Posts by Brandon Wright54

wearyviper25 said:So what, I just pick fights sometimes because I enjoy watching people lose their minds? Is that really what you think? 😕

The way you described it sounds like that first scenario to me—where you're subconsciously picking fights because you're demanding from someone else the very thing they can't even give themselves.

Understanding why things went south doesn't fix them—not by itself. But it’s the starting line. It’s basically just identifying that pattern we've talked about before. Look, no single method—whether you're talking psychoanalysis, Gestalt, transactional analysis, or whatever else is trendy—is some kind of magic wand. I don't think we actually possess the solution ourselves; we just aren't aware of it yet. These tools are just there to help us spot the issue within our own heads. I brought up this whole new dimension of relationships by looking at conflict through this lens. I've noticed so many couples struggling, convinced that either the relationship is a failure or their partner is the villain, never realizing the glitch might actually be inside them. Most people would probably take that the wrong way—I’m not saying a person *is* the problem, per se—but rather that it's what they're carrying around inside that's causing the friction. Looking at it that way opens up a whole new way to handle relationship issues. People don't have to keep spinning their wheels by denying what's happening; they can actually deal with it.

Hannah White2 said:Honestly, I’m struggling to follow you here. Could you maybe rephrase that or break it down differently? I feel like I’m missing the bridge between your two points.

I don't see the connection between smoking and that endless loop of internal conflict you have going with your partner—so I was wondering where you're drawing the line. I just laid out my take on why people smoke and how we all use different ways to self-destruct.

wearyviper25 said:Sure, I mean—I guess everything in life is some kind of learning experience, but people really need to stop overthinking it.
If someone is constantly picking fights, they’re just going to end up bitter or frustrated—it's inevitable—whereas if you spend your whole life dodging confrontation, you basically become a pushover, or maybe even a coward. It’s all about balance, I guess. 😉

I’m talking about a third dimension here—where you aren't just reacting blindly because you're frustrated, nor are you running away because you're scared. That third way is actually resolving them.

Hannah White2 said:I'm totally with you on that, but (if you ask me)
just observing the fight doesn't magically stop it from happening again or being projected elsewhere.
And I don't mean seeing it play out like some drama on a stage—I mean actually realizing it within yourself.

Now, that whole "within yourself" part is where things get tricky:

Sure, you can see the conflict inside you, but you have to actually *get* it.😕

Real change only happens if that awareness goes deep. It's like knowing smoking is bad for you because of all the health risks—that knowledge alone isn't going to make someone quit.

We're basically saying the same thing here. Real insight is being aware of what's actually going on—recognizing that an internal struggle is just being projected onto the world. We take our own mess and pin it on someone else's internal chaos. Honestly, I don't think people smoke because they know it's unhealthy; that's just a side effect of the habit itself. The actual cause runs much deeper—it's more like addiction or compulsive eating. I'm not entirely sure how much smoking links back to those internal conflicts manifesting externally, though. Could you walk me through how you see that connection?

Hannah White2 said:Look, I’ll give it to you straight—all that talk about transference and being "aware" of it? It doesn't do squat when you're actually in the middle of the heat of the moment. Sure, there's all this drama, and you can sit there and analyze how you're projecting onto someone else... it feels huge right then. Whether that actually leads to some kind of breakthrough is something you'd have to dig through the data to prove, but if you ask me, I’d call it evolution. It’s just the body’s defense mechanism trying to kickstart the healing process for old traumas.
Basically, I'd go as far as to say we instinctively hunt for partners who give us a safe enough space to dump all our emotional trash—mostly because some childhood trauma left us too weak to handle things properly on our own.
It isn't just some "opportunity" to grow; it’s an absolute necessity.

