Your dreams and imagination evolved as a view into another universe. As with the current beliefs, you cannot decipher technical information – no words in books, no details of how devices work, so even if you can describe things you see from another place, you could not reproduce a working version.
Now how do you convince others that the things your are seeing are really happening without being labeled insane? And how could you use this information to benefit yourself or others? Take a peek into the multiverse to see how other versions of yourself have solved these problems…
Would you really want to prove it? What would that accomplish?
You’re probably going to be depressed either way: either your parallel life is worse or your parallel life is better. If it’s worse then you have to witness it and (I assume) can’t do anything about it. If it’s better then it’s not really you that gets to enjoy it, and is nothing more than an existential cocktease.
I guess if you’re really lucky parallel-universe-you might have invented something world-changing and you figure out how it works and bring that information back to your universe. But if it’s anything like most of my dreams it’s mostly just uncanny anxiety-inducing quasi-nightmares.
Existential cocktease is one of the best phrases ever coined, and exactly the phrase I have needed for years to explain many of my dreams. I don’t fall in love. Like, I’ve dated, and had a few relationships, but I’ve never really connected with a person in a romantic way. I love my family deeply, in a non romantic way, so I know I’m capable. But I just have never had that with a romantic partner.
But I routinely do in dreams. Several times a year, I’ll have a dream where I fall deeply in love someone. And then I wake up, and I’m depressed for days thinking about it. It’s an existential cocktease.
Thank you for giving me the language to describe that.
This is a bit of a tangent, but: does it bother you that you’ve never been in love? I suspect if it’s a premise that is popping up in your dreams, and conscious-you has recognised that contrast between dreams and reality, it must.
I think it’s actually fairly common. You’ve probably had partners you cared very deeply for, but not at an intensity you would consider “in love,” yeah? I don’t think that’s actually a problem and more relationships / marriages are like that than we think. Just two people that care about each other, enjoy each other’s company, get intimate periodically, and are trying to survive this flaming roller coaster of a life we’re all experiencing. That’s why “partner” is an apt term, we’re all just trying to survive (and thrive), not live out a Harlequin romance novel.
If it works for both of you I wouldn’t fret too much - but I know brains don’t really work that way.
Honestly, in a relationship, the closest I have gotten to is essentially friend with whom I bone. :/ Part of the problem, I think, is that it takes me quite a long time to really consider someone a friend. Like, I need to know someone really well before that bond forms, and none of my relationships have lasted that long. I also saw my mom try in a bad marriage, she thought she could “fix him,” and that’s a fate I’ve always wanted to avoid. I think sometimes I bail because I realize they’re not the person I want to spend my life with, so what’s the point in dating them, y’know? What I want out of a partner is someone with shared interests, and someone who has a similar approach to life. Someone I can talk to about philosophy, or the books we’re reading. The culture where I live doesn’t lend itself to that, generally speaking.
Yeah, it bothers me to a degree. Less because I really crave that relationship, I do to an extent, but more because I desperately wanted to be a dad, and the only way that’ll happen for me as a gay man is to be married so I can adopt.
I’m also not what you’d call a great looker, so finding a person to go out with on something other than a hookup is kinda rare. Not fishing there, just acknowledging a fact. I’m at peace with that on most days. Lol.
You mention the culture where you’re from – might I ask what part of the world you’re from?
I know this will sound very therapist-y, but why do you think it takes you so long to consider someone a friend? Do you have a very high threshold for what you consider a friend? Are you worried about trusting them?
Regarding the “they’re not the person I want to spend my life with, so what’s the point” statement: so what if you know you don’t want to spend your life with them? Are you enjoying your time with them at that moment? My friend, I worry that you’re sabotaging your present in search of your future, but what if you’re also sabotaging your future by doing that? We’re monkey-brained humans so we’re constantly pondering all “what ifs” and that can sometimes distract us from what is right in front of us at the time. We constantly spite good in search of perfection, but there usually isn’t such a thing. It’d be like refusing a modest lottery winning because you’re waiting for the big jackpot. Work with what you have, my dude!
I can appreciate being gay can greatly reduce the dating pool, too. I’m a bi man but most of my relationships have been het; scouring dating apps for gay men I find the vast majority I do not vibe with at all, and most bi men here are poly with het female partners and are looking for threesomes / group play – from my experience, anyway. So I can’t fully appreciate how difficult it is for you to find someone you connect with (culture where you’re from, someone to talk about philosophy and books, etc) but I do have some idea. However, even if they don’t check all your boxes, sometimes “good enough” can be good enough.
Ah, don’t be so hard on yourself. Most people are not “lookers” anyway. Win them over in other ways!
Rural ass Appalachia. Lol. By culture I was specifically referring to the gay culture here, but the culture writ large is also not one I particularly vibe with. I try my best not to paint with a broad brush, but it’s undeniable that there are certain cultural and social elements at play here. The gay culture here is absolutely inundated with meth and “parTying.” The larger general culture has an almost… Antagonistic view on anything even remotely academic or intellectual. On top of that, my political views just do not align with the vast majority of the people where I live. And I’m not trying to disparage anyone, I understand there are reasons for all of that, and that education in this region has historically been so poor that they’ve had to retool a lot of the testing specifically for this region. But I’ve lived here 10 years, and I’ve managed to make 3 friends, 2 of which live an hour away, and we meet up in a city that’s central to us.
