Mental Health and Relationships

But it makes me think of something that Plato is said to have written: “According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

My recollection isn't perfect, particularly when it comes to greek names - I believe this is from the Symposium, and I think it was attributed to Aristophanes (through the story told by another, who in turn heard the tale from another...)

I recall reading somewhere that Aristophanes and Socrates were are odds, so plausibly Plato took pains to make Aristophanes comments appear as inane as possible - one example possibly being the telling of his theory of "Whole" men being split by the gods into Men, Women and Combination entities, that seek out their missing halves....

Whether suited the fashions at the time (or the fashions presently) it is a neat tale none the less.

JamesSand wrote:

But it makes me think of something that Plato is said to have written: “According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

My recollection isn't perfect, particularly when it comes to greek names - I believe this is from the Symposium, and I think it was attributed to Aristophanes (through the story told by another, who in turn heard the tale from another...)

I recall reading somewhere that Aristophanes and Socrates were are odds, so plausibly Plato took pains to make Aristophanes comments appear as inane as possible - one example possibly being the telling of his theory of "Whole" men being split by the gods into Men, Women and Combination entities, that seek out their missing halves....

Whether suited the fashions at the time (or the fashions presently) it is a neat tale none the less.

Plato was some guy - FYI he wrote down a lot of good stuff but it wasn’t him that said it - he scribes a lot of dialogues.




Plato
In his dialogue The Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes present a story about soulmates. Aristophanes states that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. He continues that there were three genders: man, woman and the "Androgynous", each with two sets of genitalia with the Androgynous having both male and female genitalia. The men were children of the sun, the women were children of the earth and the Androgynous were children of the moon, which was born of the sun and earth. It is said that humans had great strength at the time and threatened to conquer the gods. The gods were then faced with the prospect of destroying the humans with lightning as they had done with the Titans but then they would lose the tributes given to the gods by humans. Zeus developed a creative solution by splitting humans in half as punishment for humanity's pride and doubling the number of humans who would give tribute to the gods. These split humans were in utter misery to the point where they would not eat and would perish so Apollo had sewn them up and reconstituted their bodies with the navel being the only remnant harking back to their original form. Each human would then only have one set of genitalia and would forever long for his/her other half; the other half of his/her soul. It is said that when the two find each other, there is an unspoken understanding of one another, that they feel unified and would lie with each other in unity and would know no greater joy than that.

But Plato gets a lot of credit for other people’s storys - on the internet. I think it’s just easyer to say “Plato said it it’s from his book” but that’s that. It’s a great idea Aristophanes had. Glad some one wrote it down. !

There are many great ideas of different types of love available, it just all depends on which direction you want to go. What you wanna make today? What type of love you wanna try? Good stuff.

I try to keep my orbital eccentricity in check for starters!
A fling is like a parabolic orbit, and a rocky relationship is elliptical. I guess this analog posits a decaying orbit as ideal as a collision with too much energy just makes a mess!!

In other words: If your not actively working to bring a relationship closer, then the forces of nature in all it's manifestations will be busy pulling it apart.

The trick is when one person tries to hold a steady circular orbit, the other person can process the future expectations so easily that it probably makes other closer passes more attractive by virtue of having more potential! So there are a few more variables at play then ones own path through the cosmos, when it comes to relationships. Honesty and trust can bridge difficulties in navigating, ie communication.
So delicate relationships (for whatever reason) might better be more like formation flying, where two objects have the same trajectory (proximity, motivation, cooperation), and over longer periods of time develop a steady movement closer together.

what?! two corrections in a single thread?! I'm such a failure! thanks James and Carlos. Admittedly I looked at the top two results from Google and called it a day

Rex wrote: I mean it's like asking do you create or find your destiny?
The right person will bring the best out in you, but you're ultimately responsible for you. I didn't mean what I said in the sense of "you need to be captain perfect before dating someone." It's more that I've seen too many people expect that dating someone will fundamentally change who you are

AAaah I got ya Rex! Totally agree.

I had originally planned to write a detailed and drawn out post. However, for the sake of readability and getting the essential point across; I'll summarize instead.

Relationships are easy, more often than not. Regardless if it is a beneficial, or abusive relationship; the actions and decisions needing to be made are often straightforward and rather intuitive.

What is difficult however, is getting out of our own way. We fail to be faithful, despite knowing we should be, and knowing the consequences of infidelity. We stay with abusive partners, despite knowing we are being abused.

We accept excuses in place of responsibility, and we give excuses in place of taking ownership.

We, through our action; and inaction - make relationships difficult.

Adder wrote: A fling is like a parabolic orbit, and a rocky relationship is elliptical

Although you may have alluded to it (or mean it to be a deeper hidden meaning), aren't all kepler orbits elliptical?

Yeah, my opinion on relationships might seem very harsh, but it's very much from a self-help perspective (as opposed to a "necessarily true" one). The effort towards it makes you appreciate the consequences.