So, you don't agree that lack of awareness fails us during a conflict, especially when we're busy pointing fingers at our partner and highlighting their flaws? Personally, I think being conscious of our own behavior in those moments is exactly what allows us to take ownership of ourselves. If you look at it that way, the conflict is actually happening inside us—it's just being projected onto an external stage. By resolving that outward fight, we're actually settling the internal one, which stops the whole cycle from repeating. When you view conflicts through that lens, relationship problems take on a completely different dimension...

Lisa Hernandez3 said:I’d say absolutely. It’s through those conflicting—well, perhaps new or untested—situations that we really see how we react, where our sensitivities lie, and we can finally start reflecting on why things are the way they are. But I think the conflicts themselves change, along with the opportunities for them to arise, and even our own willingness to invest energy into them. Through experience and learning, we eventually realize that some situations just aren't worth a certain level of confrontation. So, at some point, we might choose to cut it short—especially if we can already foresee the scenario and the eventual outcome. We might take a shortcut by simply saying, "Okay, this is where we stop," because we know exactly why it's happening and we don't want to go any further. Of course, that isn't always obvious to the other person; they might feel like you're just avoiding the core issue—even if they were the ones who triggered it in the first place—when in reality, you're just a few steps ahead of them. It's also quite common in these moments for people to play the emotional card—conflict is often a disguised form of flattery, a provocation, or a way of testing someone—so it can be genuinely difficult to just walk away from a relationship when the other party is persistently pushing for more. And then there's the fact that abstract, principled conflicts sometimes get tangled up with much more primal needs—like sex or emotional validation—leading to all sorts of messy combinations and outcomes. That’s why I suspect that sometimes we don't actually want to fully learn from our conflicts; instead, we might just want to experience them as an exciting addition to what would otherwise be boring or overly formal relationships. Conflict brings a bit of grit—some might even call it humanity—into a dynamic, and it can occasionally skip several steps in the slow process of gaining someone else's attention. At least, that’s my somewhat cynical, simplified take on it.

Sure, new situations can always drag us back into old, unresolved patterns. That's when we react with that inner child looking for its own sense of satisfaction. If a person is capable of recognizing the trap they've walked into, they have a chance to stop the game they're unconsciously playing. What I find interesting, though, is how many of us lack the self-awareness to tell when we're playing a game and when we aren't. Once someone realizes they're caught in the loop and shuts it down, the other person eventually gets bored of throwing balls at a brick wall. Lately, I've been thinking that being rational isn't enough. Just deciding to end a conflict doesn't work if it remains unresolved on an emotional level; you have to wonder when it'll just trigger all over again. It's that broken child inside still desperately hunting for satisfaction, attention, or love. You can't fix those needs with a simple decision alone.

Lisa Hernandez3 said:I’ve heard this whole irritation regarding theories about one person projecting onto another so many times before—it feels like just another passing trend lately. First, we were all obsessed with projection, and now suddenly everyone is saying, "Don't you start with the projection talk." Times change, I guess. 😁

Regarding our interactions here on the forum, it’s actually quite interesting to observe how certain individuals approach others within this thicket of issues stemming from past relationships, shared contexts, or even unfulfilled longings. As you noted, this often has very little to do with the actual reality of the situation at hand.

Does conflict always lead to self-growth or learning? Not necessarily. Sometimes the logic of "he doesn't like me, so I don't like him either" holds up, and that wall effectively cements a lack of growth—though people often emerge from those situations feeling bitter and guarded, developing a sense of distrust and caution. In reality, maybe that's just unnecessary, as we might have simply run into a difficult person.

It really depends, I suppose, on that other person—how they treat us, whether their behavior changes over time, and whether we are willing to accept those flaws and focus on something more meaningful than nitpicking our expectations of them. It also comes down to whether we are ready to finally leave certain people and situations behind so we can maintain a healthy circle of close friends or acquaintances.

Sometimes, we actually need conflict. Often, we crave attention first, which leads to being somewhat dishonest in our attempts to get it. Then, we become dishonest in the argument itself, knowing deep down the conflict is trivial, yet we sustain it because it fulfills us emotionally—perhaps by making us feel significant, energizing our social space, or giving us a chance to make minor issues feel "weighty." In these scenarios, someone from a distant social circle might suddenly be treated like a VIP.

