Love, I used to say to myself at Balbec, is what we feel for a person; our jealousy seems rather to be directed towards that person's actions; we feel that if she were to tell us everything, we might perhaps easily be cure of our love. However skillfully jealousy is concealed by him who suffers from it, it is very soon detected by her who has inspired it, and who applies equal skill in her turn. She seeks to put us off the scent of what might make us unhappy, and easily succeeds, for, to the man who is not forewarned, how should a casual remark reveal the falsehoods that lie beneath it? We do not distinguish this remark from the rest; spoken apprehensively, it is received unheedingly. Later on, when we are alone, we shall return to this remark, which will seem to us not altogether consistent with the facts of the case. But do we remember it correctly? There seems to arise spontaneously in us, with regard to it and to the accuracy of our memory, a doubt of the sort which, in certain nervous conditions, prevents us from remembering whether we have bolted the door, no less after the fiftieth time than after the first; it would seem that we can repeat the action indefinitely without its every being accompanied by a precise and liberating memory. But at least we can shut the door again for the fifty-first time. Whereas the disturbing remark exists in the past, in an imperfect hearing of it which it is not within our power to re-enact. Then we concentrate our attention upon other remarks which conceal nothing, and the sole remedy, which we do not want, is to be ignorant of everything in order not to have any desire for further knowledge.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 55
"Love, I used to say to myself at Balbec, is what we feel for a person; our jealousy seems rather to be directed towards that person's actions . . ." Proust draws an interesting distinction between love and jealousy, associating love with the person and jealousy with the person's actions. You could argue that this is an artificial distinction, although I suspect that, as with most things, he's on to something. I've fallen for women before I ever knew anything about their actions, and their innate being never made me jealous, whereas it was something they did, consciously or unconsciously, that made me jealous. The problem is that this worldview re-enforced Marcel's desire to keep Albertine as a captive; if he could control her actions he could control his jealousy, and thus stabilize their relationship. However, while not every action is an expression of our essential nature - and I'm not simply talking about lying and cheating because lying and cheating can be part of our essential nature - I would argue that most actions are an expression of us as a person. The actions are just the expression of who we are. If we're not doing anything then it's easier for the person to impose their perception of us onto us, and thus it is only through our actions that we express our true selves. And this in turn would bring us back to Marcel's desire to control Albertine because in the end his love is only about himself anyway. [This is what happens when you get involved in a summer reading group with David Kite and Chuck Bashaw to discuss Sufi mysticism]
And obviously we've made this point before, but it's rather amazing how much time and effort we spend destroying the same relationships that we pray to have. My current SO would rather have her fingernails pulled out by pliers than talk about our relationship. When I was dating LBG we fell into the trap of talking about our relationship so much that it was exhausting, and at a certain point I said to her, "I think we need to spend less talk talking about our relationship, and more time living it.," which she understood and we struck a more happy balance. Oddly, for a person who dissected and analyzed everything down to the atomic level, I don't think Marcel actually spent much time talking to Albertine about their relationship. Rather, I think he mainly lectured her, or, more accurately, hectored her, about his understanding of the nature of their relationship and her failure to follow the guidelines that he had reached in isolation. If I were Marcel's friend, after giving him a friendly dope slap to the back of the head, I would have quoted Marcus Aurelius (because, well, it always come back to Marcus) "All men are made one for another; either then teach them better or bear with them." Doubtless, he'd then say that he was trying to teach her, leading me to dope slap him again, and say, "OK, let's try this approach," and I'd quote the Brain from Pinky & the Brain, "Focus Pinky! Stop thinking so much and live your damn life and be thankful she's in it, idiot." I mean, it would be in French so it wouldn't sound so harsh. Of course, I'd have to learn French first, but you get the idea.
And, seriously, spellchecker, you don't know how to spell "unheedingly?" What has happened to the English language? We've become intellectually rachitic. Wait, stupid spellchecker, you don't recognize rachitic? I fear this is going to turn into an eternally recurring loop.
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