperation and sorrow I experienced upon this was unimaginable. I don’t think I have ever felt such a hurt in my entire life. I think this is how a heroin addict must be feeling upon a sudden denial of heroin.

I would not go as far as to stalk her. I wouldn't allow myself to stoop to that level (sorry AstraLex! ). Didn't really do the online thing either, being a staunch anti social media person. I knew the catastrophic detrimental effects of social media, and didn't want to dig further down the rabbit hole. But being on the precipice of desire was too much to bear. In the first year of knowing her, i would see her twice a week at uni practical classes. It was kinda my fuel. I loved seeing her happy. Never did i have a feeling like that for any other person. Most guys just want to bang hot chicks. I just wanted to be with her, and get to know her. If i had a sexual thought about her, i'd be extremely disappointed with myself, to the point of self-deprecation. It's like i didn't want to taint her image. At the time, i was rather unattractive. Still a teenager, essentially. Pimples, goofy appearance, extremely graphic death metal T-shirts, you name it.

The point I want to make here is that my lack of emotional maturity played a big role in how my unrequited love addiction came into place. I didn’t dare to express my true feelings to her, partly because I was afraid of being rejected, but in the end this made me look and act like a raving lunatic, a desperate stalker, a loser, and zeroing my chances of actually getting her. Another consequence of my lack of emotional maturity was the creation of a fantasy world in which I started to live, gradually replacing the reality. I dreamed about her every day, in my fantasy we could be together, I made good chances to be with her, only if she would see what a great person I am and how much I love her. I even learned how to lucid dream, only to be with her in my dreams.

My last physical encounter with her was a few months before that DMT, and several years after that first encounter. At that point, i had matured a lot, no pimples, beard and long hair. Looked totally different. She posted in our uni degree forum, asking for notes. It was exam period. The subject she wanted notes for, i had 4.5 GB worth of. And i had finished all my exams, so was just cruising through life. So i reached out to her. We met the day before her exam, and we talked for an hour or so. I wasn't nervous, but i only talked about uni and that subject and finding work in the related discipline. I thought it was fitting, since her exam was the day after. Years later, i got the feeling that she wanted to talk about other things. That she wanted to know who i was. That's why she took so much time out of her day during a very stressful exam period. And i blew it, talking about stupid uni related shit. I'm an extremely deep person, perhaps too deep. I have no shallow end, i go straight for the hard hitting and thought provoking dialogues. But i didn't in this case. I wasn't me. I guess that was my biggest regret about this whole thing.

It took many years before I started talking to my friends and family about Melissa and my feelings for her. I got feedback and compassion, and this was a start of a very long way to recovery. The more I talked about this feeling to others, the more I grew emotionally, I started to see the feeling for what it really is: a silly fantasy, completely removed from reality, a psychological addiction of sorts. I saw that my behavior and expression of feelings was wrong at that time, and that I actually hurt my love object with my unrequited love. I think this is what people call “processing of your trauma”. It took many years to process, and even now, 9 years later, I have not fully processed it, but the progress is undeniable.

I resonate extremely well with this paragraph. DMT helped me a lot. Made me confront my feelings and emotions in extremely visceral ways, and made me feel stronger when i came out of it. Suffice to say, i did A LOT of DMT during that time. Mixture of escapism and insatiable curiousity about this enigmatic molecule. Mainly curiousity.

This advice of meeting other women will not work for you before you process your trauma and get rid of your “Cat” addiction. It is like hearing an advice: “to get rid of your drugs addiction, you have to find a hobby”, while it is completely the other way around: by getting rid of your drugs addiction, will you create a space in your life for other hobbies.

Suffering is not the seed of growth, the overcoming of your problems that created the suffering in the first place is the actual growth. You already have a dependence on a single person, for 8 years. The first step towards a recovery is to admit and accept this. From this point you can start building your life in which you will be in control and it will be up to you to decide whether you want a relationship or not. Right now, your free will is bound by your unrequited love addiction.