If we are capable of tracking these patterns and schemes, perhaps we can actually work on ourselves. It’s usually much easier for us to spot these shifts and irregularities in others, but that can serve as a useful compass—especially if we find we are consistently accurate in reading someone else's situation—to help us observe ourselves more closely.

...

Yeah, but you're talking about an emotional void here. That point where people just "go cold" because there's nothing left holding them together. I was thinking more about that volatile blur between love and hate—where the line is so thin you can't even tell them apart. A neurotic mess of a relationship...

Lisa Hernandez3 said:I’ve heard this whole irritation regarding theories about one person projecting onto another so many times before—it feels like just another passing trend lately. First, we were all obsessed with projection, and now suddenly everyone is saying, "Don't you start with the projection talk." Times change, I guess. 😁

Regarding our interactions here on the forum, it’s actually quite interesting to observe how certain individuals approach others within this thicket of issues stemming from past relationships, shared contexts, or even unfulfilled longings. As you noted, this often has very little to do with the actual reality of the situation at hand.

Does conflict always lead to self-growth or learning? Not necessarily. Sometimes the logic of "he doesn't like me, so I don't like him either" holds up, and that wall effectively cements a lack of growth—though people often emerge from those situations feeling bitter and guarded, developing a sense of distrust and caution. In reality, maybe that's just unnecessary, as we might have simply run into a difficult person.

It really depends, I suppose, on that other person—how they treat us, whether their behavior changes over time, and whether we are willing to accept those flaws and focus on something more meaningful than nitpicking our expectations of them. It also comes down to whether we are ready to finally leave certain people and situations behind so we can maintain a healthy circle of close friends or acquaintances.

Sometimes, we actually need conflict. Often, we crave attention first, which leads to being somewhat dishonest in our attempts to get it. Then, we become dishonest in the argument itself, knowing deep down the conflict is trivial, yet we sustain it because it fulfills us emotionally—perhaps by making us feel significant, energizing our social space, or giving us a chance to make minor issues feel "weighty." In these scenarios, someone from a distant social circle might suddenly be treated like a VIP.

If we are capable of tracking these patterns and schemes, perhaps we can actually work on ourselves. It’s usually much easier for us to spot these shifts and irregularities in others, but that can serve as a useful compass—especially if we find we are consistently accurate in reading someone else's situation—to help us observe ourselves more closely.

...

It feels like we repeat the same relationship patterns throughout our lives, gravitating toward the unfinished parts of our own personalities. So, I don't think it's a small thing when someone feels absolutely crushed by a seemingly random conflict. In romantic relationships, it's fascinating how much energy people spend spotting their partner's flaws and trying to fix them. It's definitely easier to see those cracks in someone else than in yourself...

I think that kind of clarity actually comes from those messy, conflicting situations—the ones that end up giving us a much-needed outlet to express ourselves in the first place.

Sure, but my point was specifically about that whole conflict aspect I laid out—how friction eventually becomes something we stop running from and instead start using to face those hidden parts of ourselves.

So, you actually believe conflict is some kind of golden ticket for personal growth, or is that just more self-help nonsense?

