EPT
“The Graph”
![[image loading]](http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/7991/yeahek0.jpg)
In life, most people, if not all people, will experience a romantic relationship or romantic yearnings. If not, well then I am expressly sorry for you.
What I aim to do here is not to turn love, or lack of it, into a formula or some kind of pre-conceived notion of what love is. Love and relationships are purely your own experiences, the thoughts and feelings you go through cannot be quantified or explained rationally. This explanation merely points out what I believe to be the different steps in the quest for amative glory. Yeah!
Ok, above is “The Graph”; in regards to this piece of writing it is indeed the graph to end all graphs. What looks like a simple unclosed triangle with a few numbers around it, is in fact symbolic of a complex network of emotions.
It is really quite simple, and something that shall be discussed…now.
The numbers and what they mean:
Zero:
Zero means nothing. We knew that before did we not? Zero is the absence of everything in this case it refers to the state which a person is in when they have no feelings of want for a specific person. Simply put, in state zero, you won’t have a ‘crush’ on anyone; you will not feel romantic feelings towards anyone. I also call this a ‘clean slate’. In this state you are at your peak of singleness, this is where a lot of people are. It is the uncertain stage for most, as most people don’t know exactly who it is they will meet, and what kind of things those people will do to their mindset. In other words, you could meet a prospective partner and they do all sorts of mentally disruptive things to you, it’s rather quite nice at times.
One:
If you are in state 1 you are in the intermediary state between ‘nothing’ and ‘something’. What I mean by this is that you are now seeing that there is someone you may be developing feelings for. It is the slight twinge of acknowledgement that someone out there tickles your fancy. This can be confused with lust quite easily, more for guys than for girls (since guys are the only horny ones right? Bm bm tss). The reason I say that though, is not a question of who wants sex more, I believe girls and guys want sex equally…guys just tend to show it more. Girls have their anti-slut mechanisms that prevent them from being able to speak openly about how much they’d like to grab a guy and have their way with him. As a side note: I wish society was like that.
Back onto the real topic at hand here though, state 1 is the state where your mind will be infiltrated with amative, lusty, romantic and positive feelings towards another human being – oh how nice. For me, I think I can comfortably be in state 1 at most times, as it makes life more exciting. Now this isn’t to say I have a crush on every girl, it’s more like having options with a number of girls, without having fully developed feelings for any one of them. It is lust mixed with carefree flirting and so forth that develops these 1 state relationships. Truly though states 1 and 0 are not too far removed from one another, I don’t consider any real breaking of a ‘clean slate’ until you move into a state 2. Which brings up the next number, as typically 2 does follow 1, unless you are counting down for something. In which case, stop doing that, there are more important things to be doing than counting backwards, immersing your thoughts in this for example.
Two:
Well now, 2 is an interesting state, it is indeed the converse state to state 4, yet in a positive way. It is the step before love and utter adoration and one of the nicest states to be in; unless you are a commitment phobic sort of individual, in which case you directly bypass love and do not collect $200 and throw yourself into a downwards spiral. But let’s not talk of such negativity until later; let’s soak up the ambience and talk of state 2.
The half-step before 1 and 2 is indeed 1.5. State 1.5 is unofficial, but it can be summed up as your feelings of adoration growing in an exponential manner towards another person. Well, it could be this way with any normal friendship, but in this case I mean in a romantic sense. State 1.5 and leading into 2 is where you begin the emotional rollercoaster, the excitement, the anticipation, anxiety and overall feeling of encapsulation by your feelings. In this state, you are constantly learning about the object of your affection, striving to know them, getting more engrossed in them. Sure this sounds like it borders on obsession, but in the end you do have slight obsession with the target of your desires do you not? The greatest feeling of course, is the overwhelming sense of ‘beginnings’ and the lack of staleness in the relationship. This person is most likely relatively new to your world, and then suddenly they walk right into it without even a single warning…how rude. The fact that everything is new is just like experiencing anything great for the first time, you feel a sense of longing for them, and you want to call them up, talk to them for hours about anything; you simply want to be in their presence – you want to keep them in your world.
It can also be a tumultuous period, as you don’t quite know where things are going to lead. If you’ve been here many times before, then you generally learn how much interest you should show towards the other person before they get scared and run away at your overbearing insistence on being part of their world.
Now, for the sake of all things good and pure, you hope that your feelings are reciprocated; you hope they are mutual feelings. In general, you hope you aren’t looked upon with animosity and your feelings rescinded before they even have a chance to bloom. In other words – you hope they like you back.
Whilst you are truly in state 2, you are also in a state of confusion; namely; ‘Where do I go from here?’ It’s almost as if you’re on an island in the middle of the ocean, eventually you’re going to have to make a decision or you’ll die. Jumping in the water and swimming might work, but there could be sharks…they might bite you. Well that was rather melodramatic, but it stresses my point well enough. You’ll have to consider your options, you’ll have to take a risk and make a break for that inland haven. Either way there is always a risk of drowning or being taken down by a Japanese whaling vessel along the journey. I digress.
