Tag: trap

deconstructing the romance narrative trap

Are you wondering why your love life isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be? Why doesn’t your partner bring you roses, arrange surprise weekends away and find all your flaws lovable? Why doesn’t that hot guy or girl you have a crush on accidentally find your phone/wallet/umbrella, track you down then ask you out for a coffee at that cute cafe you’ve been wanting to go to? Why doesn’t the person you’re seeing reply to your texts straight away and always know the exact right thing to say to make you feel good about yourself? Well, my dear, it seems you are stuck in a romance narrative trap. A what?  Well, narratives are the stories we tell ourselves about our lives: our values, our pasts, our future ambitions, our identities.  Romance narratives are those that get all gooey and, well, romantic, like when you start to turn that girl/guy you’ve been hooking up with into a possible modern-day-fairy tale before you’ve even discussed politics with them.  Before you get all slushy and defend romance, just realise I’m not attacking all romance, just the romance narratives that are traps… Whether you’ve been in a long term relationship that doesn’t quite measure up to rom/com standards or you meet someone who gives you butterflies, your brain chemistry goes out of control and all of a sudden you’re a love-zombie, checking your phone every other minute and day-dreaming about your shared future together, you’re in trouble.  Does this sound familiar?  Some people don’t seem to fall into the trap and some fall into the trap so well because it suits them so much that it isn’t even a trap, but I have been falling in and out of this trap for a long time and in the past few years I have been trying to figure out how to avoid it.  Part of the problem with avoiding it is that all those brain chemicals are highly addictive and neptunian-delusional. The other part of the problem is that the romance narrative is just so fucking pervasive. They read ya Cinderella… …you hoped it would come true, and one day your prince charming would come rescue you… Anyone remember that song from the 90s? It’s what I think of when I think of romance narrative examples – and IT’S A TRAP! Well, maybe not always, or maybe some traps are quite nice, but we’ve all grown up with unrealistic and unhealthy, bland and thoroughly hetero-normative narratives around romance – Disney is the easiest to blame, but really, it’s everywhere. Hey look, it’s a… What’s wrong with Aladdin?  Let’s not go into the insidious racism and sexism, let’s stick to the romance issue here.  So there’s this princess right, and she’s been sheltered and protected all her life and dresses like the genie in I Dream of Genie – and she’s just waiting for her hero, who is this nice, poor kid, with cool monkey who is very fit from running away from the police but, overall, a character with a good alignment (chaotic). You know how the story goes, even if you haven’t seen the movie, because it’s how all these stories go – there’s a bad guy, the hero saves the day with the princess helping out as his sidekick and they sail off into the sunset on their magic carpet: happily ever after. This is what is supposed to happen, right?  You’re supposed to meet someone, go through a few trials and tribulations, and then after the plot climax everything’s peachy. I was raised not to believe in happily-ever-afters but my cynicism hasn’t saved me – if anything, it’s only made things worse, putting me at cross-purposes with my brain chemistry addiction. So what brain chemicals are involved?  Dopamine: the reward pathway also associated with substances like cocaine and heroin. Dopamine is also known to affect your serotonin levels which can bring on low moods and further the motivation for more dopamine.  So when you don’t get the response you want, or you haven’t had any positive attention for a while the withdrawals kick in… love zombie attack! Yuck. If you’re wondering if he/she is your soul-mate, watching rom/coms imagining yourself and x as the leading characters, altering your appearance in accordance with what x might like… you’re in serious trouble.  Brain chemistry isn’t the only way of looking at this thing… there is all that aforementioned unhealthy-social-programming to deconstruct, “bad” habits to break out of and psychological issues to consider like insecure attachment. Is it always a trap? Yes and no. I have come to realise everything is a trap. Some traps are nice, some traps are comfortable, some traps help you feel like you’ve achieved something… saying everything is a trap detracts from the meaningfulness of the word ‘trap’, so we’ll just say it’s a trap when it’s dysfunctional. How does that sound? Is your romance narrative causing you grievous emotional harm? Are you wasting energy waiting for a text of continuously hassling your partner to be more romantic? Are you moping because there’s no one who loves you in ‘that’ way? Well, there you go… TRAP! But what if x is my soulmate? If you believe in soul-mates and that reincarnation shiz then take into consideration that a soulmate isn’t someone to give you happily-ever-afters, it’s someone who is here to give you major karmic lessons: lots and lots of pain and suffering, until you figure out how to learn from it and get out of the trap. The more you worry about whether it’s ‘meant to be’, the worse you are making it.  Focus on learning your lessons rather than controlling uncontrollable variables. If something is meant to be it’s not worth worrying about, anyway, is it? It will just happen, whether you like it or not. Don’t get your free-will tied up in your determinism, it’s not sexy. Okay, I’m in the trap, what can I do? I don’t have all the answers, but I have read too many self-help books, so here’s some helpful advice: 1. Get some perspective Step back from the drama of the romance, to stop sinking my energy into crazy fantasies. Don’t turn into a psi-vamp, you’re too good for that, and after a while your friends will stop wanting to hear about x and how awesome or horrible they are. Maybe x is your soulmate, but that’s neither here nor there. In your present life you have other more important shit you could be doing. Do it. 2. Bring it back. Bring your focus and your energy back to you.  You have been leaching it all over the place and it’s making a mess on the carpet.  I have this mantra which also resembles this 90s song, which ironically has extremely love zombie lyrics if you read the rest of it. Play this song and try to dance like in the music video. Go on. 3. Balance.  Balance everything – food, sleep, exercise, entertainment, meditation… be calm. 4. Get fulfilling creative interests.  There’s nothing better than fulfilling creative interests. Do something, make something, build on something. This will get your dopamine pathway functioning more healthily because you are being awesome and getting rewarded for it. 5. Meet ownemotional needs. Easier said than done, but you really are the most qualified person for the job. Be sensitive to your own feelings and figure out what needs aren’t being met – then find more awesome ways to meet those needs. 6. Stop talking about x all the time,  Just stop it. stop thinking about it so much, think about cats, cats are nice.