The threads on "what is jouissance" and "public masturbation—mental illness or an expression of spiritual freedom?" have really got me thinking about how much conflict shapes us. It’s wild how often grown adults revert to these archaic, primal reactions—basically turning back into wounded children the second they feel defensive. They just lash out with all this unresolved anger and childhood pain instead of actually processing what's happening in the moment. It's interesting how these old wounds tend to flare up most intensely within our romantic relationships. Most of us are convinced the partner is the source of our misery, but usually, it's just projection. The other person becomes a canvas. In my view, a relationship is essentially the most accurate mirror we have; intimacy strips away the layers and forces us to see the parts of ourselves we’ve kept hidden. Problems start when people look for a partner to act as a sort of emotional crutch—someone to fix their internal mess. When that partner inevitably fails to provide the "cure," disappointment sets in. I’m starting to believe we can actually use these conflicts to figure out what’s going on inside our own heads. That doesn't mean the person reacting is solely to blame; rather, the situation offers a chance to observe their own behavior and uncover things they hadn't noticed before. Usually, if something about someone else really grates on you, it’s because it’s something you can't stand about yourself. It's pure projection. A conflict with a partner eventually becomes a conflict with oneself. Partnerships usually kick off with this irrational phase of being "in love," where you're essentially blind to reality. You don't see the actual person—their flaws or true qualities—you just see a blank slate onto which you project your own idealized self. During that stage, your partner isn't a separate entity; they're a clone of who you wish you were. You aren't actually loving them; you're loving a version of yourself. Once that honeymoon phase ends and the projections shift from idealization to negativity, the conflicts start. I think this is the "shadow" that Carl Jung talks about—we project the very traits we reject most deeply in ourselves onto others. At that crossroads, you either deal with your shadow or you destroy the partner. Plenty of people end up nuking their relationships and finding themselves in the exact same mess over and over because they refused to face that shadow. In the same way that conflict is a struggle with oneself, falling in love is also a relationship with oneself—even if we specifically choose certain types of people to host our ideals. To me, real love only begins once the projection stops—once the "canvas" disappears and you finally see the other person for who they actually are, warts and all. It’s funny how some people think their partners have fundamentally changed, when really, it's just their perception that shifted. Problems escalate when people start feeding into each other's neuroses, creating a loop where past traumas dictate present reality. I think these conflicts give us a chance to relive, express, and finally resolve those childhood wounds. Of course, that's just one angle of conflict—I'm sure there are plenty of other layers worth digging into...

Nicole Miller5 said:God, you don't even grasp the difference between a translation and an interpretation (if calling it an interpretation makes you feel better about yourself). But fine, since you're so eager to "translate," why don't you try translating this whole thing into American English?

Alright, let’s say there isn't a perfect American English word to capture the weight of Jouissance—ecstasy is probably closer than just "pleasure." You could always join the debate using a completely different angle instead...

I agree—the importance of the symptom can't be overstated. To me, a symptom is basically just a way of discharging Jouissance—think of a panic attack, an eruption of energy that hits the body so hard the subject experiences it as pure trauma. It’s where The Real breaks through. That said, I don't think the situation at Corema has actually reached the stage where these kinds of symptoms are showing up yet.

Jacob Newman77 said:Here’s a little something pulled from Lacan for beginners:

Back in the sixties, Lacan was obsessed with pinning down this concept he called Jouissance. It’s funny, really—the word itself actually belongs to the English literary tradition, popping up in works like Edmund Spenser’s *The Faerie Queene* and various other sixteenth-century texts. Most people just translate it as "enjoyment," which is a bit of a stretch. In Lacanian terms, it’s more about that tipping point where something becomes too much for the organism to actually handle. Too much stimulation, too much excitement, or even just a certain kind of stagnant, heavy emptiness. Most of the time, Jouissance feels like nothing short of unbearable suffering. But here’s the kicker, the part that really gets under your skin: what we experience as agonizing pain, our unconscious perceives as pure satisfaction. That’s The Real. In a Lacanian sense, it exists entirely outside of symbolism and meaning—this constant, recurring force that just keeps coming back to haunt us, bringing that same old suffering right to our doorstep.

Repetition. Again.

