Why the Lover Whispers Sweet Nothings

I'm sure you've all heard of word association, yes? Good- think on this.

In experiments the same response is given to different words- both the words sex and father, for example, would make a victim of incest wince when repeated at intervals. Jung called this a “perseveration” of the instinct or reaction, and we see it in a watered down form among lovers who find that everything triggers a memory of their loved one.
As cute and romantic, where lovers are concerned, it is still a psychic disturbance.

“Sometimes a complex will become associated with certain words which, although seemingly neutral and unrelated, are in fact linked to an underlying disturbance. Moreover, sometimes a person will draw attention to an underlying emotional problem by using or repeating certain words or phrases which, when linked together, hint at its existence.”- from his Archetypes

Here we are concerned with the lover who suffers this disturbance in silence, either conscious of it or not he is infected. He is driven to make patterns in his conversation or behavior that act as pointers which he uses to drive our attention (or his) towards the illness, and by doing so he alleviates the sadness or loneliness that comes with it.
Its the earmark of the so called ‘hopeless romantic’- the man either burns with desire or the indignity of loneliness and we find him uttering these love words sporadically as something like psychic balm for his malady.
Instead of the purpose being that of edifying the object of his love with the words he uses concerning it ( I love you pathologies) , his selfish, mildly unconscious motive is that of redeeming the chill of that sadness inside; it alleviates his condition with the warmth these words carry and the images they provoke.

This or we find that this practice of repetition gladdens our subject because it verifies his competence in being a Romeo.

For every conviction, for every second or hour that he spends dissecting his feelings the specter of love comes alive again and into his lonely world it injects those feelings of hope, desire, faith and anticipation that without a human is rendered sterile.
Or confused and frustrated.
Even if his mistress never yields, the experience has granted him the theater he thrills in, where "thrill" is either a rapture or torture depending on our human’s purpose and nature.

Therefore, his thoughts and feelings, the very words he uses to express them are not as much the agents he utilizes for clarity and meaning as something like arrows he shoots at his object- they are more like the opiates he uses on himself.

 

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Seasoned liars, rumour mongers and assorted conspirators also mix whispers when they talk to give the dramatic effect of what they say is comig from their hearts and give credence that it should be 'true'. This heart2ears communication technique mostly works well.

 

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In that scenario, a man doesn't need opiates. He's already full of a prime motivator. Why is this opiate necessary? Why does he bother with using it on him? Are you imagining a weak man? You don't think 'sweet nothings' are just part of a mating ritual? You think that 'sweet nothings' are to satiate a complex? Hmm.

I'm not much of one for "sweet nothings". I'm pretty open with my emotions for the most part and can dorkulate my way into the pants of those who would have me. However, I know guys, and I know that at least some of them aren't whispering the stuff out of a complex... unless you're trying to say "i want to get laid" is a complex.. which is debatable I suppose. I don't think it's usefull to classify it that way since it's so damned basic. Most guys are somewhat linear in this regard and have somewhat of a complex about getting sex for sure, but it's the one that comes directly from their pants. I think chicks sometimes have a similar, though different complex regarding the vajoina? Having a cock and cock related juices motivating your actions and thoughts tends to form some sort of evidence in personality eh?

I like your idea, but I think there are probably a number of exceptions since it's been my experience that ideas people that motivate people are highly varied. Maybe there's a theme, like "sex" or "love" or whatever, but people associate so much different stuff from their own experiences with "sex" or "love" that the oddest things can be focal points or mental trinkets or oddities or whatever. Troy Mcclure, he sleeps with the fishes - see? Anyway, I think you're right that a complex can motivate someone to behave like you're talking aboot. I think you're also right that the words could be an opiate for him, but I'm certain that generally they are utilized with the intent the be an opiate for all involved parties if you see what I'm sayin nudge nudge and all. No?

 

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I agree with you to an extent wes and have told her this already. She kinda boiled the whole thing down so that all love is a disease.
However:
She does have a point. life is pain and many a person will ignore the obvious if they have some one in there life that they feel makes all the pain worthwhile. The real issue comes to bear when it is that very person that is causing a majority of the pain. The person will continually remind themselves that they suffer because the they love the other person so much. The other person means so uch to them that they can justify living through hell simply by telling themselves that they are in love.