deconstructing destination-thinking

If you reach the destination of life, then what? Then you will be very embarrassed. –Osho When I was growing up, us kids, enthralled by the deluxe smorgasbord of TV advertising, would continuously ask mum “can we go to Disneyland?” or other requests obviously out of our budget. “When I win Lotto” she would always reply. It took a while for us to realise she never bought lottery tickets. Despite that, she still had the fantasy herself: if I win lotto I’ll buy a place in the Coromandel…” I didn’t question it until recently when I started to wonder if this mass social delusion that more wealth (particularly if won) equals more happiness. Apparently it doesn’t. Research on happiness suggests that people are generally no happier (or sadder) a year after winning the lottery – even if they win millions. Interestingly enough, people are apparently about the same level of happy, a year after becoming paraplegic, as they were before.  Now, that is something to really chew on for a while. If these things we wish for, long for, fantasise about are not actually associated with happiness, then what are we doing to ourselves? We are projecting our happiness into the future. This is so appallingly common. We have been taught since childhood that when we get to the next stage happiness awaits us: when we finally get to school – when we can read/write/swim/ride a bike we will finally be happy.  When we have a friend, or a lot of friends, when we have a boyfriend, when we graduate, when we finally get a job or clock this XBox game or reach our weight goal we will surely be full of endless joy. Obviously, when we grow up we will be happy. Yes – because we can have ice-cream for dinner and no one will tell us what to do and we can have all these cool jobs and things: happy as! Wait, being grown up is just as much work. Making decisions is tricky. Money is tricky. I bet I will be happy when I reach that next goal: have a baby, get a promotion, get married, buy a house, sell a house, buy another house: happiness will abound! Oh, wait, I’m still chugging along. I know, when I get discovered for my real shining talent as a singer/actor/genius or win lotto or NZ’s Next Top Model I will then be happy… except it hasn’t happened yet, so where is my next goal? I know: when I retire I will be incredibly happy because I can do whatever I want! Yay! No job! Except that retired people often (not always) get depressed because they aren’t contributing to society as much as is satisfactory. They have removed the work from their lives and many interesting things can fill those empty hours, but real happiness is still only a goal away, or did I waste my life going from one goal to the next, projecting my happiness into the future instead of realising that happiness is only ever now? After all, what is the real destination of life? Death? Are you just biding your time ’til the Armageddon comes? Are you hoping for a blissful after-life instead of making the most of this one? All the Zen dudes will tell you that: happiness is only ever now. They reckon now is the only thing that really exists anyway. The past is just muddled memories in the narrative we tell ourselves about our lives.  The past is often full or sad stories or nostalgia that we can re-live over and over to no-avail.  The future is just projections and uncertainty. Many an anxiety can be found in thinking too much about the future. Life is very uncertain (yes, I have been reading too much Osho).  All this is very obvious. Happiness is a choice, moment to moment. If our established thought-patterns are interfering with our happiness we can change them through therapy or self-help or bazillions of other methods. Thoughts can be changed. The problem with the “if only”, lottery-type thinking is that it’s not in the moment. It comes from being unhappy with our jobs and our lives and our lack of options. We have been taught to think that money is the problem and that money (particularly a large lump of it right now) is the answer, but really, with more money just comes a different level of finance to deal with.  