Back in his early twenties, Freud and those first few followers realized something crucial: you can't just reduce the entire psyche to linguistic formulas and unconscious mechanisms. Sure, someone could deliver a brilliant interpretation of a symptom, but that didn’t magically make the damn thing vanish. Freud eventually hit on this idea of a silent force within the psyche—something that drives self-destruction and triggers that conscious pain we all know too well. He tied this directly to compulsive behavior, that desperate need to repeat certain patterns over and over. At the end of the day, the reality is that people keep making the same mistakes. They make the same terrible decisions throughout their lives—decisions that lead straight to regret and misery. Most people don't learn from their past errors, mostly because, strangely enough, there's a vested interest in their own suffering. That’s where Jouissance comes in. It is the true enemy in psychoanalytic practice, and Lacan tried to unpack it through several different lenses. Because of this, the field of psychoanalysis can never be strictly about language. "The Real" has become the focal point, manifesting as Jouissance in the sense that it exists entirely outside of meaning and signification. This unpredictable, dangerous, and heterogeneous presence of Jouissance proves that Lacan’s work—as it often does—cannot be simplified into just an emphasis on the importance of language. Now, the tension between language and Jouissance has become the primary battlefield for research.

While it might seem more subtle when we're dealing with neurosis, *jouissance* really takes center stage in psychosis. It manifests physically in the schizophrenic body or erupts through those frantic, persecutory delusions in paranoia—always tethered to something external, like the mindless hum of a TV, the watchful eye of the CIA, or even just the nosy neighbors next door.

The regulation of Jouissance. It’s a messy, exhausting business, isn't it? Trying to put a leash on that primal, overwhelming excess... it feels like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. We spend our entire lives building these elaborate psychological dams, hoping to contain the flood, yet we always seem to find ourselves drowning in it anyway. It's a cycle that never quite breaks.

Human existence has one primary function: to regulate *jouissance*. We enter this world with *jouissance* baked into our very biology—this raw, overwhelming surplus of stimulation that we spend our lives trying to offload. As we mature, we essentially bleed this *jouissance* out of the psyche through the constant pressure of deprivation, schooling, and the rigid rules of socialization. It’s the process of being folded into "The Other," a system that dictates exactly how to act and when to act. You rarely see that unbridled, frantic excitement of a toddler in a grown adult. That’s because the *jouissance* has been drained from the psyche. But it doesn't just vanish. Some of it gets trapped in privileged corners of the body, like the erogenous zones. And—crucially for anyone interested in psychoanalysis—it lingers in our symptoms. A symptom is just a part of that leftover *jouissance* that refused to disappear; it’s a piece of that excess energy that crawled back into the mind or the body, specifically to make life difficult.

Language and castration.

Jean Alain-Miller really nailed it when he showed how Lacan reframed castration. It’s not just some abstract concept; it’s the draining of jouissance from the psyche. And how does this drainage actually happen? Through the Symbolic register itself—language. The moment the psyche passes through and into language, that is castration. It’s what introduces the concepts of loss and absence into our world. The phallus serves as the permanent symbol of this transition, the unconscious way we represent that fundamental sense of lack. Lacan’s take isn't just academic fluff; it has massive clinical implications. If jouissance is part of The Real—existing entirely outside the Imaginary and the Symbolic—how is a psychoanalyst supposed to touch it? Their only tool is language. The answer, it seems, lies in the thesis that language itself is what triggers changes in jouissance. This immediately calls into question all those therapeutic trends that claim you can rewire the psyche through non-symbolic practices. It brings us back to one of Freud’s earliest preoccupations in his work during the 1890s. He viewed the psyche as a web of representations constantly bombarded by excitations. The task of the psyche is to find a way to manage these relentless excitations—mostly through redirections—to allow for new ways of navigating that network of representation.

