How many times can you fall in love?

[Ripheus23]

From the fact that many relationships come to an end, it can be inferred that romantic affection is not necessarily infinite in extent or degree. However, the limit* of romantic ideality is the one that testifies to those who hold that their love is eternal. I think that these alternatives of extent and degree are part of a sort of intrinsic pattern of possible romantic love, intrinsic to the attitude itself that is.

First, I want to introduce the category or concept of metafinity. This adverts to Cantor's difference between relative and absolute infinity, but also involves situating notions of relative and absolute finitude. (Technically, there's also a fifth category of the antifinite, here, but that is a story for another time.) Moreover, Kant's spectrum of finite-indefinite-infinite is recapitulated in this idea such that the relative metafinities correspond to the midpoint, with the caveat that some of the form of infinity in general is still given at this midpoint.

What does this have to do with the question of how many times you can fall in love? Let's suppose that it would be sort of suspicious for someone to claim that they fell in love, say, ten times. And they're talking passionate, intense, abiding, deep, whatever love. Maybe some people would have the emotional energy to sustain such a number, but I think that on average there is a reason why the number would be lower.

So let's suppose a sort of process of emotional development, here, like Kohlberg's(?) stages maybe, whereby on average, the first time someone falls in love, it is probably going to be, for reasons of potential maturity, only to the absolutely finite degree. This supposition resonates with the attitude we adopt towards adolescents who appear to be overdramatic about their romantic suffering. On the other hand, I will not deny that there are authentic, stable cases of high school sweethearts enduring to the end, so to speak.

Anyway, then, let's suppose that the next time a person falls in love, on average so to speak, they're likely to feel romantic affection to an indefinite degree. This might cover cases where a person remains in love with someone else just so long as person A is around person B, or common examples of premarital relationships, or whatever along such a line.

Next, let's say the likeliest degree of affection is going to be "relatively infinite" and this would underscore attitudes such as the long-term examples of til-death-do-us-part or a less propagandistic gloss of "diamonds mean forever," say.

Finally, then, if you fail all the other kinds of love, you get to take the ultimate test: in defiance of possibly all other reason, your heart and your mind will convince you that you can understand the concept of absolute infinity such that you understand the scale and degree of your romantic affection as somehow absolutely infinite. If deontic information states are the only ones that tangibly encode for absolute infinity (Kant's implied thesis, here), then the romantic irreplaceability of the subject of absolutely infinite romantic ideality is tantamount to the inexchangeable value of all unique agents, and at any rate if you feel this way about someone, your feeling should be indelible, irrevocable. Maybe this is infinitely frustrating(!), But maybe it's true as well.

In the end, the idea here is that the absolute limit** of romantic ideality as an ordinal function, so to say, gives us the final cardinality in a way (maybe "transfinal" is more fitting a word), though only in the way that the alephs are all relatively infinite, whereas God or the Von Neumann universe or whatever, is/are absolutely this. ("Transcardinal," then, even.) And this cardinality is what fixes the framework for the number of times that you can fall in love.

Does this sound ridiculous? I will admit, I have a personal interest in such a notion of "running out of options" here, and I dread that I am making an excuse to "believe in" something I might be better off disbelieving in.

*/**: Note: the absolute infinite is here situated as the limit of the metafinite order. That is, the four (or five) metafinite concepts go in an exact sequence, and the final element of the sequence is the mapping to absolute infinity. This does not make absolute infinity into the equivalent of a limit cardinal for the entire universe V, or I should say that it should not make the one equal to the other. In fact, my research into the concept of transfinality (my word AFAIK but assuredly not my concept!) testifies to more, on this score, but I'm going to end the addendum on this point.

Edited November 20, 2019 by Ripheus23

[Truthless of Shinovar]

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.

Really though, this is all super cool!

 

[Honorless]

As many times as it takes

[Ripheus23]

On 11/23/2019 at 10:27 AM, Honorless said:

As many times as it takes

You don't think there's a point of no-return/conclusive failure?

[Honorless]

4 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

You don't think there's a point of no-return/conclusive failure?

Technically no. But I'd probably have stopped long before then. 

[Ripheus23]

Hmm. I have had to admit a tempering of my ideal, to be honest. Like, I think that sometimes, when it comes to the finite-types of romantic affection, there can be partial/quasi-cases or something, where the flame's spark was set, maybe not fanned too much, but it was there and the fact of it haunts reality with the question of what-might-have-been had the fire grown greater and brighter (or darker...).