Also, men are generally weak.

don't lie wes!! you mean all those things you told me were just pillow talk!?! I feel so cheap.

true enough. however, the number that say shit and mean it is far smaller than the number that just want to get laid. But, that is the way society would have it.
gotta stop this train now, or we are goign to go in to one hell of a tangent.

you hurt the cause of you own gender wes. oh well...

Absolute brilliance wes. truly, where would we be without such mindblowing observations. (ok, i will quit being an ass now)
you speak true enough though. unfortunately, you love to make things overly simplistic.

It's all fear.

simpsons reference?

Problem is that she is speaking in a more psychological aspect in which the person wouldn't intend for the words to be an opiate. its a subconscious kinda thing that acts as a coping mechanism.
damn the id.

 

Everno:

Castro in a nutshell, huh? Not really.

Anatole France, in a famous line stolen from his novel and made 'quote', says the things distinguishing man from animals is lies and literature.
But short of calling our subject a liar (for he is not), I believe that with this character what he feels from his heart he feels as true and unquestionable, its only that he may be blind to the source of his thrust. This type has a "romance" that bears the sting of martyrdom- he sacrifices for his lover, he agonizes from a distance that is made all the more desirable for him by negation.

You know how rain is made don't you? In the air there are small scraps of pollution or particles called hygrospic nuclei that serve as something like a seed around which the water molecules will take shape and make drops of rain water. That seed inside is the smallest ingredient in the whole thing with all the water built up around it swollen with overmuch. No seed, no rain- this is why some form of pollution is needed.

The object of his love is that seed- its important to him, no one denies this- but it makes up the smallest part of the whole. All the rest is exaggeration made mostly of....water. See?

Wes:

I've just been accused of using umbrellosophy (my own term for a thesis that assumes it knows all of humanity and so butchers it with umbrella terms);I notice you've used 'most', 'not all', 'some', 'perhaps' and 'maybe' alot which is healthy but I, in my pigheadedness, wish to make a point.

You come off as the guy who thinks with his boxers first to whom all romance is biology, not art. I'll be the last to say you don't love your wife and you telling your squeeze how wonderful she is is just that- she's wonderful and you chose to tell her.

And as for calling our species a 'weak' man, you said it, my boy. Not me.
However, its not sensitivy that makes one weak and nor does this need for human warmth- it only lowers our thresholds and manipulates our safety measures and guards- this is why Love is either repulsive or frightening.
I am, however, singling out the lover stuck in distance and silence- the Cyrano de Bergerac with his long nose whispering to Christian all the love words that make women swoon:

"...To compensate for his fixed belief that no woman can ever love him on account of this affliction, he has made himself renowned in Paris for his personal bravery and the charm of his verse."

On the micro scale, this brand of lover harbors a small Cyranno in his body when his lady won't have him.
You're different since you already have yours, Wes.

 

Mephura:

And so "because I am in love" is what they tell themselves?

 

Come now, gendanken.
you throw an idea out there, fleshed out in a was that makes it seem as though you know your subject and now you ask me what it is that your subject thinks, and how it is that they act?
really...
How can you arrive to any of your conclusions without knowing something about the question at hand?
It's like trying to explain calculus without knowing algebra.

and what makes you so sure i would know the answer to your question?
Am I one of the hopeless romeos that you are targeting?

 

Gendanken :

In many cases the feeling of love is built upon during the utterance of the sweet nothings. Once the initial attraction is established, the romantic will then wish to build upon that to approach a state of feeling he (or she - this is not limited only to men) would consider to be good... love. Your point is correct - the word love itself conjures images of that state. The lover, wishing to be in love, will do what he can to achieve it. Word association - the lover's sweet nothings act more as nourishment for his own feeling rather than his target's - although he may not be aware of it and believe his target is indeed that. The more he tells himself he is in love, the more in love he becomes, to some extent.

I've come to believe that this is a part (although I'm not sure how much a part) of the relatively recent phenomenon of internet relationships. Obviously, pheromones play no part at all, so what leads to the feeling of being "in love" in this medium? A major part must be the lover building an image of the other - or as gendanken has put it before "The story we make up for others". In this case, that story is interpreted by the lover and built upon, leading to an image. Thus when he whispers to that image, the lover then feeds his own creation, and his own feeling of being "in love" with that creation, rather than the reality of the object of his affections. The two might not be completely dissimilar, and there of course must be at least a token similarity for it to happen at all - but the point stands.

