About Love IV. Love is everywhere. Just look around. So many people you see everyday. All of them with their own stories, their needs, desires and disappointments. Next in row talking about her experiences is Rosie.

 

"With most people around me I feel totally disconnected"

Rosie (36 years) is tired of her pattern of passivity. But what to do? Why does she always run to the same walls when she starts a new relationship? And always those relationships refer to herself: "I do not love myself. I can not deal with my imperfections."

By Dominique Verschuren

Rosie: "I can't tolerate anyone around me too long. Since a couple of months there is something in me that makes that I totally don't feel connected with the most people around me. It is precisely this connection I have been facing. But in my mind I yearn for it continuously.

Love gives the most complete sense of existence. If you go to Paris and you can choose between a very good friend or your lover than I think anyone will choose that lover. It's a more complete experience: the physical linked to the mental to the emotional, all these areas come together in the bond of love. It's unique. In my ideal movie I feel completely connected, completely at my place. Because I never experience that in reality, I think it's never enough."

 

House of love

"The muddle of my life has to do with being afraid of closing doors. If I start a new relationship I step into a house, but I always leave the windows and doors open. There always have to be an exit. More and more I realize it's a certain pattern, through which I don't engage completely. At the moment I step outside the relationship and leave it behind me, I don't close that door behind me. All relationships I've had are very much symbolized by open doors and windows. So you always sitting in the draught and you have constantly a stiff neck or a cold.

That cold is expressed in constant doubt. Is this what I really want? Isn't there something more appropriate, better, more grand and more immersive? It's almost never enough. That has to do with some ideal image. That movie is in my head and I can see it. And not everything in that movie fit into my life. Even if I can recognize that something is beautiful. If I choose someone I always panic for something I leave. I'm going to Paris, but how would it be in Moscow or in Iceland? But luckily I can go next year. This is not possible if you really want to go for a relationship. Now I realize that it is not enough because all my doors and windows are open."

 

Tiresome love-sickness

 

"All my crushes are linked to a situation of non-commitment. From the moment that the non-commitment threatens to fall, then also the love-sickness disappears.

For a long time I was in love with P. In my experience he was the man I wanted, no doubt about it. I suffered from it. Actually my bond to him was in his rejection of me. You feel so vulnerable, that other person has so much power over you because you are so vulnerable. That is terrifying. The worst thing is being rejected by someone you're terribly in love with. That hit you in your deepest core. You only fall in love if that person has touched you. Being rejected makes you so insecure. Like a cut inside you. I understand very well that people who experience that once or twice, say: please let me never fall in love again. They rather prefer a safe relationship they can control. This begins to outweigh the sadness, the helplessness, the vulnerability of a love that is not answered.

 

You've got the love-sickness that you are very happy to see that person, or very nervous beforehand. The love-sickness which you speak together when the other is not around. Constant dialogue in your head. Pleasant kind of love that brings color in your life. There's also love that comes across like a disease. Twice I experienced it. Like they have injected drugs in your arms, you have absolutely no control over it. 24 hours a day it has you in her power. You get obsessed. It gives you wings, but it is so difficult because you can't turn it on or off. I can't function then anymore. The first time I experienced it, it cost me almost a year. I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't read, I could no longer write a paper. I could think of nothing else. A complete helpless feeling. You feel ridiculous. You do things you felt embarrassed afterwards."          

 

 You can't change the other

 

"I do not love myself. Currently not. Earlier neither. I can't deal with my imperfections. I've never been proud of myself. Sometimes I feel like I can give more to people if I'm not in a relationship. In all those relationships I experienced a feeling of failure. Maybe I blocked on expectations. With lovers and friends can I be more myself. In a relationship I give too much of myself away. Binding is for me the same as losing yourself in the bad sense of the word. Always a constriction or something that you can't hold intact. That's that fear of commitment. I can't think, just try it three months and then we'll see. From the moment I'm in a relationship, I do not know where I end and the other begins. Everything blurs. Being alone is much more clear. You just have to take yourself into account. Loneliness is a clear emotion and only you possess it. I have less difficulty with that than being in a relationship with someone you feel he reproaches you.

 

Very important is to be yourself and dare to remain, from the beginning. If you always go to bed at ten o'clock and the other person continues until one a.m. then you should not be tempted also to sleep later. That always avenges. Because you do not show who you really are, because you are deceiving yourself at that moment. Sooner or later there comes a time when you still want to go to bed at ten o'clock and the other begins to reproach you because in the beginning you did participate and now not anymore. From the beginning you have to dare to be yourself fully. From the beginning to stand up for the things you stand for. That is the only way to really get together or not. Many people make the mistake to start blaming after ten years that the other does not take them into account. Actually they have to blame themselves. You must know which battles you want to fight for: what is important to me and what is less important? On what can I do a concession?      

I find that very difficult. You can't change the another person and you don't want the other person to change you. But how do you deal with differences? Because they are always there. How do you deal with it so you remain true to yourself and the other also can be himself, but at the same time you can discuss certain things? For me that's a difficult balance. I have so far not found a way to deal with it. When you do something out of love, when do you deny yourself?"

 

 Go for it!

 "I don't believe in the principle: this it's not the right time, first I need time for myself. If you really want to be with somebody, even when he's living on the other side of the world, you just go for it. You leave it all behind or you try to arrange the circumstances as good as possible to be with the one. Don't waste words on excuses like: my last relationship was not so good or differently, or: is this the right time? You go for it like it is the first and only thing in your entire life. Doubts I see as an alarm. That makes it so confusing for me personnally. I always get those signals, unless someone don't chooses for me. Even if the right man comes along, then I have that alarm. Then it's not because of that person or the circumstances, but it's me.

Maybe I should decide not to step into a relationship for the next three years. And perhaps dedicate the time to something else, writing a book. Looking back since my last eighteen years relationships cost me much time and energy consuming it. Actually, it cost more than it brought me."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS8m44KjGGU