Assertions

[queerbychoice]

Primary Assertion:
The difference between when you predominantly love someone and when you predominantly desire them is that when you predominantly desire them, being in their presence and knowing they don't belong to you is more painful than not being in their presence at all, whereas when you predominantly love them, having them around at all is a joy and not having them around hurts far worse than any minor detail about them not being yours.

Somewhat Wilder Assertion:
It therefore follows that if you look at someone's LJ friends/friends-of lists and find that they never ever under any circumstances put anyone on their friends list who doesn't reciprocate that, this is somewhat unpromising evidence of their usual love/desire balance with most people (or at least with most people on LiveJournal).

(I currently have 29 people on my friends list who do not have me on theirs. It could be argued that I am more prone to making wild assertions when they are favorable to me. :p )

Comments

[senselesslover.livejournal.com]

er. i'm not friends with anyone who isn't on my friends list. is that a bad thing?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Not inherently. It's possible that you could love someone unselfishly and they just coincidentally love you back. My entry was only in regard to the statistical odds, especially for people with huge friends lists.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

The people on my friends list are simply people I find interesting to read, plus people who have added me (who I may or may not find interesting). I would say I love only a tiny fraction of the people on my friends list, and desire only one. Two, counting me. Hmm... can you desire something you already have? If not, I desire none.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Is your Boi on LJ? What's his username?

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

he is, but he prefers to remain somewhat anonymous... however, a good internet detective could figure it out in a matter of minutes, if you care to try.

[socialismnow.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you can deduce from someone's LJ friend lists that they never put anyone on their list who doesn't reciprocate that. I believe everyone on my friends list currently reciprocates, but I added several of them before they added me, and would most likely have kept them there regardless.

I like to grow my friend list slowly because it means less danger of needing to trim it later on. I reason that a person is less offended by not being added than being added but later removed.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I agree, I know that sometimes the fact that everyone has added a person back is sheer coincidence.

As for the dilemma of adding and then removing people, I really wish it wouldn't be seen that way, because really if someone was ever on my friends list in the first place the odds are about five hundred to one that I'm still fonder of them than I am of the average LJ user who's never been on it.

And anyway, I can never remember to keep reading their journals regularly if they're not on my list, so if I didn't add people the first time I felt like it I'd never get around to doing it later either.

[ex-audient412.livejournal.com]

I don't put people on my friends list unless I want them to be able to read what I put in my journal. Generally speaking, all of these people have so far turned out to be people who put me on their lists as well within a week; if someone declined to put me on their friends list, I would imagine that without a good reason I would consider them somehow not a very close friend, since it's easy enough to filter out a journal from those you read, and eventually drop them from mine. I do refuse to allow a few people on my friends list because I don't trust them with personal information, and a further few people on my friends list are filtered out of a category I'll use for anything that might, say, include my last name, since it's rare enough that with it and a vague sense of my location you could easily find me. What does this say about me? Maybe that I don't like people showing up on my doorstep uninvited, or trying to look up my high school yearbooks to find my last name and thus my address so they they can send me a "birthday present" without my permission. :P

Did I ever tell you that story? I should.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

You didn't tell me that story, no.

Assertion #2 was a very minor speculative one that no one needs to take personally. Assertion #1 was the primary point, and it was directed toward the same person who provoked my latest entry in the gaylemadwin journal.

<3

[ex-audient412.livejournal.com]

I will tell you when I get home, if you're around. It is very exciting (maybe.)

Re: <3

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I look forward to this excitement.

<3.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I sometimes feel weird if people don't reciprocate- like maybe they don't want me reading their stuff. But I have quite a few people on my friends list who didn't add me back, and I'm happy that way as long as I'm sure they don't mind.