I guess there needs to an Unrequited Love Anonymous group or something. I guess this is it, in this thread. But in all seriousness, i need to take this recovery more seriously.

At one point in my life I liked to listen to stand-up comedians like Louis CK, but now I realize that most of them are bitter old men, with much of their bitterness coming from the assumption that the death is the end of everything, while I believe now that the death is just the beginning of a true life. The more progress you will make in dealing with your trauma, the less will be people like Louis CK striking a chord with you. I think you can even use it as an indicator of your growth: the less you will like the cynicism spit out by Louis CK, the more progress you make.

For me, comedy and music is catharsis. It gives me relief to laugh at fellow pathetic people, and to headbang to killer riffs.

Well, there is nothing wrong with a man wanting to do things in order to please his woman. Many scientific discoveries were made, and great art was created, by men who wanted to impress their loved ones, to prove them their worth. A true love can be an amazing motivator, a muse, for a man to live his life the fullest and realize all of his potential.

In your case, however, the problem is that your loved one is a silly fantasy (sorry for the hard words!), not based on reality. The way you see her and imagine her to be has probably nothing to do with how she really feels and acts. So, doing things for her will accomplish nothing. Even if you find a cure against all forms of cancer and every person on the planet would know your name, and she will be confronted with your name everywhere she goes, this will not win her for you. There is absolutely nothing you can do to win her, believing otherwise, after 8 years of fruitless waiting, is an illusion and the faster you get rid of this illusion, the faster you will be able to shut down that nagging voice and move on with your life, doing things for people who actually want your love.

No hard words at all! It's something i need to hear. I think a lot of guys are guilty of this, turning their crush into a deity like being. I don't actually want to be in a relationship with her. Even if she rocked up at my doorstep, with a tearful apology for causing me hurt, and devoting herself to me for the rest of time. I would turn her away. She caused me too much hurt. A very good friend of mine said this "Own the pain, make it part of your identity, and then move on."

Remember I told you a few paragraphs ago that you are made to love and have sex? Well, this is true, but now you have an unrequited love addiction standing in the way of your biological destiny. Getting rid of the addiction will let your love energy move freely through your body, turning the pain you experience now into pleasure.

I am driven towards the monastic lifestyle, so i don't know about that. Even the Buddha was married and had a child, but he walked away from all that.

The problem you have now is that you are not free, you are a slave to your unrequited love. This is why you don’t want to start a relationship, because starting a new relationship would mean that the fantasy girl you constantly think about now, should have to move out of your heart, which is very painful. You have attached yourself so much to the image of that girl, to her name, that it seems to you that you will never be able to ever get rid of this penetrating thought and that all relationships are like that. To the contrary, a normal relationship is not nearly as toxic as the one you experience now. In a normal relationship, people do not get addicted to each other, and let each other be free and independent, despite sharing the same house, sleeping in the same bed and having sex. Once you get rid of your toxic addiction and get a taste of a true, mutual love, you wouldn’t want to be single ever again, trust me.

I know what you are talking about. On DMT, i have lived through countless lives. I have experienced relationships psychedelically (not the same thing, i know). But the feeling of attachment and devotion to that one person was both amazing and painful.

Before, when i used to think of her, the first word that pops in my head was "perfection". Nowadays, it's "cognitive dissonance".

Having an unconditional love for “all others” is an abstract concept, an illusion much like the unrequited love you experience. Loving others whom you have never met, or interacted with, is very easy. The more you get to know somebody and interact with him/her, the more irritability and anger you will experience. You will discover lots of characteristics you dislike about that person: how he/she eats, smells, talks, acts and whatnot. That’s why forming a true, deep relationship is very difficult, you need to put a lot of effort in shutting down your ego in order to form such a lasting relationship. While “unconditional love for all others” is easy, it is only until you actually start to know somebody of those “all others” and all of a sudden, your “unconditional love” is gone and irritability has kicked in. My point here is: break yourself, break your ego and start to form a truly unconditional loving relationship with your partner and then will you have a chance to love other people as well, unconditionally, even your enemies.

