The Promise (Darling in the Franxx)

For the past 2 months I've been deeply conflicted on the matter of Love. It all began when I started to talk to C and everything seemed to go really well. In-person, C was extremely pleasant to talk to and be around with. I especially enjoyed C's presence no matter the context of what activity we were engaging in. But communicating online was just not C's strong suit, long reply times was my main dissatisfaction in the whole period we spent with each other.

The first month was still pleasant and fun, we went on a few dates and got to know each other & our respective friends group better. But as the second month came, everything just made me feel more distant as she become occupied? with other commitments, but she still gave me reassurance that things will clear up soon.

But I guess that was just a signal that she was giving me that I did not pick up. Which reminds me of the protagonist in movies and tv shows that are oblivious to the signs that the other person is giving, I usually scoff at how absurdly oblivious they are. But this made me realize that Im a total brick when it comes to these as well. Not just that, I feel like Im a total brick when it comes to Love

So after that whole ordeal and revelation. It made me rethink what is love, why do we love and what it means to be loved. Naturally, I went to search up some stuff about this topic. I initially used Google but everything I found were just not good, it wasnt until I started to look at blogs of talented writers I began to understand more.

Here's a summary of what I learned so far:

Half-Heartedness

if the person you like likes you back, you can probably tell. If you’re not sure they like you, they’re almost certainly half-hearted or conflicted or lukewarm.

This post gave me some food for thought, am I half-hearted? am I not sure about my own feelings? am I hoping someone can reassure me? But I have yet an answer to these questions.

It is easy to see if someone is half-hearted. To draw an example outside the context of a relationship, when people are talking about anything they love or enjoy doing you can see them come alive. The same principle applies to love.

Being mindful and understanding yourself can help you understand the person you love, without truly understanding yourself how can someone else understand you? Write it down if it helps you.

To love is the desire to place happiness outside of ourselves

Love != Math

The concept of “settling” and the obsession with perfect romantic compatibility are both born of the idea that a relationship must maximize utility: there exists a set of variables that together form one’s utility function and the goal is to optimize them. Line up all of your variables and add them up, one by one: what you are left with is a single neat little number that represents the compression and distillation of the very concept of love. Highest number wins! This is what happens when utilitarian ethics infect love: you are left with a math problem.

In reality love is intractable and has a mix of irrationality in it. As Zizek puts it, True love is the habit of building small daily rituals and the mundane day to day lives that ultimately becomes a whole story of your lifetime. Not an efficient algorithm that gets the global maxima.

Commitment is required to build anything meaningful over a long enough time horizon. Relationships are committed bets. Love is born from a commitment and nurtured in growth and shared experiences. Commitment is the only way for compounding bets to reach escape velocity.

I’d wager that most people today are not failing to be compatible—they are failing to commit. - Zizek

Healthier Relationships

What I took away from this is to not force a relationship into shape:

• let each other know what you truly want, there's no "convincing" in a relationship.
• dont hope for people to change in order to maintain your vision of the relationship. People change when they want to, not because you want them to.

True love is voluntarily given and taken

Often times we hide our true intentions even to our loved ones because we are afraid they might not be able to accept the True us. We can fake and pretend all we want but it'll still show, the best thing is to be brave and show your vulnerabilites.

To be Loved is to be Changed

give love and accept love in a way that feels earnest

to be loved is to be changed. The people we love shape our language, our thoughts and our choices.

Mistakes in love can feel existential because it's a reflection of who we are.

We use what we love constantly, but we're also responsible for taking good care of it.

We should try and be more careful about how we change other people. Because when we love each other, we alter how we move through time.

The Agony of Eros: Dating

the thing that’s really hard about dating is that it tends to bring out all your attachment issues, problems you’ve inherited from your parents, primal fear of rejection, etc so it’s really, really hard (basically impossible) to fake being different than you are.

Two keypoints to remember:

• self-awareness (know what you want first before pursuing)
• honesty (extreme honesty, keeping things "hidden" will only make misunderstandings grow)

An example that she shared gave me a conclusion that words can have surface meaning and an underlying meaning. And knowing the underlying meaning of the sentence is extremely crucial in any situation. Because humans are surprisingly bad at communicating our true intentions and feelings. It takes a copius amount of effort for us to be good at sharing our deep sentiment behind the shallow one. We're just not taught how to ask the HARD questions of both ourselves and others

Ava had a short conversation with an elderly couple about the secret recipe of a good and long relationship, and the secret recipe is pretty simple. Phenomenal Communication Which I personally think also stems from its root which is Deep Understading.

Only when we're able to communicate the precise observation, the actual feeling, that we can make real progress.

Afterthought

I personally love AVA's work on love, and relationships. It has a down to earth view on love and it humanizes the subject rather than romanticizing and mystifying it like how Hollywood does it. Mainstream media has a tendency to make love into such a perfect sculpture right from the bat when it is not. It becomes a beautiful sculpture after countless interactions, misunderstandings, hardships, and even arguments to form an understanding which in the end molds it into its final form not perfect yet portrays beauty in its own ways.

despite being the most connected generation, we are also the loneliest.

After the short chapter with C, I've found out that I treasure companionship and presence with the other person alot, treasure clear and direct communication, treasure emotional, mental, and physical support. It was funny because when C asked me this question I genuinely could not annswer, I didn't know why I couldn't answer those questions as well maybe Im just not used to speaking out my true intentions (like the reasons that were highlighted above).

One book that I definitely want to get back to reading is a book titled:

• How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh