Love and Submission

Over the last few weeks I've had no shortage of topics I want to write about. I've written several drafts of entries I have wanted to explore and not published them because while I'm full of ideas I'm not particularly emotionally stable these days. I find that when I try to write while not under the influence of emotion it is painful to write and disjointed in structure. When I'm writing under the influence of intense emotions it is altogether impossible for me not to sound manic.

While I hardly expect that I'm going to find inner balance and peace anytime soon considering the vast number of traumatic and high impact events in my life recently. Nonetheless, it is painful to be multi-tasking so many intense emotions for prolonged periods and very difficult for me to work efficiently. So, I'm trying to bring acceptance and peace to the turmoil within me. In the process I'm also appreciating that all my previous models of emotionality are far too simplistic to adequately describe the conflicts and changes going on inside of me. Models based on 2 or 3 primary emotions are really just preposterous to me now. I actually think only a thinking-type person with very little self-knowledge could put forward such a ridiculous idea.

In my quest to expand my model of emotionality I've found the following:



Wow.

The eight colours each represent a primary emotion. The intensity of which increases the darker it gets. The emotions written in between represent complex emotions made by combining the elements of the two neighbours. For more about the person who invented this wheel of emotion click here.

Intuitively I know there is something wrong with this model immediately: If we have 8 primary emotions then we shouldn't be limited to 8 composite emotions. While I accept that opposite emotions can't be combined easily there is no logical reason why composites can't be made across 90 and 135 degree arcs. Reducing it to 4 primary emotional bi-poles would eliminate such issues... but for all I know such complex combinations are allowed in the 8 primary system. But for now let's move aside from the flaws in this system.

What strikes me is the location of love on this wheel: between joy and trust. I've found myself many many times in trusting and accepting relationships that I just wouldn't call love. I trust them with my physical and material safety and they felt the same with me. But I never trusted them with my emotional safety and I have friends who would be far more intimate with me if they could bring themselves to trust me with their emotional safety.

My problem with my previous relationship was mostly because while I was seeking to encourage serenity within the other person, the other person was seeking to encourage fear in me. Which apparently would lead to my submission to them if successful. Certainly, I felt that their intention was to make me submit to them and their wishes and my problem was always being able to feel sufficiently good about myself to break free of them... otherwise I really did feel like I should submit to them. The thing is I haven't just experienced this dynamic, I've watched it in other people's relationships. One or either of the people in the relationship try to make the other person feel insecure about the other person's care and affection for them. Certainly, it feels more comfortable to feel above someone than below them.

It is probably much easier to get someone to submit than to combine ones psychological assets to work towards creating harmonary and peace with each other. It does require taking off ones psychological armour to another person and trust that they won't hurt you. In my mind the idea of getting someone to submit in a relationship sounds a lot like, "find their biggest fear, fluster them with it and fuck them," because it is easier to induce fear in a person than serenity and really, fear can be as reliable as serenity when it comes to tying a person to you. Also, I don't think this happens only in romantic relationships. I've been reading up on a few tyrants recently, they honestly see themselves as loving people and the people below them genuinely feel unworthy of their tyrant's love. Yet the flow of kindness and compassion in their relationship is assymetrical.

Of course, I for one belive that we should be brave in our search for love. We should bolster up the confidence and happiness of those we love even though we're giving them strength they could use to leave us with. I know abandonement hurts, but if you lift up a person and they desert you for it then it is a good thing that they have left your life because they don't deserve to have someone as wonderful as yourself. Of course you can get angry with them, hate them even for abandoning you, but I have to wonder, if we just accept that sometimes people will desert us for our effort just as department stores accept that a certain proportion of their stock will get stolen, then can we not avoid a corrosive recourse into bitterness? I hope you'll get me when I say what I am proposing is simultaneously optimistic and cynical. Optimistic in the endeavour to find true love but cynical in the acceptance that some people just don't want to love us back.

What impresses me about this model is that the creator, Robert Plutchik, wanted to prove that there was a survival advantage in having emotions and that all animals use emotions as part of their basic information processing schema. I wonder if he knew that we're now trying to give computers emotions because it is considered by some to be the missing ingredient in artificial intelligence?

What concerns me, as I've probably said it a million times, is the number of people in positions of authority in the world who don't appreciate the role and importance of emotions. They push them aside and dismiss them as though they are some form of weakness. A person without emotions is simply not alive and as autonomous as a robot. While conversely they would point out that people who are over emotional are inefficient and irrational. However, the fact that they've said 'over' instead of emotional gives away that they recognise the importance of emotions on some level and referring to people who struggle to balance and harmonise their emotions isn't fair considering the millions of people who successfully balance and harmonise their emotions every day.

What we need is to learn to be literate in an emotional and relationship-wise sense and appreciate the value of empathy. One can always reach a win-win solution with a person who has adequate empathy but you will never reach a win-win solution with someone who cares more for themselves than others. Conversely, a person who cares more for others than themselves will always be getting the rough end of the deal.