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#relationship #loneliness #belonging #community #expectations ✱ James Hillman

work at personal relationship and love

Another thing that therapy pushes is “relationship . You think you’re going to die if you’re … not being in a significant, long-lasting, deep relationship … or that you’re crazy or neurotic or something. You feel intense bouts of longing and loneliness. Those feelings are not only due to poor relationship; they come also because you’re not in any kind of work that makes sense, that matters. You can’t make up for the loss of passion and purpose in your daily work by intensifying your personal relationships.

In a world where most people do work that is not only unsatisfying but also, with its pressures, deeply unsettling; and in a world where there’s nothing more rare than a place that feels like a community, we expect all needs to be met by a relationship. There’s a feeling about a good day-to-day slow. Having a good moment at breakfast, tasting something us very much like being with a lover — it has to do with beauty, this matter of love. And I think all the “work” at personal relationships fucks that up.

For me, what love is about aesthetic and sensuous, and a kind of joy. And when that aspect isn’t functioning, the other person becomes a little bit of a camel, carrying so much weight through the desert of the relationship — your baggage, the other person’s baggage. Love doesn’t result from working at something. So the therapeutic approach to love, of clearing up the relationship , may clear up communication disorders, expression inhibitions, insensitive habits, may even improve sex, but I don’t think it releases love; I don’t think love can be worked at.

non-sexual needs addressed with sex

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