Romantic Fiction, Reality Shaping and The Work

I don't know why you would think that.
Emily was in love with Ash basically since the first time she met him, and definitely by the time he left for India. She never stopped loving him, and when he came back broken, she knew what she had to do for him. Had he told her everything when he returned instead of being an idiot and holding back, they might have married immediately. It really had nothing to do with a sex crazed or starved man getting pity sex from a friend. He was an idiot in Heartless, and had to learn his lesson through extreme suffering.
I never used the words pity or sex-starved. I meant someone painfully hurt by rejection (or in general hurt by life), depression kind of pain, where they just want to be alone and away from life and someone else who isn't expected at the time to be a long term love aka just a friend or obsession afterwards doing something sex related to provide temporary help for the depression. In Emily's case, she was betrothed to someone else and in the example from my life, the girl had a boyfriend.

I certainly felt I loved the girl the first time I saw her in German class (there were only 4 of us and she was the only girl) and every school day for two years I wanted to tell her but couldn't get words out (my sister told me she did doodle my name in her notebook). She not surprisingly got a boyfriend for the third year (perhaps relatedly she left our German class) and I just wanted to close my eyes and block out the world for as long as I could and that's exactly what I did during that free period when she showed up for one of them and I just looked at her for the whole period. She's kind of lucky or rather I was kind of lucky I bothered to look when she walked beside me making some noise sitting down. I never lifted my head off the desk though but somehow she stuck her face where I could see it. When she got up, I still didn't lift my face for a minute but did in time to see her leaving with her back to the door she was leaving out so I could get one last look at her.
 
Note: All the suggested books are in the Romance novel List sheet.
After reading the session and part of the thread, I had a dream yesterday in which I was "experiencing" life and relationships from books - interestingly enough, I haven't read any romance novels yet.
I have a dream crystal, I don't know maybe it's also because of that. In the dream I knew that when I got up in the morning I would buy books and start reading them from this thread.

I just ordered 16 books in Polish from the list. I will keep writing about my feelings after reading a particular book.

Thank you for this thread! 🙏
 
I never used the words pity or sex-starved. I meant someone painfully hurt by rejection (or in general hurt by life), depression kind of pain, where they just want to be alone and away from life and someone else who isn't expected at the time to be a long term love aka just a friend or obsession afterwards doing something sex related to provide temporary help for the depression. In Emily's case, she was betrothed to someone else and in the example from my life, the girl had a boyfriend.

I certainly felt I loved the girl the first time I saw her in German class (there were only 4 of us and she was the only girl) and every school day for two years I wanted to tell her but couldn't get words out (my sister told me she did doodle my name in her notebook). She not surprisingly got a boyfriend for the third year (perhaps relatedly she left our German class) and I just wanted to close my eyes and block out the world for as long as I could and that's exactly what I did during that free period when she showed up for one of them and I just looked at her for the whole period. She's kind of lucky or rather I was kind of lucky I bothered to look when she walked beside me making some noise sitting down. I never lifted my head off the desk though but somehow she stuck her face where I could see it. When she got up, I still didn't lift my face for a minute but did in time to see her leaving with her back to the door she was leaving out so I could get one last look at her.
One of the lessons for us to learn is accepting the hurt we experienced when we were young while also accepting that the experience involved fake boyish love that was not real love (eg Devil Riders book 2 His Captive Lady). It was immature. Now that we are grown, we cannot regard true love in the same light as that fake boyish love. The pain was real, but the boyish love was not real.

So as a grown man, I must continue to reject your notion of friend sex to provide help with depression. I do not think that's what these books are about, and I don't think that's what Heartless and Silent Melody are about.
 
loreta said:
I come to believe that this communion is with myself, just as these romantic characters have it with themselves first of all.

Could it be that, as fragmented souls, on the 3D level male/female relations developing into marriage love and commitment are parallel and analogous to making a spiritual bond with higher levels?

As Above, so below
 
loreta said:


Could it be that, as fragmented souls, on the 3D level male/female relations developing into marriage love and commitment are parallel and analogous to making a spiritual bond with higher levels?

As Above, so below
Absolutely. Which is why the institution of marriage, and consequently the traditional family, is under attack by the left and post-modernists/woke faction(s). Which consequently leaves children from broken and non-existent families open to abuse and exploitation by those same deviants and psychopaths. Sickening.:mad:
That was an amazing performance!

I have not seen Les Miserables on stage, but the book is one the best that I have ever read. As it happens, it's setting overlaps with the regency era in England.
Ruthie Henshall's performance is achingly beautiful. I remember Les Miserables as a reading project way back in grade school. I'm going to reread it
 
One of the lessons for us to learn is accepting the hurt we experienced when we were young while also accepting that the experience involved fake boyish love that was not real love (eg Devil Riders book 2 His Captive Lady). It was immature. Now that we are grown, we cannot regard true love in the same light as that fake boyish love. The pain was real, but the boyish love was not real.