Don’t get me wrong, having not-enough money and struggling for survival really sucks, but unless your fantasies about winning lotto are a helpful coping strategy for dealing with real hunger and desperation they are probably doing you more harm than good. For most people who read this, who are in the pattern of ‘lottery thinking’, it is a little escape from the drudgery of every-day life. You wake up, you go to work, you work, you come home, you *insert escapist media here, eg: Playstation, movies, TV series, Facebook*, you maybe get a bit of creative time to work on building that model air-plane, writing that screen-play, painting that impressionist take on the New York skyline, re-designing your poodle’s coiffer, you practice in your steam-punk death-metal band and so on… and you dream… you dream of all the poodling, steampunking, screen-playing you could do if only …If only you had more time, if only you didn’t have to work. Well, here’s a thought: how about, instead of fantasies and escapism, you try making little baby steps toward genuine happiness. There are two ways to do this and you probably should do both: 1: Choose to be happy. Try it now. Just one moment of happy. Just one moment of letting go of the struggle. Relax those shoulders. Breathe. Good, now go on. Don’t grimace. Smile. Yes, yes! That’s it!  You’re doing it, baby. Every time you realise you’re in a yucky mind state, your going around in circles, you’re dreaming of that day you finally reach heaven STOP! Yes, now, relax. Smile. You don’t even have to smile, but find a tiny bit of happy just by dropping all the shit. I’m glad you’re so good at following instructions. The more you can choose happiness in moments, the more moments of happiness you may experience in your life. Don’t just depend on the external world for you happy, DIY it. 2. Make steps towards doing more of the things you really love. What really feeds you? Do you even know? If you’re not sure, think about the experiences you’ve had, the things you’ve created and done, that have given you moments of happiness. Don’t tell me you’re not creative. Creative is part of human. You are continuously creating the story of your life in your head (right now), how do you want your story to go? Try new things. Figure out what brings your joy, little by little. Write a list. Figure out what you want to contribute to the world in your lifetime. Make baby steps. If your job sucks the life out of you, look for a better one. If you don’t have a job, figure out how you can contribute to your community. Community can feed us when jobs can’t. If you love to paint, sing, write, draw, ski, ride, explore, love, share, don’t relegate your passion to: ‘if/when I have time’. Everyone has the same amount of time. Everyone. It’s how you use it. If you want to be happy, let yourself do the things that bring the happiness with them. Let go of your own internal barriers to happiness. It takes a lot of time to master an art so start right now. You never know, you could be the next professional poodle coifferer.

deconstructing the romance narrative (trap)

Are you wondering why your love life isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be? Why doesn’t your partner bring you roses, arrange surprise weekends away and find all your flaws lovable? Why doesn’t that hot guy or girl you have a crush on accidentally find your phone/wallet/umbrella, track you down then ask you out for a coffee at that cute cafe you’ve been wanting to go to? Why doesn’t the person you’re seeing reply to your texts straight away and always know the exact right thing to say to make you feel good about yourself? Well, my dear, it seems you are stuck in a romance narrative trap.

A what?  Well, narratives are the stories we tell ourselves about our lives: our values, our pasts, our future ambitions, our identities.  Romance narratives are those that get all gooey and, well, romantic, like when you start to turn that girl/guy you’ve been hooking up with into a possible modern-day-fairy tale before you’ve even discussed politics with them.  Before you get all slushy and defend romance, just realise I’m not attacking all romance, just the romance narratives that are traps… Whether you’ve been in a long term relationship that doesn’t quite measure up to rom/com standards or you meet someone who gives you butterflies, your brain chemistry goes out of control and all of a sudden you’re a love-zombie, checking your phone every other minute and day-dreaming about your shared future together, you’re in trouble.  Does this sound familiar?  Some people don’t seem to fall into the trap and some fall into the trap so well because it suits them so much that it isn’t even a trap, but I have been falling in and out of this trap for a long time and in the past few years I have been trying to figure out how to avoid it.  Part of the problem with avoiding it is that all those brain chemicals are highly addictive and neptunian-delusional. The other part of the problem is that the romance narrative is just so fucking pervasive. They read ya Cinderella… …you hoped it would come true, and one day your prince charming would come rescue you… Anyone remember that song from the 90s? It’s what I think of when I think of romance narrative examples – and IT’S A TRAP! Well, maybe not always, or maybe some traps are quite nice, but we’ve all grown up with unrealistic and unhealthy, bland and thoroughly hetero-normative narratives around romance – Disney is the easiest to blame, but really, it’s everywhere. Hey look, it’s a… What’s wrong with Aladdin?  Let’s not go into the insidious racism and sexism, let’s stick to the romance issue here.  So there’s this princess right, and she’s been sheltered and protected all her life and dresses like the genie in I Dream of Genie – and she’s just waiting for her hero, who is this nice, poor kid, with cool monkey who is very fit from running away from the police but, overall, a character with a good alignment (chaotic). You know how the story goes, even if you haven’t seen the movie, because it’s how all these stories go – there’s a bad guy, the hero saves the day with the princess helping out as his sidekick and they sail off into the sunset on their magic carpet: happily ever after. This is what is supposed to happen, right?  You’re supposed to meet someone, go through a few trials and tribulations, and then after the plot climax everything’s peachy. I was raised not to believe in happily-ever-afters but my cynicism hasn’t saved me – if anything, it’s only made things worse, putting me at cross-purposes with my brain chemistry addiction. So what brain chemicals are involved?  Dopamine: the reward pathway also associated with substances like cocaine and heroin. Dopamine is also known to affect your serotonin levels which can bring on low moods and further the motivation for more dopamine.  So when you don’t get the response you want, or you haven’t had any positive attention for a while the withdrawals kick in… love zombie attack! Yuck. If you’re wondering if he/she is your soul-mate, watching rom/coms imagining yourself and x as the leading characters, altering your appearance in accordance with what x might like… you’re in serious trouble.  Brain chemistry isn’t the only way of looking at this thing… there is all that aforementioned unhealthy-social-programming to deconstruct, “bad” habits to break out of and psychological issues to consider like insecure attachment. Is it always a trap? Yes and no. I have come to realise everything is a trap. Some traps are nice, some traps are comfortable, some traps help you feel like you’ve achieved something… saying everything is a trap detracts from the meaningfulness of the word ‘trap’, so we’ll just say it’s a trap when it’s dysfunctional. How does that sound? Is your romance narrative causing you grievous emotional harm? Are you wasting energy waiting for a text of continuously hassling your partner to be more romantic? Are you moping because there’s no one who loves you in ‘that’ way? Well, there you go… TRAP! But what if x is my soulmate? If you believe in soul-mates and that reincarnation shiz then take into consideration that a soulmate isn’t someone to give you happily-ever-afters, it’s someone who is here to give you major karmic lessons: lots and lots of pain and suffering, until you figure out how to learn from it and get out of the trap. The more you worry about whether it’s ‘meant to be’, the worse you are making it.  Focus on learning your lessons rather than controlling uncontrollable variables. If something is meant to be it’s not worth worrying about, anyway, is it? It will just happen, whether you like it or not. Don’t get your free-will tied up in your determinism, it’s not sexy. Okay, I’m in the trap, what can I do? I don’t have all the answers, but I have read too many self-help books, so here’s some helpful advice: 1. Get some perspective Step back from the drama of the romance, to stop sinking my energy into crazy fantasies. Don’t turn into a psi-vamp, you’re too good for that, and after a while your friends will stop wanting to hear about x and how awesome or horrible they are. Maybe x is your soulmate, but that’s neither here nor there. In your present life you have other more important shit you could be doing. Do it. 2. Bring it back. Bring your focus and your energy back to you.  You have been leaching it all over the place and it’s making a mess on the carpet.  I have this mantra which also resembles this 90s song, which ironically has extremely love zombie lyrics if you read the rest of it. Play this song and try to dance like in the music video. Go on. 3. Balance.  Balance everything – food, sleep, exercise, entertainment, meditation… be calm. 4. Get fulfilling creative interests.  There’s nothing better than fulfilling creative interests. Do something, make something, build on something. This will get your dopamine pathway functioning more healthily because you are being awesome and getting rewarded for it. 5. Meet own emotional needs. Easier said than done, but you really are the most qualified person for the job. Be sensitive to your own feelings and figure out what needs aren’t being met – then find more awesome ways to meet those needs. 6. Stop talking about x all the time,  Just stop it. stop thinking about it so much, think about cats, cats are nice.