So the value of the overall model, though, would advert only, or principally, or something like that, just to people who failed(!) to experience the quasi-cases, who were susceptible too much to the flame's enticements. At least, I can say in my own case that by episode 3, I had gotten it into my head that it was an infinite problem for me, emotionally, so coming up with an explanation for episode 4 (the most serious) depended on changing my concept of infinity, or refining it rather (I knew both Kant's finite-indefinite-infinite scheme, but also Cantor's distinction), and worst of all the change seemed (seems!) to fit the case. But I am already obsessed with infinity, so there is a flare of rationalization at issue (or play) here, like: I needed to reconcile my abstract obsession with a kind of number, with my concrete obsession over this or that nice fellow, and voila, I come up with an interpretation of my situation that so conveniently matches my predetermined dread?

If there could be a worse, then, it would cancel itself out and be something better: because the extra truth that is "worse" is better. I mean, knowing how this situation is from the inside out, and having no earthly reason to absolutely doubt myself (I do indeed have reasons to doubt myself, as anyone does, but not to the extent of just up and assuming I am and have been hallucinating for sixteen years or what by now: I would've been 15 when it started and I think a lot of other things would have gone differently later had this really started, as a hallucination, then)...

For example:

On 8/8/2018 at 11:19 AM, Ripheus23 said:

 

  Hide contents

... Ripheus argues that if everyone gives their share in the Final Power, to Apollyon (only Armirex has else done so at this point), they can cause Apollyon's cycle to automatically maximize to infinity, as in an infinite sequence of negations, and that if negation is turned on itself to infinity, it will cancel itself out and the cycle will end (double-negation elimination in logic, to an absolute degree). The people of the cosmos transecrate their magic, to the shield that Ripheus carries, because it is like the stones that the Precentor's servants used, a piece of Apollyon, in fact the heart of a mantle to the gate into the City of Destruction. So once fully charged, the shield is taken by Ripheus to the gate, where he drives it in like a key and begins to channel the Final Power of the entire world, into the anti-world light of the Destroyer, while Apollyon starts to argue in some way to try to inspire Ripheus to surrender, torturing Ripheus in the process, to get him to lessen his hold on the shield, to let it slide from the mantle of the gate. However, this does not work and the tide of the Final Power washes through Ripheus into the City of Destruction, transforming it into the City of Resurrection (resurrecting Apollyon from Its eternal undeath), but tearing Ripheus apart, physically, in the process.

 

Jesus Christ, that was really that long ago?!?!

Well anyway, in A Little Blue Kite, this book that just came out like two weeks ago, there's an "immense monster too immense for any one name and hungrier than all the emptiness between all the stars," whose presence is always in shining red letters, and the problem of nothingness is solved by nothingness giving its essence away to form somethingness---that is, nothingness would become something if it weren't always emptying itself of essence. I could not &$%*^@# believe that when I read that. Why? Because I assumed if I read ALBK I would find out that the author knew something I knew, and of all the things for him to know...!

So it occurred to me afterwards that the police have never told me not to try to go to Dean. No one has, IIRC. Even after I found out he moved back to the area, where he works, even though everyone knows I went a thousand damnation miles and wandered a city in the desert looking for him... So, I just wonder, like, have they not told me to relent, because they know if I do go to him, he won't object to me being there? Like, either he'll be surprised, or happy, maybe. But if he'd told them that he didn't want me to try to talk to him? So has he never done so? He never has done so online, to me, so either he has no idea that I've tried to talk to him a lot since I last saw him in person (which is maybe peculiar, for different reasons...) or he does and he's never chosen to respond. Or he has responded, and his responses have been intercepted: not even impossible, this is a Facebook scenario we're talking about to a great extent (I mean I met him in person, it only eventually got diverted to Facebook but by then...), and FB themselves were the ones who even later did tell me my account had been hacked, from Colorado Springs (I live in Port Orchard, WA, near Bremerton/Seattle), so who knows? (There are oddly specific reasons for Colorado Springs, but which one applies, IDK. FB just said that was where my account was hacked into from, at least one time.)

