”When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis". In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love. When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.”

I have been thinking a lot of cathexis and how we often use this word to substitute the word love, because we do not understand or define the word love. In our current use of words to describe our romantic relationships, we have like, lust and love without anything in between. When like becomes stronger, we upgrade it to love without actually describing how our actions differ because we assume that caring is love. Based on bell hooks’ definition of love, I believe that I know and have known true love both as a child and now in my marriage. I receive love on a daily basis and give love to my child. I am very thoughtful and cautious of loving the spirits of my family and this definition helped me understand it in a way that will enrich my loving. I also read a lot of romance books, some I hate and some I’m obsessed with. When it comes to some of my recent DNF’s, I was frustrated by how abuse was masquerading as love. Now, I have a more complete understanding as to why this bothers me. It isn’t just the abuse, it is the fact that the authors are confusing cathexis for love because they are fundamentally missing the respect and the desire for the spiritual growth of another. I have also confused cathexis for love. When I was 20, I dated two men at the same time, without telling them. After a couple weeks, when I did come clean to them both I had a unique opportunity. I had justifiably given them both cause to be upset with me and while I didn’t do it for this reason, it allowed me to see how they would express their anger towards me. One of the men called me a bitch, was incredibly angry and proceeded to go and sleep with a whole host of people. The other listened patiently, said he did not own me. He was upset but otherwise he appreciated the honesty. He still says that he knew if he tried to hold me too tight, I would leave. That he held no claim on me (and 18 years later still says this. In this moment, I was able to see (without having the words) the difference between cathexis and love. I had invested a lot of emotions into that first man but the second one was loving my spirit. I was able to choose between love and cathexis and I knew that the way that I was treated in that moment would tell me a lot about how they would treat me when life got hard. That choice allowed me the opportunity to heal some childhood trauma in a relationship that nurtures my spirit, the spirits of my family and child to this day. In my latest romance reads that I have DNF’d, I have seen cathexis but not love. Love cannot exist beside abuse. Neglecting the spirit or physical body is a form of abuse and cannot be love.

Anyway, thank you to bell hooks for presenting this in such an accessible and beautiful way. I will think about this for the rest of my life.

Hello Everyone,

I have a few THICKies (600+ pages) on my TBR that I have avoided because I want to know that the length is justified before taking them on. I figured other people may have some THICC reads that they want others' opinions on as well so please drop any you want to know about in the comments.

Mine are Fairydale by Veronica Lancet and Anathema by Keri Lake.

Thanks in advance for your help!

I’ve been all over the place with my reads lately and I’ve avoided quite a lot of (some of them on the chunkier side) books I’ve got on my tbr. So I’d appreciate any sort of shove in the right direction for the following books to help me pick one of them up after I finish my current read! I kinda want to get through some of these before I nosedive into autumnal reads once September arrives hahah

• The Second Death of Locke - V.L. Bovalino • Sunrise of the Reaping - Suzanne Collins • The Wildborn - Perri Torani • Wild Reverence - Rebecca Ross • Thistlemarsh - Moorea Corrigan • Sword Catcher - Cassandra Clare • The Children of Gods and Fighting Men - Shauna Lawless

I really really wanna get to these ones but I’m finding it difficult to decide where to start so I appreciate any encouragement 🥰

Hey y’all. So this may not be the right place to ask questions like this and I apologize in advance if this post annoys anyone, but i’ve been really struggling with my gender identity lately and I wanted to ask if yall had any advice? I know this isn’t a book related question but i know pb has a large queer community and this is an online space i feel safe in so please bear with me.

I’m AFAB but have started to express myself much more masculine and it makes me feel much more like my self. I don’t really know what this means for me and i’ve been thinking about things like this for years now but i’m not really sure where to start. Honestly with the situation i’m in transitioning feels so scary that I often just push down the feelings so I don’t have to think about. I’ve also thought about possibly being enby but i’m just not sure.

For any trans people:

How did you realize you were trans?

How do you get through first telling people, especially in an environment where you’re well known already?

What if i’m wrong?

Help?

Thank you for any and all comments. Also if you have book recs where characters are figuring out their gender identity that would be awesome too.