So as a grown man, I must continue to reject your notion of friend sex to provide help with depression. I do not think that's what these books are about, and I don't think that's what Heartless and Silent Melody are about.
Well Emily was my high school age when she fell for Ashley which actually is one of the reasons I threw in the "just friends" words (even though Balogh does use the love word in spite of Emily's age at the time) but also like with Samantha and her court guy in the colorful attire who pined for her; it was supposed to be a "just friends" afterwards for betrothal reasons. I mean a pined for friend not a casual sex friend. When I said "good friend" originally I was trying (perhaps rather badly) to get past casual to pined for. Even a potential real love is only a pined for if the other person can't return it (Emily was betrothed to someone else before she met Ashley as a grown woman). When Ashley had sex with Emily due to Emily being down about her situation with her betrothed, they had very little experience together as both grown people and no experience together as grown people who were both available.
 
Could it be that, as fragmented souls, on the 3D level male/female relations developing into marriage love and commitment are parallel and analogous to making a spiritual bond with higher levels?

As Above, so below
Wasn't Ibn Arabi who wrote about loving a woman (for men) as a conduit through which to love god/the universe? I might be misremembering though.

This project however, even if it doesn't concern real actual relationships, may be opening the centres to specific subtle currents in exitence, or in the parlance of Ibn Arabi's sufism, to the names of god of love and kindness. At the more superficial level on the other hand, it counter-balances the external influences of doom and gloom whith which we are bombarded with nowadays. OSIT.
 
When Ashley had sex with Emily due to Emily being down about her situation with her betrothed
That's not what happened. I suggested that you read both books again. You seem to be projecting your past onto these characters.
Ash had expensive lovers he had to financially support because he boyishly thought that's what a man was supposed to do. You didn't have any experience with girls and weren't financially supporting girls. Ash left Emily to go to India, because he was a man trying to find a purpose for his life and she was a girl, not a woman. You didn't leave your German class girl. Ash married another woman. You didn't get another girlfriend who was not the German class girl. Emily was devastated and tried to move on from Ash by getting engaged to a man she didn't have strong feelings for. Your German class girl was not devastated that you got together with another girl, and your German class girl wasn't trying to move on from you when she got with her third year boyfriend, whom she obviously had stronger feelings for than you. Ash's wife and child died when he was cheating on her, and he was broken by his actions. Nothing of the sort happened with you. Emily still loved Ash when he returned broken, and gave herself to him in his time of need and broke her engagement. Your German class girl did not love you and did not break up with her boyfriend to be with you, but recognized you were in pain and sat with you for a few minutes.
That is so far removed from the idea of giving sex to a depressed friend. If any of the men in these novels ever had that idea, it would be when they were still acting like a boy and had not yet become the mature man by the end of the book. I do not think we are supposed to be aspiring to boyish values, and rather we should be aspiring to the manly values.
 
That's not what happened. I suggested that you read both books again. You seem to be projecting your past onto these characters.
Ash had expensive lovers he had to financially support because he boyishly thought that's what a man was supposed to do. You didn't have any experience with girls and weren't financially supporting girls. Ash left Emily to go to India, because he was a man trying to find a purpose for his life and she was a girl, not a woman. You didn't leave your German class girl. Ash married another woman. You didn't get another girlfriend who was not the German class girl. Emily was devastated and tried to move on from Ash by getting engaged to a man she didn't have strong feelings for. Your German class girl was not devastated that you got together with another girl, and your German class girl wasn't trying to move on from you when she got with her third year boyfriend, whom she obviously had stronger feelings for than you. Ash's wife and child died when he was cheating on her, and he was broken by his actions. Nothing of the sort happened with you. Emily still loved Ash when he returned broken, and gave herself to him in his time of need and broke her engagement. Your German class girl did not love you and did not break up with her boyfriend to be with you, but recognized you were in pain and sat with you for a few minutes.
That is so far removed from the idea of giving sex to a depressed friend. If any of the men in these novels ever had that idea, it would be when they were still acting like a boy and had not yet become the mature man by the end of the book. I do not think we are supposed to be aspiring to boyish values, and rather we should be aspiring to the manly values.
A person can certainly want to comfort another person and there's nothing wrong with that. Before Emily comforted Ashley over his problem, Ashley comforted Emily over her problem (with her betrothed). If there's any kind of pre-existing sexual tension between the comforter and comfortee that can lead to sexual tension related things (and adult ones can be more adult-like). I don't see where we are disagreeing?
 
So, it seems that it might be possible to assist in altering reality by undertaking activities that remove fear, intimidation, inhibition and even entering into such realities via positive dissociation.
I wonder how literally I could interpret this?

I need to tell a bit more of the story that I posted in “the Mandela Effect...”
#287(mods I apologise I have been trying to link to the post I made in Mandela effect thread to explain story and ended up posting a copy of the post below. I don’t how to fix this up?)

Preceding the Thursday the scarf mysteriously appeared my husband was preparing to leave New Zealand, flying to Oregon on the Thursday. He is there now visiting family and had four months of work, which we are both happy he has rather than languishing over winter in NZ with not enough employment to keep him occupied. He is an everready bunny and needs to be doing something productive to stay sane.