Whatever, I'm rambling, I even messaged Brandon Sanderson about this because guess where the ^$#@ Dean comes from! The place in Utah that inspired the chasms. I used to mispronounce Kaladin's name, the way they discuss in book 2 even, and this was before I met Dean, so you can imagine... And that's one drop in that ocean. So anyway I messaged Sanderson and no dice, either he has no time to reply to this ^*&@ or he tried and it was blocked or who knows 

[Jaywalk]

On 11/25/2019 at 6:22 PM, Ripheus23 said:

there can be partial/quasi-cases or something, where the flame's spark was set, maybe not fanned too much, but it was there and the fact of it haunts reality with the question of what-might-have-been had the fire grown greater and brighter (or darker...).

This idea has been on my mind for the last little while. I’ve had experiences—one in particular—where a relationship I had with someone could have progressed to something more, but a combination of circumstance and my own foolish actions ruined the opportunity. It’s a constant source of regret in my life, something I’m not sure will ever leave me.

Personally, I believe that you can fall in love a finite amount of times, and after that, something’s lost. Perhaps distracting yourself from the remnants of your past lost loves would change that, but we are products of our decisions and mistakes. To forget the lost loves would be a betrayal, almost, to yourself.

[SingingMosaic]

While I can't speak to all the concepts described because I don't have the background in chewing on the universe that my brain wishes I had, I think it's situational. I think it's different for each person. I think you make a decision and/or your emotions push you into a reaction from which no new connection can grow, but connections only wouldn't grow in that state. So if circumstances ever took you out of it again, you might. So yes, it's finite for many, if nothing changes about things that are specific to their emotions and experiences, but no, if those things do change. A person might be done and really mean it, done and absolutely know it, but they're done so long as the current configuration of their existence persists. That might be for thee rest of their life, but it might not, and there's no way to know whether said current configuration can change enough or not that I've been able to think of...

I've known people who tried once, and gave up after that, living alone for decades, never finding anyone or looking for anyone, and some who only tried again entirely by accident, once most of their life had gone by. Some who tried dozens of times. My cousin was married three times by age twenty-three. People are so similar in some ways and so individual in others. I've known people whose minds were so finely tuned and who were so self aware in certain ways that they knew who they loved within weeks of meeting that person, and they never loved anyone else because what they needed was so specific. Some of them got their chances. Others didn't...

There's always a next and in that time, things may stay the same, or they may change..

If I didn't hope for change I wouldn't be alive right now. But I sympathize with the things that make people stop.

[Elend Venture]

     I am somewhat paying the devil's advocate here, but there is not necessarily a real or even palpable event that is 'falling in love'. What we call 'falling in love' is a generally childish and immature infatuation. Loving someone is in short putting the wellbeing of the person you care for before your own, enjoying being around them simply because they are there, etc. you all most likely understand that. The giddy feeling people often get when say, going on a date with someone they don't know well is but infatuation and lust, not love. One can not simply 'fall' in love in a relatively short time span. It often takes years.

     So what quantity of times could you so called 'fall in love'? Being that we have already dismissed the idea that the concept actually exists outside of fairy tails, we should instead discuss if there is a finite amount of times that one could become infatuated with someone as well as the limit of times that you could actually love someone. 

     To start with foolish obsession; This will be easier to develop as a younger adult or post pubescent child. This is partially due to not yet having developed a jaded and cynical wisdom that allows them to see the world for what it really is. It is more largely a factor of their extremely high libido, which shall begin to taper off as they reach their late thirties to early fifties. So for one thing you are limited by time, as you appear to only have about thirty-five years. (That being said, most of the foolish infatuation takes place in the adolescent years, most likely due to the wisdom and cynicism I brought up earlier.)

     My conclusion? One can always so called 'fall in love' so long as they are (excuse my blunt and crass terminology) appropriately horny.*

     I really couldn't say for the quantity of times that you could actually love someone, however I should think that it would vary greatly, depending upon the psyche of the individual in question, though it does outwardly appear to become more difficult the more you fail.

     Unfortunately, I altogether lack a great deal of experience in the latter field, for I have loved, and I have been fond and childishly obsessed with people, but near seventeen years is not nearly enough time to draw any full conclusions about such relatively deep topics. Such being the case, most of what I have said of actual love is learned  from the narration of older and more experienced individuals that I have conversed upon the topic with.

*Unless of course, one mentally can't get over one's past relationships, in which case, it is a closer situation to my explanation of the quantity of times you could really love someone, which is found in the following paragraph.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Elend Venture
Correction of a typo.