You Can Gaslight Yourself into Loving Someone | Hacker News Reader

You Can Gaslight Yourself into Loving Someone

gist.github.com

23 pointsWilsoniumite14 comments

> a common feeling is that might be making us more judgmental and more picky in our partners. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I love perfection as much as the next person and knowing what's out there helps you narrow down the ideal human being you want to spend your life with.

I kind of disagree with this. I‘m pretty sure love is something where the 80/20 rule applies as much as everywhere else. Looking for perfection doesn’t make much sense to me, when you can be 80% happy for 20% of the invested time. Try to find someone you can argue with and talk it out without being so angry that one of you walks away forever. Searching for the perfect partner who’s not in a relationship with someone else sounds like a nightmare to me.

And I’m with the same person for > 20 years, non-married, with a 12yo daughter.

This is probably the best part: “And if you're ever feeling down, note that this still works even if that "someone" is you”

> Disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist, nor am I a doctor or have any medical background or really any authority to talk about any of this. I'm a programmer and I didn't even finish my masters. I might be autistic but haven't been diagnosed (assessment soon!) so for now I'm just a Weird Nerd who writes about complexity aaaaaand let's move on to the interesting stuff.

This entire field responds better to self-treatment than anything else.

Apologies for the tangent.

Hey, in case an Autism diagnosis concerns you I just want to say I work around and with a lot of people on the spectrum both in open source and professionally both in large companies (like Microsoft) and small ones (startups) and people on the spectrum perform as well as neurotypical people in my (anecdotal) experience.

It's worth knowing though by all means ask for whatever adaptations help you.

(Not on the spectrum but have family/friends on the spectrum in the industry)

> I'm just a Weird Nerd who writes about complexity aaaaaand let's move on to the interesting stuff.

It's important to remember with a diagnosis you'll still be the same weird nerd (+ the diagnosis) :) We're all (most) weird nerds here you're in good company.

(Obligatory disclaimer about how autism is a spectrum and it's much harder for certain individuals than others + I'm not a health professional just a fellow nerd)

I have always assumed it is always the touch of the 'tism that drives society forward.

Intense fixations on random niche topics the majority of people don't even know about? That's how we get scientists, inventions, engineers, etc.

love is willing the good of the other

you learn to love by loving, i see no reason to call this difficult process gaslighting and i see every reason to call it acquiring virtue

"You Can Become Virtuous Enough To Love Someone"

One of those Victorian novelists: "I hope he endeavors to be worthy of her"

I don't know, that couches things in terms of value to the other to an extent. Love is willing the good of the other. One can love another person without being worthy of them. Perfect love is loving those that hate you, is my understanding.

I tried to gaslight myself into romantically loving a wonderful, kind person--the kind of person I should want to marry. It didn't work and just ended up hurting both of us. Ymmv

> What you're doing here is replacing a possibly incorrect view of the world with another possibly incorrect one. You're doing this because (the search for truth is a futile one because) given the choice of being sad and maybe right and being happy and ever so slightly more wrong, you should choose the latter.

I completely disagree with this.

You must avoid a choice that lets you be happy and "slightly more wrong", if that choice ultimately deviates from the truth.

Always pursue truth first. It is knowing the truth that often leads to fulfilment, even if it may not lead to immediate happiness. because with truth can now grasp at the problem and find a way to fix it. Ignorant bliss is only a temporary salve, and cuts short the route to true fulfilment.

Always opt for truth no matter how sad/bad it makes you feel. Emotions are fleeting; the truth isn't, and knowing the truth is what gives you more control over your emotions.

As an alternative perspective: too many people who are fixated on finding the one true ground truth end up actually pursuing cynicism. The "truth" they find is invariably depressing and rather than enabling agency and action leads them to believe they have no agency at all.

Truth—real truth—is very very difficult if not impossible to find. We all approach life through a lens of some sort and it's impossible to calibrate that lens without access to an alternative perspective, and we only have access to those alternatives through highly imperfect language.

I've never known someone obsessed with finding absolute ground truth to be happy. I've known plenty of people who are happy who see life through a lens that leads to joy but would be regarded as naive by the perpetual cynic.

I feel we are mixing up subjective feelings with objective facts here. Facts exist outside of a person and doesn't care about feelings. Feelings belong to a person and exist separately from facts. You can't invent your own facts but how you feel about them are up to you.

Facts have objective truth. Feelings have subjective truth. You can't really be wrong about your feelings. You feel what you feel. You can have various relations to your feelings though. Like you can feel that your feelings aren't helpful or they don't align well with each other. You can chose to work on that I suppose and call that truth. But I think it's somewhat problematic to think that there is some essential or objective truth in emotions. That there's a "objectively correct" way to feel.

If you can convince yourself to feel differently about something then you may call that gas lighting or you may call it growth. That's up to you.

Pursuit of the truth can also be a distraction from what’s actually truly happening in this moment. Emotions aren’t arbitrary — they contain immense amounts of information. I’ve found that “controlling” emotions doesn’t work for me. What works a lot better for me is to acknowledge and accept my emotions, care for the part of me that is feeling that, and then let the emotion fade naturally. I’ve learned to more gently ride the waves and shifts of feelings that move through me, and it’s really made a big difference in my life.

There is more to life than pursuing truth. Ultimately, it is impossible to fully attain, so striving for it at all costs is a battle that cannot be won.

Ask yourself what does it mean to live a good life? And then continue to ask that question as you live and experience new things. And don’t forget to touch dirt now and then. We are much more than thinking machines.

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