It is often assumed that we are identifying with things on purpose because we want to focus on them. That is not the case at all, identification is an automatic process. It is a process that takes place as naturally as breathing. I’m going to approach a few of the more general identifications that most people experience at one time or another in relationships.
Being attached to being in a relationship.
Falling in Love is something we are taught to do. Often we can find ourself identifying with the act of falling in love. There’s an endless list of romantic comedies about being forced to fall in love by this pressure or that pressure. This identification is built up not just by our parents and friends but by our culture. There’s a huge pressure to be married and to be with a person. That pressure is often larger than one’s own desire to not be alone.
The pressure that’s being pushed on us start somewhere so young, this is an ingrained identification. It has been present since right after we were born, and it is hardwired into us according to the culture we grew up in.
This identification amounts to is being attached to an ideology. Marriage and the institution of a family are concepts that vary from culture to culture. Depending on where we’re from we’re going to view these relationships differently. Some people are taught to be attached to a certain career or perhaps the military service. Our parents and education can create attachments for us.
Love is blind
Have you ever been in a few relationships, looked back and thought,”Why do I keep picking the same kind of people?”
We learn what beauty is. We learn what kindness is. We identify with those things that we learned and the people we learn them from. And depending on our personal adventures in life we are left with what some would call biases.
We find ourselves attracted to the people that have certain features. They must be smart or quiet or short or certain colored hair or perhaps they must have a little meat on their bones or like to party. And typically, it’s a combination of a bunch of things. In my experience it is a compromise between these different traits depending on what the person lacked or had in excess. These may seem like shallow observations, but these are the type of things that we hinge a relationship on.
Even if I just met the love of my life, the person that I will die in the arms of. When I met them and I heard their voice for the first time, I was attracted to something very simple. I was attracted to something that I identified with strong enough, to single that person out from a crowd.
We hang onto this identification throughout the relationship. It becomes a more complicated identification with more identifications underneath it like a chain or net. The more we become identified with a single thing, all the less we can identify with anything else. If this chain of identifications becomes so long and deep, it takes all of one’s attention away from the world around them.
And we become blind to reality. Hence Love is blind.
Lost in objectification
As one plummets down this pit of love. The identifications become more personal, more selective. We begin considering the other person. They gain value and meaning to us, due to this high state of identification they become a part of one’s life. One becomes lost in the other.
This external considering is the golden nectar of love. The joy of understanding and feeling another person’s happiness and being able to be the cause of that. To have a connection with someone as you experience things and know that you’re both sharing the same experience and seeing it from the same point of view.
Not all identification is bad and not all objectification is negative.
Considering oneself
Internal considering rarely seems to offer up anything worthwhile in a personal relationship. Internal considering forces us to perceive ourselves as greater than or less than another. When we feel another person needs to be doing something in particular because of their relationship with us. That is internal considering. To put it into more familiar terms: jealousy, envy, codependency and enabling.
The moment we feel like somebody owes us something, we are in the state of internal identification. It does not matter if it is true or false right or wrong. Those moral and ethical aspects belong to the culture in which the relationship is taking place. Someone in a deep state of such internal identification, will often treat the other as if they are property.
On the other hand internal considering is of great necessity in the fields of science, business, and sports. There’s a good deal of internal considering taking place for a person to feel confident enough in themselves to take things further than anyone else does. In the world of business this internal considering can drive a person to success, but in relationships we are not in competition.