So we have been having ups and downs this entire past year. But I feel the processing of emotions and modeling of behaviours as a direct result of reading these romances has enabled me to completely change how I see him and what I expect from our relationship and my part in creating that. Don’t get me wrong we do not have a romantic thing going anywhere close to the characters in these books. However each of us have our strengths and I found ways to meet him on a level where we could connect. Mainly I switched from being a brooding introvert to becoming much more animated to and simply expressing more joy. My husband is an extrovert people and children love him. Think of the make version of Christine in Slightly Dangerous. Me, more Wulfric Berwyn without all the capability and respectability.
Anyway, I was able to lift my game and said to him I think both of us just need to commit to being happy. And by that I meant have a positive attitude and demeanour to each other. My husband knew exactly what I meant and always responds to constructive ideas with affirmative actions. As a consequence before he left we were good and still good as we communicate every day- because we enjoy talking to each other.
Anyway, he said something else a couple of days before he left, we were talking about men and women and sex. He said,
“Being desired should be a positive experience”.
That just resonated with me profoundly and with all I had read. It was an important statement somehow.
Now he did not at this stage have a return flight to NZ he has dual citizenship. Everyone arriving into NZ has to book managed isolation stay (police and military supervised) in an isolation hotel for two weeks. These dates available are generally not released until 3 months out. My husband was going to gone for 41/2 months so we were not expecting him to be able to book his return flight as it has to be precisely coordinated with an available managed isolation vacancy.
Then last Thursday morning an hour before my husband left the travel agent called.
She had secured a managed isolation voucher him and booked his return flight.
In that moment I suddenly felt like the future was now going to happen. Before that it appeared to me an apocalyptic fuzz, and suddenly I saw him coming back to me.
And then the strange happening of a black scarf appearing from nowhere happened. I still have found no owner of that scarf, the only explanation that now seems reasonable is that a merged timeline occurred. But I feel the significance of having found a new path with my husband was/is what caused this.
 
Last edited:
Edited post
Full story about how black scarf appeared mysteriously is in Mandela Effect thread.#287
 
Last edited:
A person can certainly want to comfort another person and there's nothing wrong with that. Before Emily comforted Ashley over his problem, Ashley comforted Emily over her problem (with her betrothed). If there's any kind of pre-existing sexual tension between the comforter and comfortee that can lead to sexual tension related things (and adult ones can be more adult-like). I don't see where we are disagreeing?
I'll jump in if you don't mind. There's nothing wrong in itself to comfort someone with sex as long as both participants are consenting and both adults. But I suspect you don't understand the female psyche that well if you think a woman will confort a man who's not her partner with sex without expecting this man to become her partner. You don't give so much of yourself for nothing. In such a case, one is giving everything and the other takes without giving back. That's creepy.

A grown man who's depressed and asking for sex, overtly or covertly comes off as immature, needy, weak and that's not attractive at all. But in itself you're right, it's not wrong. It's just not the best a man can do. Sex doesn't mend a broken heart, it doesn't right the wrongs of the past, and while it can give a boost, the only way to heal is to face what is wounded inside you.

The purpose of these books is to show what a man and a woman can be at their best, they show how hard it is to get there, and the joy that can be found when one overcomes obstacles. They show how a couple can help each other overcome these obstacles. Sex has is part, because it is an expression of love.

As for Silent Melody, I am siding with @hlat and advise you to read again.

SPOILERS
Emily and Ashley love each other, and that's a not a small difference. Althought Ashley has a more brotherly love toward Emily at the beginning, and suffers when he crosses the line. Because Emily gave everything and he took without giving back. Because he was so immersed in his problems, that he didn't saw all the wrong he was doing to her until the deed was done.
Emily proves to be a hell of a woman when she refuses to marry Ashley, the man she loved for years, when it is presented on a silver plate, because at that moment, it isn't right, because at that moment Ashley proposes out of guilt, not out of love. The book is all about how Ashley realising his love as morphed into a more mature love, he learns to give back, to let go of the past.
 
Last edited:
Hello,

I have finished reading Marriage of convenience (book 2) by Annie Gracie.

I identified repressed emotions through the character of Edward Galbraith. Mr. Galbraith suffered from unfounded guilt. His interpretations of what others thought of him were wrong. His wife made him realize that there was nothing to forgive. He felt guilty for the deaths of his friends at the war. He had written letters to the families of his dead friends, but the letters did not say how they died. He had written letters that described a heroic death but they were not the truth. They were the horrible deaths that so often occur in war.

At the age of 18, Mr. Galbraith became in charge of a battalion in which these friends were present. He froze having no experience of war. It's an understandable reaction.

I don't want to describe the whole scene because people in the group will read this book. I wanted to describe the scene simply to give you some context. I cried for a moment while reading this part of the book. It was liberating. I realized that sometimes there is false guilt. We interpret what others will think of us. When Mr. Galbraith heard the views of his friends' parents, he had to accept that his guilt was unfounded. In fact, his wife helped him.


Thank you.
 
Back
Top Bottom