It’s easy to disappear into relationships, so much that it restructures your thoughts. It’s a weird mind-meld that has struck me in the past, emerging from it, as a total mind-fuck. Nice in that you can roll over for sex, but not in that you run the risk of disappearing as an individual. People start addressing you as a unit, you start acting out your problems externally, fluctuating per their mood, et cetera. Its a balance methinks, a balance. Give me not enough time alone and I start to go nuts. Give me too much time alone, I start to go nuts. Give me nuts and I throw up. Which brings me to the link. The Times covered this (suddha) Buddhist couple that took a vow not to be more than 15 feet apart. Then this normal couple in Slate tried it. Interesting.
My favorite parts of the articles and, admittedly, the most prurient:
Two decades her senior, he was a Princeton graduate who in his years studying for the geshe degree also built a personal fortune by helping to grow Andin International, a designer, manufacturer and distributor of fine jewelry, from a start-up to a $100 million-a-year business…
The couple also admit to a hands-on physical relationship that they describe as intense but chaste. Mr. Roach compares it to the relationship his mother had with her doctor when she was dying of breast cancer. “The surgeon lay his hand on her breast, but there wasn’t any carnal thought in his mind,†he said. “He was doing some life-or-death thing. For us it is the same.â€
and from Slate:
Here are my notes from this dark period: “Hanna talking on the phone loudly. Loud loud loud loud loud. She talks too loud on the phone. Talk talk talk. Talk all the time. Talk talk talk. Always talking.”
and a relevant video to close it off: