Βy Dalida
If you are looking for an answer to this, please don’t read this, you will just waste precious time! The truth is that you already know the answer but your ears just burn to hear it repeatedly. In my endeavour to express my thoughts and analyse certain behaviour patterns, this article may raise more questions than answers. The real question is why WE have made them so complicating. I understand the need to rationalize emotion, although there is no point to it in this case, because you can’t help how you feel about someone or can you?! You basically wish you could.We live our adult lives searching in the side-lines for our perfect match (and of course ‘the perfect’ is subjective). The thing that we have been programmed to look for that is ‘our kind of special’, ‘our type’, ‘good for us’. We have all sat and questioned whether on not that exists and how it works and if we have come across it already. But the question that is troubling me, is that what if you feel something for another and it’s ‘uncontrollable’, there is a distinct connection but you are not each other’s obvious types. I guess the question following this would be, in this situation do types exist or are they used as a means for commitment issues, from both parties.
In the past, it seemed so much easier you just happened to like the other person began to talk and then started to see each other, for me at least. But now, we are looking for all these small but significant details that will fit our own peculiarities – just to makes us believe that we are not compromising. But I think that this is when compromise occurs, that fact that we are not listening to ourselves and striving for the ‘logical’. We compromise our own happiness and passion in order to be merely ‘content’. When did life get so serious?
I do truly comprehend the need to categorize people and that types do exist (not that I totally agree). The majority of people on the planet have types but types change as we grow older and understand that our needs are different so we look for something else, more ‘appropriate’ or ‘suitable’. Have we become so cynical that we are not able to see beyond the end of our own noses? Have we become so cynical that we repress our feelings and cage our instinct, in order to be ‘just ok’? As Slavoj Zizek stated when commenting on ideology “we live in an era of cynical heavenism… cynics are the most naïve people, they live in a very deep way in illusions”. Is that us? Are our lives governed by constant pseudoisms: pseudo-feelings, pseudo-relationships just for pseudo-happiness; a pseudo situation that simultaneously mocks its own ideology and ethos. Is this why we are constantly unhappy with our own lives because we are at constant war with our own thoughts and emotions – denying ourselves opportunities to feel satisfied and a spec for happiness just to satisfy our ability to have a rationale that pseudo-protects us.
I also have a type, I always have; it has changed slightly over the years but several attributes remain unchanged. However, I have recently dared to come out of my comfort zone and accepted that I do have feelings for another who is definitely not my type…that by rationale I would not dare to introduce to my parents. But I have realized that I cannot help how I feel and I am fed up with filling my head with pseudo-ideas that provide me with pseudo-protection. I kept on trying to convince myself that he is not good for me, because I stuck to what I like – or what I thought I like. But if “I like or I am fond of…I would like” are synonyms of “I desire” – well there is the issue. As psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan explained desire is the metonym for manque à être (the lack of being); he contrasts this to manque à avoir (The lack of having), which is associated to the context of demand. To put it more simply, desire pushes for recognition. It is less a question of what we desire as much as it is that we be recognized. The dependence on the other for recognition is responsible for structuring not only our desires, but also even our drives. I have recently recognized this and have become a true believer that I can do whatever I want, once I stop waiting for someone else to tell me that I deserve it. Therefore, the eradication of dependence on the other will release us from our inhibitions that prevent our true drive. In this case, what we desire, being influenced by our environment is something that should be unrealistic – a characteristic that not many people favour but simultaneously agree with the idiom “be careful of what you wish for…” because in most instances (although due to our egoism we deny this) when the desire is received, it is not welcomed any longer.
So in this sense the significant type is what we desire – what we think we want, influenced by our surroundings and our need to feel acceptance by the people we admire and respect – but what if the type comes our way and it is not all what was expected. And the other instance, where the usual type that you go for is never interested in you – I believe this is due to the illusions that we live with, which Zizek discussed; this can be related to the “not good enough for me”.I’m not saying that, that having high standards or being ambitious is a bad thing – in fact I am highly self-motivated and ambitious person and this is what I usually look for. But the key to being released of inane inhibitions is to change the way in which we dream. And yes this can be applied to anything. In addition the usual type can also be what we are used to, which prevents us from stepping out from our comfort zone. This is fine for some people, but unfortunately I am not prepared to sacrifice my feelings or urges just because someone is not my type. Are you?
