You Probably Think This Post is About You

“There is not narcissism and non-narcissism. There are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming and hospitable narcissism. One that is much more open to the experience of the Other as Other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the Other would be absolutely destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the Other, even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation, must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of one's self for love to be possible. Love is narcissistic.” -Derrida


Watching the documentary about Derrida, he brings up interesting concepts above love. According to Derrida, love is narcissistic. Any interesting thought, yes?


Derrida goes on to explain love as something almost impossible to describe and posts the question if we love someone for who they are, or what they are. To love someone for what they are, you love the certain qualities they possess, which can mean you do not love the “whole” person, just some of what makes them up. To love someone for who they are can be considered different; as you love the entire and actual individuality of the person. In which it can be said that when love has ended, we had only loved the certain qualities of the person, not the person as a whole. This makes it possible to end such a relationship when only the qualities where liked because life can continue on without those, and can be found within someone else.

But how is this narcissistic? In a relationship full of love don’t we care unconditionally for the other person, making sure we can continue to make them happy? Don’t we go out of our way to do whatever it takes to make sure we never lose this love? But why are we doing all of this? For our own benefit. Yes, we go above and beyond to show how much we love our person, but for their sake or ours? Ours. We only are driven to act this way for our own selfish reasons. We want this love to never die, we want our lover to be happy, but only so the love we want can continue on. We may seem to be acting selfless in the name of love, but we are actually narcissistic, caring so much about what we want that we go to many lengths to secure what we want, in this case love.

We can also focus on "love at first sight". What is the basis behind or feelings towards this person? Strictly the way they look. We tell ourselves we are truly deeply in love and this person is amazing, yet the only quality we have experienced about this person is their physical appearance.

And if we dig deeper and find someone with a connection strong enough to call love, why are we in 'love'? We are in love because this person possesses qualities we like, that we want, that we are looking for. This has nothing to do with the other person. We are not falling in love with qualities we never knew existed, we are creating an ideal person in our minds, and falling in love with others we feel fit the mold.

This brings up the question, do we only ever fall in love with ourselves?