The Meaning of Meaning - Part 1

Assessment: When I first saw a possible connection between the numinous relationship experience and the human experience of meaning itself, I quite thought I mightn't have much more to say about (female led) relationships at all any more. I was (happily) wrong; see especially here, here, here, here and here. In my last segment about the nature of the human experience of meaning I think I either burned myself out or finally managed a functionally accurate (enough) theoretical framework with adequate explanatory power (for a while anyway). However, although in this analysis of the 'biological meaning matrix' I've hinted at how to do this, I haven't yet adequately connected the human interior experience of meaning (and passion) to the numinous (female led) relationship experience.

Theory: The experience of numinousity is similar to 'flow' and 'play' in that it results from action or passion (nearly) completely 'filling up' the 'space' within a given (no matter how they are 'derived' or 'created') set of rules, borders or limitations.

Yet the experience of numinousity is unlike 'flow' and 'play' in that it's meaning has an aspect of 'revelation' or 'epiphany', akin to a 'short circuit' of consciousness, that (I think possibly) results from a large scale 'fitted-ness', like (a large number of) puzzle pieces (all at once), of symbol/experience with one's interior mental framework.

The numinous intimate (female led) relationship experience is thus particularly interesting because the dynamic (I think) is one's partner becomes (to a large degree) the set of rules, borders or limitations (through empathy and sublimation) that one (nearly) 'fills up'. The result I think of as a 'relationship synapsis': the perceived intimate 'lining up' of two people's interior spaces and an intimate sense of 'fitted-ness' that also has qualities of 'playful flow'.

This is an emotional 'rim experience' on the mental space spectrum but since it happens (is at least perceived as happening) on both one's emotional interior and interactively on one's exterior, this lands on arc C or D (depending on how compact or differentiated one's mental framework is) and arc A.

And, to answer another question I had, I do think meaning is both an emergent property of mental frameworks and used as if functionally accurate for the objectively 'real'; thus meaning is (or at least can be) simultaneously concurrent to experience and retrospective.

Need

The word 'need' must be the one of the greatest sources of confusion to accurate and adequate relationship communication simply because most people only ever infer (implicitly, contextually) what the goal a thing is needful for, or what might happen if what is needed doesn't happen. Try inserting the phrase "in order to _____" or the phrase "or _____ will happen" - or better yet, insert both. For a frustrating but educating bit of perspective, instead of "I need _____" try using this formula every time:

"In order to _____, I need _____ or _____ will happen."

When it comes to love, our interior spaces and our emotions in general, you'll find not only you and your partner but most people only have the vaguest ideas of what to put in those first and last blanks, yet they are the blanks that make what one 'needs' meaningful.

Reciprocity of Love Widgets

We need to give. Yet we also give to get, get what we need, love in symbols we understand, and so we do what we can: compromise, give and take, consciously and unconsciously do things in certain ways simply for our partner’s satisfaction. And such things are not solely widgets bartered. Because we do them out of our love and for our partner’s sake, those widgets become love widgets, more than mere motions on a stage or lines we speak, they become the currency of our relationship, the currency of our love, they become love symbols and we become a person who loves by those symbols.
~Octopus Heart

There may some truth (operative word here is 'some') to the common assessment that men are uxorious because they have learned (perhaps from a very young age) to find comfort and security in lavishing attention and ceding control, and women are dominant because they have learned (perhaps from a very young age) to find comfort and security in controlling and manipulating their environment to their advantage.

Admittedly both these suggestions are more than a little reductionistic, yet I think they accurately reflect the tension between the success of finding the comfort and security every human wants and desires and the potentially unhealthy ways in which, and the potentially unhealthy lengths to which, we will go to successfully get that comfort and security.

Moreover, if everyone wants love in symbols they can understand, and if these are the symbols a person understands, then in the feedback need and love symbol negotiation I think it is only right and fitting that we not only want to give our partner what they want (because we love them) but that they get some comfort and security in whatever way they understand.

But should one actively trade? Relationship bargaining, like sex bargaining, bothers me.

I give my wife the help fit for her and her happiness because I love her and want her to be happy. Yet I also do this for my sake - so that I am happy and complete, because being her 'help mate' is what completes me. I do not help her hoping she will someday do anything specific for me in return; in this way my love and help to her is 'somewhat unconditional'. Because on the other hand, I do expect that she will choose to do things that adequately express her love for me, where, when and how she desires, and I expect to receive expressions of love from her - although still I don't think even this is (even an unconscious) condition for the love and help I give. Thus that she would try to force herself to trade or exchange love widgets out of duty or obligation bothers me - because I do not wish her to feel ... beholden. I value her freedom, and the subsequent happiness from her freedom, too much.

Relationship Reality and Role Playing

Some additional thoughts to Feedback Need and Meaning Part 1:

On 'role playing': Part of the problem is we use the word play in too many different ways.

While 'playing at' some thing is not to 'be' that thing, a 'role played' is attempting to fulfill a set of expected behaviors (e.g. husband and wife). Moreover, the 'interactive play' of many people's 'roles played' (kids playing cops and robbers, or adults playing foreman and crew) require a certain 'codependent suspension of disbelief'.

Another thought on the reality of play: A (female led) relationship cannot be real without two people attempting to fulfill each other's expectations (no matter how varied the success), and the relationship becomes real once the two codependently suspend their disbelief in the roles.