I do like the raindrop analogy. That dust particle could also be, in this case, the lover's desire to be in love. The water his building an image of his object around that desire, and projecting his feelings onto that image. There are many possibilities here - your first post covered one, and I think my own reply here might have dragged away from the initial topic a little.

 

FW

That's beautiful and dead on I think.

That's how the mind works. I saw a doodad recently about how 25% of an experimental group was convinced that fictitious childhood events were a real part of their history when, over a period of a few weeks a suggestion was repeated "do you remember when we... (insert fictitious memory)". I believe the researches were claiming that to the subjects, it became part their history.

So I think we draw on our context, our experience in the way you just described quite clearly as I see it anyway. This constructs a marker we create which establishes the boundaries of a subset of our experience, centered around interaction with the object of the romantic notion. That subset is assembled into an automoton of sorts, existing as a pure subjective abstract in the mind of the person on either end of the interaction, in a sense governing our interaction with it. I suppose that's the thing gendy was talkign about with the "picture we paint of them" or whatever (pardon the misquote).

 

to say that love is a disease seems to me to be inaccurate. the man gendanken describes has a very serious problem. what he feels is a perversion of the thing people call love. what he loves is a delusion, an idealized fantasy. his "utterances" are not an expression of his feelings, but a reinforcement of the idea that he has these feelings. he is trying to convince himself of the fact. this is not to say that he is not devoted, but his devotion is to the ideal, the perfect form upon which the actual object of his affections is loosely based. in truth, he loves nothing but the "water" as you put it. to other people though, love is only a word, it is the ideas of affection and togetherness to which this word is linked that are relevant. :m:

 

I can't resist a poetic intermezzo:


W. B. Yeats:

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

See another reference -- for example the Old Bard:


To the Celestial, and my Soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia.
/.../
Doubt thou, the Stars are fire,
Doubt that the Sun doth move,
Doubt Truth to be a liar,
But never doubt, I love.

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers: I have not Art to reckon my groans;
but that I love thee best,
O most Best, believe it. Adieu.

Thine evermore most dear Lady,
whilst this machine is to him,
Hamlet.

 

Gendy... my bitter-sweet;

Good thread. Insightful.

I agree with the spirit of what you assert - our individual understanding of love varies and that understanding serves to feed an underlying desire - but fail to align myself with your belief that a 'disturbance', whatever, is necessarily a negative phenomenon on the human psyche. I think your example of incest victims(that word is used loosley) only serves to strengthen your entire assertion - whispering 'sweet nothings' fills a void left by a negative 'disturbance'.

Is it a stretch to believe that people not victims of incest may very well wince when the words 'sex and father' are mentioned? I think not. I think it's a lot easier to draw a negative conclusion to that response when you focus on incest victims alone.

Anyway, from that opening assertion on I fail to follow the logic.

In my experience, just as wes... pointed out, my reasons for whispering 'sweet-nothings' served different purposes/desires at different times. Drawing a parallel between the whisper of 'sweet nothings' to filling a gap left by some tramatic experience evades me, in the context of your opener. I think the moment bornes the purpose.

 

Mephura:

People look to reinforce a point, in the way a scientist will ask his peers for feedback on experiments to compare with what he already knows.
Here, I've looked down on your research and wondered
at your using simple arithmetic in place of algebra for your calculus (your replies to Wes).
This:

The other person means so uch to them that they can justify living through hell simply by telling themselves that they are in love.
- you

In a way, reinforces this:

For every conviction, for every second or hour that he spends dissecting his feelings the specter of love comes alive again and into his lonely world it injects those feelings of hope, desire, faith and anticipation that without a human is rendered sterile.
Or confused and frustrated- gendanken

You also mention that our person would not intend for their words to be an opiate.

"Problem is that she is speaking in a more psychological aspect in which the person wouldn't intend for the words to be an opiate."- you

I am calling them opiates, in addition to labeling this condition a possible disease. By condition do I, like fireguy would have it, really mean 'love' in general 'cuase, you know, I'm bitter? No.
Some fall, get hurt and move on without wincing. Others fall, scrape their knee and move on with their battlescars yet still have experienced a healthy wonder.

Others will break- remove their object and they are driven to pscyhophysical impoverishment. They will not eat, wil not sleep, more and more they look as if they're dying. I just described an AIDS patient.
Therefore, given the chance their 'love' gives that injection of " hope, desire, faith and anticipation that without a human is rendered sterile.
Or confused and frustrated."..... the way our AIDS patient will inject inhibitors into his body.
"Healthy' would be two solitudes touching and making love all the while remaining intact. "Love".