Dayum. There are some things to think about in this paragraph. But i still hold unconditional love higher than anything else.

Do you really think there are no women who, like you, want to help people with their problems, and disappear with the wind, travelling through frozen tundras and blistering deserts? There are many women who do just that, as the saying goes: “every Jack has his Jill”. But only after you get rid of your unrequited love addiction, will you realize this and meet your true love.

I don't think there are no women like that. Just very difficult to find. So i guess, i can't be bothered looking for someone like that. Like looking for a needle in a haystack factory.

Well, in order to overcome addiction, you will need to build up lots of willpower, the power to exercise your free will. Initially, you will try to attain the willpower in order to get rid of your addiction, but this is the same power you use to accomplish any goal-directed action. So, the more progress you make with kicking your fantasy about your unrequited love, the more willpower you will be amassing, the more you will become an active actor in your life and not a mere observer. In this way, you will even become grateful that you have had this addiction, because overcoming it will make you a strong, vigorous man: “Quod me non necat fortiorem facit” (That which does not kill me makes me stronger).

Well, on this one, i've made some progress. Will be starting rigourous martial arts training daily, so hopefully, i can redirect my energy.

No problem. I am quite a chaotic person myself, always lacking the willpower to clean up my room. Maybe, this lack of willpower is what makes one susceptible to addictions?

The lack of willpower and being enchanted by delusions and illusions are the cause of addictions.

Concluding remarks
It has been 9 years since I got addicted to Melissa, developing a pathological unrequited love condition. Through talking to others, processing the accompanying feelings and thoughts, and exercising a mental effort to tackle the expression of the addiction (like constantly looking up her, and her friends and her friend friends on Facebook), I gradually started to recover. It took many years to free my heart from her. The only left-over symptoms of my psychopathology right now are occasional thoughts about her (which are easy to shut down) and occasional swearing with her name (using Melissa instead of shit, for example). Nine month ago I started a romantic relationship with another girl and our mutually loving relationship is getting stronger every day. This new-found love is an important milestone in my personal recovery and lacks the addictive properties my pathological unrequited love had.

I wish you, Psilosopher?, all the best. I really do, for I have come from the same hell. I hope that my post was of any help to you. If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them.

With kind regards,
A.

Once again, i thank you for your monumental effort to help a suffering soul. I shall try to ascend from this hell, and in turn, help the other poor devils stuck here with me.

 

[Jagube]

She didn't hurt you, you hurt yourself. But it seems you already know it and only use the words as a mental shortcut.

After that DMT experience, i kinda sent her a colossal message. Confessing everything, all of my feelings. She said "I appreciate the honesty, but i don't feel the same way". I was expecting it, i knew that she would never say yes. But it still destroyed me.

It sounds just like me. It must be a common pattern with guys.

There is a lot of educational material out there for men on how to attract women - Youtube videos, seminars, books etc. It basically teaches you to do the exact opposite to what you and I did (and calls guys like us wussies, suckers and losers :lol: ). And while much of it may be shallow, there is something to it. Women are wired to be sexually attracted to certain character traits, it's not a conscious decision but instinct. So dating is a bit of a caveman game, whether we like it or not, and no matter how high we want to rise above it. Sex is not a highly intellectual activity after all. Of course different women look for different types of men, but some things remain the same. We can embrace it or turn our backs and walk away. Monastic life may be your path after all. But maybe not.

In my younger years I'd become attached to all kinds of things - places, toys... so no wonder my crushes were hard. My experiences with entheogens have shown me I need to learn to let go.

It seems that some people are less selective and will settle for anyone and much of their life is spent living with another (not just in terms of time spent in relationships, but how much they see themselves as a half of a couple, rather than an individual), whereas others are much more selective. The selective ones generally have stronger interests, hobbies etc., often have more interesting and active (sometimes socially active) lives. They're less complacent and know what they want from life - and they often want a lot. A feedback loop of sorts can form here: the more time they spend being single, the more they 'define' themselves as individuals with specific interests, needs and goals, and the clearer their self-definition, the more selective they become.