As far as making friends goes, it’s not that I don’t trust them at first blush or anything, I guess I’m just sort of stuck in my own routine, and it takes quite a lot of time before I can adjust my programming to include another human into that. I have to feel a connection with them to want to include them in my life, and that takes time. On top of that, it’s incredibly difficult to find people with shared interests. And I know, I make the perfect the enemy of the good. I do that, and I need to stop.
But lemme tell you about my most recent date. Lol. Met this dude online, talked for 2 weeks. He seemed perfect. Great guy, exactly my type. Smart, funny, into nerdy shit, loves philosophy, he’s a writer.
We meet up at a local park, where’s there’s a busy walking trail. Go on an hour long walk, where he informs me the love of his life is in prison for dealing meth, will be getting out hopefully in 2032. He wants someone who will me in with him, and keep him company, be a companion until his man gets out of prison, at which point the relationship has an expiration date.
The guy before that was also pretty compatible, not exactly everything I wished for, but a good guy, i thought it could be something. We broke up because he was in the closet, which, fine, I understand that. What I couldn’t tolerate is how he would go out on the weekends with his cousins to go fagbashing. They’d catfish a guy on Grindr, and then pummel the shit out of him. He was so afraid of his family that he would participate in that. Which is horrible that he had to deal with family like that, but I just couldn’t sit by idly. He broke up with me when I reported turned in his cousins.
Tennessee can be a lovely place, but get too far outside of a city, and it turns dark real quick.
haha say no more. I’m from Toronto and have never been to the Appalachians (rural or not), but uh… that area of America is well known. Infamous, even. I’m a bit surprised there’s a discernible gay community there at all. There’s a lot of “parTying” here too (I see what you did there), not my vibe at all. As someone from outside of America looking in (because we are perpetually bombarded with American culture) it seems like the vast majority of the country is anti-intellectual. Which is of course by design, it’s much easier to stage an authoritarian coup if the majority is too dumbed down to think critically and fight it. Plus starve the beast, wedge the class divide further, and you have masses of people fighting each other for crumbs. I suspect your life would be greatly improved if you were able to get the hell out of there (of course that is easier said than done). I can’t imagine it’s going to get much better there anytime soon.
Wow, imagine waiting 10 years to be with a meth dealer. That man clearly has some serious issues. And the gall to assume that someone would agree to be in a long-term relationship with an expiry date. Plus if things end up going really well, and he doesn’t want to wait for his meth-man anymore and just be fully committed to you, you then have a potentially angry ex who just got out of jail, expecting his guy to still be waiting for him. No matter which way that would go it would be absurdly messy.
What in the fuck? If something like that happened here it would be front page news. But the way you describe it, and the fact that it has a colloquial term, makes it seem like it’s a common occurrence? That’s fucked up to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if you could apply for asylum in Canada because of it.
Okay, with all of that in mind I’d probably also be hesitant to accept and integrate friends into my life, and would have a very difficult time dating.
It’s not the most common thing in the world, and to be honest with you, the majority of people around here don’t hate the gays anymore (they’ve moved on to the trans!), but yeah, it happens. It just generally isn’t reported as being motivated by their sexual orientation. It’s just a random attack, or drug related, or whatever.
Jesus, I’d move to Canada in a heart beat. Sadly, I’m one of those working poor you hear about. No marketable skill that would let me. I know y’all have your own set of problems, but to be somewhere I wouldn’t have to worry about healthcare? Dream come true. Feel like marrying a southern neighbo(u)r for a few years? Just long enough to get me in. Lol.
Where’s my ring?!
Also, we’re all working poor. Wealth has transferred to the hands of a few. Of course some of us have slightly more than others, but from the perspective of those with all the wealth we’re all just living on pennies.
I’m sure you have SOME kind of skills that could be marketable if massaged the right way, no?
“Everything everywhere all at once” seems to be a great example of your first point!
My dreams always bring that moment of “this is so simple and it all makes sense,” but as you wake up further and reality starts setting in you realize you can’t actually remember much and the details don’t really make any sense at all. It’s so frustrating.
This week I had a dream I was singing an inxs song to little girl in the street as people watched, my voice was amazing and I was changing the lyrics on the fly to be more childlike and not adult. What in the actual fuck was I doing
Was the INXS song Original Sin?
Lol! No it was never tear us apart
You were seeing one of those realities where everyone expresses things in song and can bust out a lyric as easily as stating an opinion. 😀
So glad it wasn’t a Bollywood dream then lol
Or a porno!
When your dreams make you feel like you’re a paedo
God I hope that never happens.
I’m also throwing an accolade for the existential cocktease phrase. It will come in useful I’m sure