Wolf:

True. The 'during' ones are only part of the whole, I've made no room here to include them. Its the 'because of' ones I find interesting.

I believe we're seeing eye to eye here- your word of 'nourishment' only reinforces the AIDS analogy.

No one said the object was not important, however we must look into those fascinating little tidbits of unconscious prirorities!
We can get silly and say a man's love is only an unconscious memory of his mother's breast and his desire for it back again we find he expresses in a guise called 'love'. This he gives to a female that does not now she's only, techinally, a cow for his nourishment.
This is silly- but we are seeing eye to eye here.

The key here is that he is unconscious of his focus, the 'source of his thrust' that I have up there in my second post in this thread:
I believe that with this character what he feels from his heart he feels as true and unquestionable, its only that he may be blind to the source of his thrust.

Now- is this necessarily a good or a bad thing? Harmless?
Can we fault people for simply saying the same thing (love) but in a different language (method)?

B.i.n.g.o.
With distance comes enchantment.

I was also moved to wonder when exactly did physical love become romantic love and I found it was in the postponing of our mating. This left an unfullfilled longing of the flesh to continue its race as programmed by mating, and in the face of morality and Christian pathologies the lust was forced to turn inward and keep itself busy- but how? With imagery and craving that corrupted down to wishful thinking- this served to tame his lust. Poetry.
No longer could the pubcent boy fullfill his task as an animal, so now we find he has resorted to the potery of romance that he dresses his objects with.

And this is the very thing that happens in these internet phenomeona you spoke of:
Distance denies the possession. This agitates the body. Then tortures the mind.

Therefore, these internet phenomenas are small replicas of the civilization of man- the distortion of both nature and behavior with distance. Here, its on the micro scale.

Not really.
I'm always put in mind of that stupid bitch Bovary:

"And she repeated to herself 'I have a lover! I have a lover!' and the thought gave her a delicious thrill, as though, she were beginning a second puberty."

Fireguy:

Why? Becuase you can't see how a person brought up 'normally' would wince at the mentions of 'sex' with 'father'?

"Romance' means shit to a reptile as does 'incest' to one never having experienced it. Its not the spectotor this thread is about, buddy.

The married man whispers them for completely different reason that the lover who has not came, saw, and conquered yet does.

This is what I'm getting at.

You I believe whisper this shit for some booty.

 

And she thought i was getting worked up. if anything, i find this whole thing kinda funny.
Especially now.
I will reply in a bit an explain why. i might not have enough time atm, so it will have to wait.
I will give you a hint though: it is something that wes should be very familiar with.

 

I'm thinking the similarity between object and image is the key to the long term - the romantic would not be aware of the difference, or as you said "unconscious of his focus". As to whether it's a good or bad thing - I would have to ask if we're considering short or long term. If you consider long term compatibility, the deluded lover's image might prove to be quite different from reality - and therefore failure and possibly dissillusion would be the result.

Interesting theory - and the more I think about it the more it makes sense. I also have a theory regarding the evolution of love, and perhaps it was a combination of factors.
I got to thinking about the so-called "7-year itch" once, and realised that after 7 years (or thereabouts) a human child bereft of one parent could survive quite well. Human love might have evolved as a result of this - children fending for themselves at younger ages would not have survived so well (ie - parents mate, father leaves, mother forced to raise child by herself) as those who had both parents raise them for a certain period. Those who exhibited an attachment to both mother and offspring would have more surviving children than those who did not. This trait would have evolved long before what you speak of though -and perhaps we can tie it all together and assume that "love" existed very early on, and later humans turned it into something different again as you describe. I'll have to put more thought into it though.

*chuckles* and there we have the female version. Illustrates the point rather well, doesn't it? The object is as nothing in the face of her being in love.

 

Fenris:

Long term or no, always remember that golem.

One look at the 'dead fishes' born in the Lebensborn programs of our Nazis and we realize that warmth is the mammal's trademark.
I've looked to the reptile brain to find we have it in common (its brain) but the lizard's blood is cold and indifferent. We know the lower registers of the human brain mediate these 'magical' love feelings, yet these lower registers are reptitilian.

Two bodies, same seed, but a whole universe of difference. Fucking odd, no?

