RE: Biting myself. — WeAreAliveAndSocial

Thank you for that great comment! (@topcomment might want to check it out)

Honestly, I would say that you are fully living the stoic perspective in your relationships. It's not about giving up your own character, but working on it, improving it, and as you say - not losing it ever. We can't control the other part, the other people.

Your comment made me curious about how stoicism views "love", I never got much into that part. I'll think about what I read and will try to set it into relation to it, if I can't find anything written - besides "don't be attached!"

I do believe that we need other people to change. We have to have motivation, and becoming a better person is incredibly hard, especially when we're within a shell of ego. Loving other people can break that, make us aware of our flaws and most importantly make us want to be better. That's what I tried to emphasize - we have to want it, we have to want to become better because of "better". The rest can come from the outside, but without believing that it's "better" for us, too, I don't think it'll work. That's when we lose ourselves.

I still compromise a lot, I believe it's very important. But I have set limits that I keep a close eye on. Going too far will help nobody, so I try to uphold my boundaries, as a part of who I am.

The goal is what you have - an honest and respectful relationship, full of love of the other as the person they are, with ample possibility to grow together.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I like your distinction between changing because something is truly better for us and changing simply to please others.

Your comment about stoicism and love made me smile. My first thought was that the ancient Stoics probably didn't spend 38 years looking into the same pair of eyes every day. Their advice not to become too attached is certainly wise in some ways, but it also feels a little incomplete to me.

Love inevitably makes us vulnerable. The moment we truly love someone, we accept that part of our happiness is tied to another human being. From a purely rational point of view, that may not sound very stoic, but it is deeply human.

I also believe that other people help us discover what "better" actually means. Without my wife, I would certainly be a different person today—and I doubt I would be a better one. She did not change me into someone else. She simply helped me see my own blind spots, and I hope I have done the same for her.

Perhaps that is one definition of love after almost four decades together: helping each other become more of who we really are, not less.