So, there it is. Just the tip of the iceberg, really. It’s enough to make you want to dig much deeper into 🙂

I'm keeping the discussion here so we don't lose the thread... I have to say, I disagree with some parts of this interpretation. For instance, the author claims Jouissance translates to "unbearable suffering," which is just wrong—"ecstasy" is much closer. I find Bart's take interesting, though; he suggests it's the body's orgasmic enjoyment at the exact moment culture invades the flesh—basically, the moment the social construction of the body is wiped out. Which means, once again, everything circles back to language, since psychoanalysis is essentially the study of language. As for the link between psychosis and Jouissance, I've already shared my thoughts there. The author argues that Jouissance is visible within psychoses, but I'd argue it manifests only as a refusal to accept an ideology—something the psychotic subject simply isn't capable of doing. Primarily because—and I know I'm repeating myself here—they accept the role of the victim. A hysteric, however, doesn't play the victim because they actually see through the lie of that victimhood. They don't buy into being a victim because they realize there’s nothing there to fill that gap in The Other. If you look at it logically, Jouissance acts as the barrier between the Imaginary and the Symbolic; it's the field of the traumatic Real. A psychotic subject is completely dropped from the process of symbolization, so those are two distinct positions. The third position would be plaisir, which implies a confirmation of one's social identity. Think of it as a kind of conformist satisfaction—you just bend to whatever the ruling ideology happens to be.

mistyscout2 said:That kind of separation feels like a classic symptom of our frantic, capitalist, hyper-individualistic American society. Honestly, I just can't get on board with the idea that "one excludes the other"—I completely disagree. I’d love to dive deep into this, but I’m swamped with work at the moment. Maybe I'll write more in a day or two, or perhaps even later today if I catch a break...

Not necessarily.

There’s a grain of truth in the old saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and that everyone has their own taste (so there's no point arguing over it), but I don't think that's quite right here. For instance, if I see a girl walking down a street in Chicago and I think her figure is beautiful, that isn't being "created" by my love; it's just pure, simple sexuality. Sure, that beauty might act as a trigger for a whole chain of events—maybe I ask her out for coffee, we get to know each other, I fall in love, and eventually, we develop a deep bond—but one doesn't strictly depend on the other, if you catch my drift. I'm worried we're talking about two entirely different things using very different logic. I think you might have missed my point earlier, but it’s not a huge deal... And I could sum up my current thought in one quick sentence: if I walk past fifteen girls on the sidewalk who all have great figures (from my perspective, though they look that way naturally or due to cultural standards—since culture is basically our second nature), it certainly doesn't mean I'm in love with all fifteen of them, haha...

What we perceive as attractive in someone of the opposite sex is shaped by biology, our culture, and our own personal histories—those specific memories and experiences that might give us a certain preference for certain types. And ultimately, hormones usually drive the bus... But even someone older, whose hormone levels have leveled off, could look at two people and say objectively, "that person has a better physique than the other," without feeling any sexual arousal whatsoever.

I'll get back to you on the rest later; I still owe you an answer regarding the chocolate thing and my take on love... But I will say this: if anyone was more perceptive and vibrant regarding sexuality than Lacan, it was definitely the Taoists. They could just sit, be silent, and observe. There's a massive difference between living in traditional China and being in 1960s or 70s Paris during the height of the sexual revolution, throwing around flashy theories, hanging out with socialites, smoking cigarettes during lectures, and using overly complicated topology or pseudo-mathematics just to show how brilliant the master is—or to see how far he can push things before people realize the master is just talking nonsense (which is a theory in itself).😉.

Anyway, I don't think there's anything uninteresting about Lacan. In fact, quite a few of his concepts really grab me, especially when you look at how much he influenced philosophy and that whole tradition of bridging psychoanalysis with philosophical thought...

I’d argue that what we call "beauty" in the opposite sex is driven by exactly those subconscious triggers psychoanalysis tries to untangle. We need to strip these mechanisms down to see them for what they really are—otherwise, they lead us straight into pathology. Take the classic case of women who end up with abusers who, at first glance, don't seem to fit the profile at all. They sense something, a specific kind of attraction that hits a hidden nerve. If she had fifteen different options standing in front of her, why was the one that felt most "beautiful" actually the one mirroring her father's psyche?

mistyscout2 said:That kind of separation feels like a classic symptom of our frantic, capitalist, hyper-individualistic American society. Honestly, I just can't get on board with the idea that "one excludes the other"—I completely disagree. I’d love to dive deep into this, but I’m swamped with work at the moment. Maybe I'll write more in a day or two, or perhaps even later today if I catch a break...