The female is obsessed with sex- with the act, she is a prostitute. With the product, she is a mother.
The male is obsessed with sex- with the act, he is a prostitute. With the product, he is a mother.

Same in both sexes- but in the woman we find not so much a burning to love but one for being loved. Most times, its sufficient enough that she feels desired so we find she puts little into her blooming relationships where he is breaking his back for her: she's an attention worm and as we all know, dogs pass them in their feces when they've overstayed their visit. This is the point where we find her clueless and crying at home with a broken heart wondering what went wrong and she'll never understand if we explain to her that in 'love' she's only a parasite.

Therefore, the stark difference between our sexes (and yes, i'm umbrellasophizing):
If he only lives when he loves, she only lives when loved.

Therefore, I'm more than willing to blame all the agony heard round the world come from love on our women.

 

I agree with that. But why does it happen this way?

The importance of *being* loved -- because women are programmed to "receive" (ie. the seed), and men are programmed to "give" (ie. the seed)?

(If you give, you don't have to worry about the given thing anymore. The receiver has it, and has to look to what she'll do with it: After mating, the man can simply walk away, while the woman will (originally) have her life changed by bearing a child -- that's the source of this instinct.)

And then, in our wonderfully pathologized Christian-based society, this "programming" is brought to extremes -- and we find the common belief that a woman is nothing if she is not married. And she should feel bad if she's not married or at least engaged. Women are supposed to please -- and if they fail to please, they have missed their life's objective.
And many women, and men, still believe in this.

 

It's a misunderstanding that the disenfranchisement of women is a Christian thing - it's actually cultural. It happens when people give more weight to traditional gender roles (social/evolutionary) than the complementary natures of each.

Otherwise, it's true as Futurama said: Men are from Omicron Persei 7, women are from Omicron Persei 9...

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Sweet nothings... maybe because women respond to expression, and men like to please? Sweet, because the context is intimacy - nothings, because then the content isn't so important.

 

Huh, it is mostly about WHO says it -- the LOVER, not what is being said. And whatever he says, is ... ummm.
Like when Brian Ferry could sing the telephone book, and I would still think he has the beautifullest voice ever.


Ah, a vexatious memory: More than this -- you know there's nothing.

 

Rosamagika:

I hope you realize that by ‘seed’ I meant the brain structures that we share with reptiles.

Now- I’ve debated with myself on your outlook as well, is it because she bears the brunt of our species? That she’s contaminated Humanity with these needs men won’t give her when pregnant and lo behold there’s a bloody Christian coming down from Constantinople to aggravate her condition?
“Romantic Love” as distortion of “Maternal Love”.
But this would not account for the sick male- Bovaries come in both sexes.
And both are enamored of love.

I even tried consulting with the plant kingdom to make the answer to your question “But why does it happen this way?” scientific (having found philosophers only speaking of her with resentment)…..…but that’s horticulture. Not psychology.

See, this where I got stuck.
But I found how simple it is to do away with negatives by throwing them at a Christian (or any of its mutant forms- Spinoza, for one).

Jenyar is right- the female 'lover' with her superficial vindictiveness is born from a culture that romances her body. Look to any Babylonion love song or a rotting Egyptian wall and there you will find pretty words and images that have lent her that charm of inacessability.
She's given as pure and a prize worth the fighting for whom nations and little boys should fight mountains just to give her a trinket.
Its this cultural artifice that's been heir heirloom through ages and its this that she capitilzies on with no right to; its this idea of Self, a lie, that she uses to justify her making him miserable, and this to me is the ugliest behaviour in the kingdom.

Her body pulses with just as much lust as his and she's just as savage and vulgar- this beautiful charm she'd like to call 'modesty' is really synonymic for 'mindgames'. At five years old she's already a tiny manipulator, having mastered the games adults play and already we find her coercing young boys and grown men with her coquettries.
All becuase she craves the attentions his Desire gives to her- and when his attentions are threatened, there do we see her finally coming alive if only to make him jealous until his Deisre for her is stable again. She will then revert back to being that corpse he puts on a pedestal, dying to be looked at.

Her counterpart is the male too sick to notice, and we find how successful she's been all these ages considering how dead he feels when not loving that creature demanding to be loved.

Yup.

Another thing we must consider is our lovers mistaking the word sacrifice for what may really be simply evidence for love. As in, if one must show the other what they did for that other then whatever they have together sounds more like a tribunal than it does 'true' love.