Tuesday, September 12, 2006

In a book I am reading, one line went like this, "One possesses in another person only what one changes in him." Except, when reading, I made out that fragment as if it were about loce instead of possession. A question formed as I read:

Is love a form of possession?

My first instinct was to answer "yes," because of a feeling of propriety I have towards my wife. At the same time, I wonder if these feelings, while certainly connected, are distinct and independant of one another. If the pained, stolen emotion I perceive when even a small part of her drifts toward another, the welling up of that proprietary feeling, is not directly love, but a cause of love, then isn't the statement I thought I read false, even if the actual written statement were true?

When one gives one's self to another person, one is not possessed unless one is accepted. If both parties give themselves over to one another, then a true bond of love forms, a requited love. If then, each person possesses the other in the manner in which he gave himself to the other, does not this exchange of possession form sort of mutual possession? 

Can Unrequited love be the same thing? In some cases I would venture to say that no, it can't be the same thing. Envision a fanatic madly in love with a pop idol. The idol doesn't know the fan and cannot acknowledge his love even in the simplest of ways. This kind of love simply forms an obsession in the fan. On another hand, a one-sided exchange of possession is possible with only side being in love with the other. Imagine a sexual slave who has given themselves over to a dominatrix and who may even love the person they have given themselves to. The domme may acknowledge his feelings even if she does not feel them stir within herself towards the person who has given himself to her. This might be an example of unrequited love as a form of possession, though it is an inverted form in which the possession is given, rather than taken. 

No comments:

Post a Comment