To jump from state 2 into 3 is almost always going to be a positive; it requires mutual admiration and will often be quite a long lasting feeling. The problem now, is that should problems arise in the future (as they very frequently do) the two (or six of you if you’re into the whole polyamory thing) of you are now inextricably emotionally attached. Any break up here is going to leave the two of you almost certainly emotionally affected in a negative way. Neither of the two ex-connected people are going to be thrilled about it for a while. But let’s hope that all relationships always work! Then we can paint smiley faces in the sunshine and drink frosty lemonade, yay!
As you can see in “The Graph” there is a bridge between 2 and 4, as indicated by the incredibly obvious red line (the IORL?). Anyhow, that IORL signifies that you will not always reach state 3, which is indeed love – instead, and what happens frequently, is that one of the people involved will reach state 3 before the other is fully aware what is going on. Simply said, someone could be in state 3 whilst the other is in state 2 (or low and behold state 1). Guys, if you’re in state 3 whilst she’s only in state 1…please, go and use the internet and find out what the term AFC means. I’ll cover the rest of what could go horribly wrong with the next number, that timeless classic, number 3.
Three:
Human society has been consumed and overwhelmed at this concept for many, many years. Poetry has been made, art has been created, songs have been written and wars have been fought over this very thing. It has existed within human society for the longest time anyone can possibly hope to imagine. It fills almost everyone’s daily life – it is the essence, fulfilment and sense of completeness of the world. It is something that permeates into every structure or foundation of anything that exists (ok maybe a bit too far) – it is in fact…ham…no wait, I mean love. Yeah, that’s right love, what a simple little word to create such fuss…it isn’t as cool a word as dichotomous but still it is fairly important I believe.
Simply said, state 3 is love. I would try to explain it, but then again…no one really has been able to succinctly define it, and I don’t think words will do it justice, I think it’s a fairly serious kind of thing – not to be taken lightly anyhow. Love is good I suppose, love can be many things – a stab in the heart, the ring of the school bell, the sound of children’s laughter (not a child molesting allusion…please), the cool breeze through your hair, the sun shining on a beautiful and flawless ocean. Yeah, that is enough flowery descriptions for now. State 3 is love; I’m going to say its good – now we’ll leave number 3 at that.
Four:
That was a shame; we were only in love for a small while there. But let us continue with our hearts now sunken and shrivelled, I do hope you can wipe your tears away and continue reading. Please, here is a tissue now do join me in my quest for reaching the end, it’s a hard road ahead into realms of depression and questions of self-worth, but hey – this is just an explanation.
State 4 is indeed the departure from state 2 and state 3, it is the place where you will feel the most emotionally unstable; the place where you question almost every little thing pertaining to what went wrong, what could’ve been and why you aren’t still in the ‘moment’ filled with happiness and joy (sounds like Christmas – but…it isn’t.). In this situation you will often think you might still have a chance of getting it back together with them, you might still be in your own personal state 3, whilst your ‘ex’ is now in a state 4 or even 5 (You hope they aren’t in a state 0 already, how heartless they would be if that were to happen.). Now, almost definitely you will not have a chance to get it back together, unless it was a silly break up which was done in the heat of the moment. Usually once it’s over, it’s truly over. You’ll be in a critically reflective state of mind at this point and you will be in a state of mental and emotional unrest. Some people deal with it well and move onto state 5 quite fast. This all depends on how long your feelings were allowed to develop towards the other person however.
State 4 is one where you don’t want to be for too long, as it leads to desolation that permeates into every aspect of your life. It’s almost as if there is a permanent bias on everything you do that is infiltrated by thoughts of ‘what you used to have’ and ‘what went wrong’. Usually it’s the simple realisation that you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get on with life that leads to state 5.
Five:
State 5 isn’t too bad; it’s almost the end of this horrible experience which is the ‘relationship comedown’. Your thoughts will drift back to old times, the way he or she smiled at you, held you…the special look they gave you when…oh sorry, I’m breaking your heart all over again aren’t I? What I really mean is that you are almost at the end of this downfall and will be ready to get back into the game again. This is the period which can be considered the cool-down between relationships. It’s like when someone says “Oh they just broke up…they need time to sort their feelings out before they can think about seeing anyone else.” For guys, this cool-down period can be anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes…ok I’m kidding, but generally speaking guys will have a quicker cool-down period. Unless of course they are very emotionally sensitive – but I think really, that the best way to get over old feelings is to create new ones, fresher ones which make you feel good about yourself again (if not only to relive the same horrible two-sided triangle experience once more).
Final thoughts:
Now that you’re over this set of events, you’ll probably just repeat this a few times until you find the ‘right’ person. As cliché as it may sound, I think there is a correct person for everyone. In fact I think there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of ‘right’ people for you – you just don’t have enough time to filter through them all. Besides, would you really want to do that to yourself?
Don’t get too hung up on thinking that the most perfect person for yourself you’ll ever meet, could be ‘beaten’ by someone else you’ll never meet. Just be happy and know that you’re at the top of the triangle – just be careful of your footing or you might fall into the nothingness of 0 again.
Damn, I didn’t mean to sound pessimistic right at the end there…I have to end this with positivity. Happy, sunshine, moonlight, smiles, hugs, kisses, ice cream, succulent cherries and laughter.
Cheerio!
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