For such a person, finding the right partner is indeed like finding a needle in a haystack. But then, finding a needle in a haystack doesn't have to be that hard if you know where to look, or have a magnet If riding a horse through deserts is your thing, maybe just do that, enjoy it to the fullest, and who knows, maybe one day the love of your life will emerge on a horse on the horizon. The chances of that are higher than meeting her at your local pub or gym anyway.
If not, you'll have lived your life doing what you enjoy.

 

[RAM]

If nothing is going to change your mind and you truly want to eliminate your sexual desires and urges, have you considered castration?

While I am quite fortunate to have a wonderful partner in life, I do think our world would be much, much better off without sex. The negatives of sexual desire and its consequences, in my opinion, far outweigh any positives that anyone has from having sex. At times I have also felt like a slave to my sexuality, but again I am lucky enough to have it under control.

Anyway, castration might be a good solution if you want a way to totally bypass these urges. You will produce less testosterone and not be as much of a slave anymore. However, there is no turning back, so it might be good to save up some sperm or something.

 

[Jees]

Obsessions..

Sometimes we want/try to debunk them directly at the subject level. That might work, maybe not. But the reason to be obsessed an sich (for whatever) might lie somewhere else. In those cases a subject-level-debunk might lead to only a brief victory because a next obsession might be right around the corner awaiting.

I've found my own obsession-vulnerability is strongly related to my personal life level of satisfaction. If something is bothering me in my private sphere then an obsessive tendency of whatever is close by.

It might be worth looking into a wider scope. Things repressed, well hidden, forgotten, ...
The correlation might be unsuspected. But one thing stands out: the obsession gets you away from a state, into another state, mission accomplished. It's actually a little gross to use other people for that sort of mechanics, but it does the job so well.
Obsessions can have fantastic results no doubt, mathematics, art, inventions,...

But when I feel myself in a state most aligned with living, not much of obsession or urge remains. My obsessions are usually a counterweight for something else.

One could analyze ones selves to death what the direct and/or hidden cause of obsession is, and many therapists live of such approach. Might work for some, not for others. Yet you'll never be sure, it could be a combination for that matter, and things can be really latent perhaps to dna levels. And one could suspect the wrong reasons easily. I don't believe much in analyzing it to bits, it all could become just another obsession in itself.

What helps me is to realize how pathetic I am and have a good laugh about it, this draws already much of energy out of the 'seriousness' that seems to be a pillar of the obsession at hand.

I really think obsessions it's like many things a survival reaction that got picked up and framed into and around a particular set. BIOS stuff. Good stuff to get things sorted when the sh*t hits the fan, but annoying stuff when it gets freewheeling around a hobby, job, art, love,.. So I think of obsessions as an asset and a burden at the same time. Looking at it this way, it all start to feel less personal. That girl I cant get over with becomes just a one cog in the whole, no more. Zooming out, another perspective arises, and my energy investment changes accordingly.

Blessed be

 

[Animistic]

AstroLex that was an awesome post!!

I have experienced something of what you're talking about Psilosopher however with its differences, i will share what I believe to be relevant for this situation. I didn't have a relationship for 5 years, thinking I wanted to be free of sexuality after being hurt by several women and had a trust issue with them.

I realized something though, sexuality is one way to access a very unique but powerful part of ourselves and I should really work on the hurt/trust issue instead of trying to transcend sexuality. Its the source of a lot of motivation and inner fire and can be cultivated to maximize a persons health and vitality, this is also a daoist idea I have since learned. This isn't to say you should spank the monkey everyday or something like that. Spanking the monkey generally leads me to feel tired and unmotivated, particularly if it's done often. Sex with a partner is invigorating in a very unique way. For me it was feeding the demon I was trying to slay.

Slaying wasn't the answer though, integrating my sexuality into my being was. Like all motivations sexuality is a double edged sword, a celibate priest is impressive (though respectfully I believe it to be the source of a lot of problems in some religions) but someone who can integrate their primal power/magic/essence into their being and not be ruled by it is not only more impressive in my opinion but also more interesting to interact with!

I hear you on what you say about the whole other half thing. I think it's a phrase which has multiple levels of interpretation and after all meaning is something of subjective experience to a large degree anyway. I would say that by becoming whole is integrating/harmonizing ones inner landscape to a certain configuration, its complete but not in a terms of a finality we are forever growing beings and even in a relationship our wholeness continues to develop and grow. For me this was in ways i likely wouldnt have or had a much harder time doing so if I was alone. In my experience I relate to this more as coherence of connectivity than wholeness. Wholeness is something I always am, even if I feel broken.

As we shape our inner landscape into a form of coherence and come to different levels of integration/awareness within ourselves we start to attract a compliment. So when one says "you'll find your other half" I think what should be said is "you'll find your compliment", they don't complete you but together each is enriched and strengthened.

Take home message, be careful rejecting an aspect of yourself - particularly sexuality. Its a tricky beast but there is a mutually beneficial relationship that can be had if we become friends with it. Best of luck on this journey Philosopher!

 

[CosmicLion]

Dude you must be the NoFap master!

8)

 

[Legarto Rey]

At least as evidenced by this thread, "toxic masculinity" has been good and well subdued.
It might be worth recalling that male v female SMVs tend to follow inverse trajectories, twixt the ages 15-50y. This can be leveraged to a man's advantage, should such an approach be chosen.

That noted, obsessions of any ilk can be quite vexing.

Peace

 

[nexalizer]

It's been 8 years, and she enters my mind every day.

Damn, that's the worst case of oneitis I've ever seen.

 

[obliguhl]

I think you are trying to turn pain into something better, that might work or it might not.
I would not recommend it, personally. It's just not healthy to enjoy pain and see it as a "stimulant". It's better to find a "stimulant" in joy as it isn't destructive.

If you are serious, stop masturbating and go for longer times without. Start with 2 weeks, then a month, then two, then three etc etc.... You can also live in a monastary if that goal is so important to you. There is also chemical castration and various drugs that kill libido.

I think you just want to talk with someone about your pain though.

 

[Legarto Rey]

Regular ejaculation has been associated with better prostate health. Lower incidence prostate cancer, prostatitis and urinary retention. Long term retention of semen encourages prostatic concretions.

Peace

 

[dragonrider]

By trying to surpress your feelings, you will be just as much a slave of them. Maybe even to a greater degree, because 1-it will be a constant fight, and 2-you are gonna lose that fight anyway.

Your problem is not the feelings themselves, but the fact that they've got an obsessive nature. You don't cure obsessions by denying their existence. They could worsen, even.

Surpressed feelings are like vengefull little demons inside of you. All they need is one weak moment to retaliate.

What you want is the strength to on the one hand accept these feelings, and on the other hand to say 'no' to them. And that is realy, realy hard.

You could maybe tell yourself: "i accept that i have these feelings, but they are totally out of place in THIS particular situation".
Emotions are Always a response to a particular situation you're in. Once you fully realise that they are out of place, that is, that these particular feelings are not an appropriate response to this particular situation, they tend to lose a lot of their 'magical' powers.

They become a bit like donald trump....an impotent old man, boasting about his super human virility: not convincing anymore.

 

[Psilosopher?]

So i've thought long and hard about all of your responses. I've read them all multiple times now. As i was trying to sleep last night, i thought i'd try something different.

I thought that i should think about her a lot. And think about how crap that relationship, if it ever bloomed, could be. I'm kinda convincing myself that she is not a good partner, manipulative and deceptive. And, i can't believe it, it's actually working. Every time i think of her now, my first reaction is "ugh". Which is a lot better than "whoa". And because my first reaction is "ugh", i'm thinking about her less and less. I'm becoming more possessed by my hobbies, self improvement and learning different skills. And that feeling of spite is almost entirely gone. She is a becoming a fragment of a memory. Fuckin' finally. This burden, this shackle, this tether. I'm becoming free.

I can't thank all of you enough for helping me through this. My heart is soaring like an eagle, instead of being chained to the earth.