Must love be two sided?

As already hinted I have had a lifelong fascination with the possibility of Platonic relationship. The idea that people can desire each other for who they are, rather than what they are and so express that desire in non-physical terms.

I discover today that my now departed muse may never have desired me physically. I'm sure there was something originally, but it was lost in the spiritual explorations.

However this raises the possibility that the spiritual relationship may have been more one sided two!

I remember an old girlfriend who got caught up on this problem twice. Firstly when she was on acid she kept asking me whether I was "on her trip" or on somebody elses trip. That experience on the wind swept remote sand dunes of Terschelling island, Netherlands, was very eye opening seeing the mind workings of 6 friends completely fall apart - I remained straight to check all went well. It made total sense because my mind began to fall apart with them - it is just that I remembered it all very well afterwards. "trip" was a word they started using meaningfully only after the acid came up. Each person was zoning out in their own unfolding stream of creative consciousness. What was bizarre was that trips kept crossing over when people talked so that halucinations would spread around the group, even I - the sober one - could see what they were talking about even though for me it was just an interpretation of visual data, rather than a convincing hallucination. People were calling people into their trips, and sometimes more fringe people would take a while to see what was being described. My girlfriend (as best as her spaced out consciousness could be) was very taken by this feature of her trip, unsure how it was hers and whether I was on her trip or not.


Exactly the same thing happened when we split up and I had to be honest with her I had never really loved her. That was destroying for her because she then had the experience that her love was a "trip" that I had not been on.

Well its karma isn't it because maybe this profound experience that has driven my last 9 years, and which I have waited my whole life for was actually just a "trip". I called to my muse to enter my trip but she didn't come, and so she became simply an object of fantasy and hallucination through which I could explore my own "trip" and mind.

Deep down I think I am actually happinest about this narrative because it means that there was no responsibility to her, there was no real connection, loss or gain, infact it may have been simply a powerful dream. Hmmm except I did know that something terrible was going to happen, and had happened... so there was some physical evidence for a connection. I am still to find out from her sister if there was any real connection. I knew we were very "good friends", I as a man am still to find out quite what that meant ;-)

Maybe I'm beginning to realise that for women at least it is the body which drives the mind, not the other way around. Irony there when it is men who are stereotyped by women as the physically obsessed sex... but of course that is simply women projecting their desires onto men ;-)

Someone who worked here had an even closer connection. He suddenly saw a girl he used to sleep with staring at him from the other side of the street. They had not met in years but he was sure it looked like her. He was with his wife so couldn't do anything, but she just stared and stared till he was gone. The next day he got a call that she had been killed the previous day in a bike accident.

So is love always a "trip" and does one initiate it and pull the other in, or is there destiny which brings people together from outside, or is it just luck that people have mutual desire which brings them together inside, or is it simply bloody hard work if that is what you want. I can say the last is not true alone because I have tried to make a relationship from scratch but without a starting spark nothing happens.

Amazing that after so much consideration the court is still out here. I'm clear on one thing - the narrative you use depends upon your mood! I'm just getting "out of love" with everyone I ever met, and so the "trip" theory seems quite good today. But I have only yesterday liked the destiny theory.