To be afraid to post my thoughts on my own blog is ridiculous

So now, I’m pondering the term “soulmate”. “What is a soulmate,” I asked myself. I couldn’t answer it, so I decided to ask wiki.

Definitions of “soulmates”

I was particularly intrigued by the “scientific soulmates”. “The person that makes you happiest”? I think it’s a rather silly label to give someone, isn’t it? The idea of the soulmate is an antiquated concept…or at least, that is my thought on it.

With the way the world has become more superficial, “deep terms” like “soulmates” have been replaced with lesser terms indicating significantly smaller amounts of commitment required. The banality presented by the journey for “the perfect soulmate” is a large contributor to its diminishing importance in man’s love lives today. Simply put, who has the time to wait around for a “perfect match” anymore? No….we now define almost everything as love, regardless of how much affection we actually hold for that seemingly significant other of ours. We’re back to where I always start….the definition of “love”. So I decided to ask wiki.

Love

I found the biology behind it very interesting:

“Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.”

Never mind what it actually says, the idea here is that your brain chemically creates these illusions of romantic grandeur….which to me makes love similar to the “trip” that acid will surely create for you; this makes me even more skeptical about this term “love”. So then how do you know when you actually love someone (romantically, I mean)?

My friend Kiarah and I had this conversation about friendship and love, and how closely related the two might be. She proposed the theory that if you were to let go of every concept that you’ve been taught about what “love” is and look closely at friendship…then your closest friends are probably the best potential “lovers” that you’ll ever have. We then decided that, of course, this idea will not be accepted by society as a whole because that would label close friends of the same gender as “potential lovers”; in the community that we live in now, where people hold very idealistic concepts of who should be able to “rightfully” love whom, that is a heinous crime. Hence, gay marriage is banned. <.<

I think that her theory might hold some truth…because…well, in my case, I’d most enjoy the company of someone who understands me well, someone that I’m perhaps not afraid to talk to. In regards to that qualification, none of my boyfriends have come close, while many of my close friends have. However, there is also the matter of physical attraction. Despite what people say…I think that physical attraction actually hold significance when making a choice about who you like. Well, perhaps it pales in comparison with personality, but still…you know that almost everyone considers it, even yourself. To that point, my friend replied, “Well, now that is the reason I’m bi. Does it make sense to you? Shouldn’t I be open to the idea that the person I love could be anyone, not just a guy?” I guess that makes sense to me, but since I don’t see myself physically attracted to a girl, I really don’t see the point in it. She says I’m a bit close-minded, but perhaps she’s right. I don’t care really…whether or not I’m close-minded in relations to this, because it’s a matter of personal belief. However, since I do cater to the concept behind her idea, I get really angry when people try to limit others as to who they can hold deep romantic affections for. Seriously…would you like it if you met the man/woman you love…and then you were told it’s wrong to be with them? However, I shall not open that can of worms. I’ll get on a rather long rant.

The point is, how do you put restrictions on love exactly? Well, no matter how it’s done, society does it anyway. Over the course of history, the idea of the “love behind a friendship” has been closely watched by overzealous religious supporters. Instead of typing, I’ll simply refer you to the Decline of Friendship section of the Friendship article. Since homosexuality has long been considered “sinful”, classical boundaries for a friendship has been restricted; fortunately, as the world moved towards humanism and the individual, the strict restrictions resulting from religious constraints have been diminishing in numbers.

However, when I look at it from another point of view, I see that women were less affected by the constraints, and I realized that there is also a certain amount of credit due to a human’s pride, ego, and expectations owed to society. Men have more expectations from society than women, and are rather closely watched to be model examples. Women are allowed to openly express more of those “weak” emotions, which left room for closer friendships. I’ve found that while religious reasons for keeping a distance has been diminishing in popularity, reasons based on how “strong” one wished to be viewed has been more popular. Not to be selective, but Asian culture in particular holds mental and emotional strengths as things to be proud of, and while this rather traditional ideology has been diminishing in popularity as well, the remnants of it in some still-traditional families have been taxing on the mentality of the members of that family. Fulfilling filial and general familial duties is a must, yet affection is never an issue. Does that affect how Asians interact, and are viewed, by more emotionally flexible cultures such as that of America?

Does that, in turn, go full circle to create that cycle of doubt in regards to how valid of an emotion “love” is? Does the created confusion recreate itself? Are we merely a result of generations of inherited doubt? I don’t see many of my American friends questioning love. Oddly, the ones like Kiarah claim to be honorary Asians anyway...so wtf?

Oh my….I typed so much. I must be very tired...these are the thoughts of a tired person. To a nap I go.