Not necessarily.

There’s a grain of truth in the old saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and that everyone has their own taste (so there's no point arguing over it), but I don't think that's quite right here. For instance, if I see a girl walking down a street in Chicago and I think her figure is beautiful, that isn't being "created" by my love; it's just pure, simple sexuality. Sure, that beauty might act as a trigger for a whole chain of events—maybe I ask her out for coffee, we get to know each other, I fall in love, and eventually, we develop a deep bond—but one doesn't strictly depend on the other, if you catch my drift. I'm worried we're talking about two entirely different things using very different logic. I think you might have missed my point earlier, but it’s not a huge deal... And I could sum up my current thought in one quick sentence: if I walk past fifteen girls on the sidewalk who all have great figures (from my perspective, though they look that way naturally or due to cultural standards—since culture is basically our second nature), it certainly doesn't mean I'm in love with all fifteen of them, haha...

What we perceive as attractive in someone of the opposite sex is shaped by biology, our culture, and our own personal histories—those specific memories and experiences that might give us a certain preference for certain types. And ultimately, hormones usually drive the bus... But even someone older, whose hormone levels have leveled off, could look at two people and say objectively, "that person has a better physique than the other," without feeling any sexual arousal whatsoever.

I'll get back to you on the rest later; I still owe you an answer regarding the chocolate thing and my take on love... But I will say this: if anyone was more perceptive and vibrant regarding sexuality than Lacan, it was definitely the Taoists. They could just sit, be silent, and observe. There's a massive difference between living in traditional China and being in 1960s or 70s Paris during the height of the sexual revolution, throwing around flashy theories, hanging out with socialites, smoking cigarettes during lectures, and using overly complicated topology or pseudo-mathematics just to show how brilliant the master is—or to see how far he can push things before people realize the master is just talking nonsense (which is a theory in itself).😉.

Anyway, I don't think there's anything uninteresting about Lacan. In fact, quite a few of his concepts really grab me, especially when you look at how much he influenced philosophy and that whole tradition of bridging psychoanalysis with philosophical thought...

If you're getting hung up on the gap between an image and an idea—using the whole physique thing as an illustration😁—then I was just trying to explain why I think that distinction isn't really there. An image only exists as an "idea" because we project our own ideals onto it. That projection is what makes it attractive. Your example about those 15 women is about the mechanics of attraction; the specific physical trait I'm talking about is just the manifestation of an idea already formed within someone you've actually fallen for. It's the idea of *their* body. If that's not what you meant, then walk me through your logic. Besides, your scenario just raises more questions: what determines which one catches your eye, and why does it even matter which one you pick? Why couldn't you just fall for all 15...

Looks like that chocolate metaphor finally melted 😁

We’re talking about two distinct states here: love and pure sexual lust. They’re essentially polar opposites—one tends to kill the other. When you’re genuinely in love, you’re operating in this spiritual realm where the idea of raw physical coupling feels almost distant... The more erotic you become, the less sexual you actually are. The person you’re connecting with becomes a projection of your own need for affection; even the way you perceive their body is shaped by your feelings, meaning what you see isn't necessarily reality. You could argue that this kind of spiritual love is the direct antithesis of lust. It borders on narcissism—loving a version of yourself through someone else. Love relies on illusion, on the idea that the ideal we’re chasing is already embodied in another person. You don't have to be the type who gets worked up over airbrushed models in Las Vegas to fall into this trap; even then, the object of your affection becomes a blank screen for you to project your perfect being onto. In this sense, idealizing someone isn't just about physical perfection—it’s an attempt to find yourself within them, rather than seeing them for who they truly are. From this angle, spiritual love looks like a narcissistic, selfish phenomenon, and that image of perfection isn't really a product of what's actually in front of you.