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...to describe a person whom one loved in the past but does not love now. The word--if I could get it off the tip of my tongue--is similar to "beloved" but beloved suggests a current state of mind. Can anyone help?
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enthusiast
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I feel your pain, Owlbow. <sympathetic smile>
In fact, the word I'm looking for is to be used in a book I'm writing about getting over a love relationship. I was going to use the word "beloved" to describe the person with whom one is striving to fall OUT of love, but that imbues the ex-love with too much present emotion. I'm looking to this group to help me find the perfect word for an "ex-" who is, at least for now, an ex in name only. Thanks.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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estranger is the noun form of the verb estrange; once you get past this stage and actually have fallen out of love, the really obscure word anagapesis applies.
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Carpal Tunnel
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When you're done with your book/relationship, I'd be curious to find out how long it takes to 'fall out'.
looks like tsuwm and I were riding the rails...
BTW - Welcome Cathcoy!
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Yup, musick, the right words are important, especially in healing the heart. Here's where I refer to this issue in my book.
Beloved or barnacle?
Some who reviewed the manuscript of this book suggested that I refer to the Beloved in a less romantic or endearing term; that the very use of the word “Beloved” suggests an ongoing attachment to that person. Words like “my attachment,” or “the one I loved,” or even “past love” were suggested to take the charge off a discussion about the Beloved. But I submit it’s unhelpful to demonize or even neutralize the Beloved and, during my own detachment, I refused to do so. After all, I reasoned, I tend to exercise good judgment when I love someone--that is, if I love someone, he’s worthy of that place in my heart until he proves himself otherwise. To now reduce the Beloved to merely an emotional “attachment” is to say that my judgment can’t be trusted. I believe that I honor the place the Beloved had in my life by referring to him as what he was to me. This treatment doesn’t compromise one’s ability to form a strong bond with another Beloved somewhere down the road--in fact, that’s our goal. We can cherish the memories and recognize the authenticity of the relationship by acknowledging, “I would not be who I am without this experience.” The relationship happened. It had a soul and a life force, albeit a force that needs to be forsaken now. As Whitney Houston sang so powerfully, “The ride with you was worth the fall.”
By the way, my working title is "How to Unlove Someone...in 30 Days or Less."
(Still searching for the right word, as I want to abandon "Beloved.")
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tsuwm, you've given me an idea for fleshing out the "stages" a person goes through when they're moving through this universal challenge of falling out of love. Thank you!
I guess, then, we would have (1) Lover, (2) [possibly] Beloved, (3) Estranger and (4) Anagapesis.
What's the word for the person experiencing anagapesis--the Anagapetor? And the ex-Beloved would be the Anagapetee? LOL
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Carpal Tunnel
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I actually dated Ana Gapesis quite a few years back ... a lovely woman of Greek extraction with olive skin, black hair and eyes that looked right through you. But that's another story for another day.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...and eyes that looked right through you.
She wasn't related to Ana Strophic, was she? [cross-eyed threading]
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That's funny, Father Steve. How did you refer to Ms. Gapesis, assuming you were struggling to escape the power of her gaze?
Let me give you all two paragraphs from the Preface to gain an understanding of the word I'm looking for.
This book is borne of my own experience of being unrequitedly in love. I say “unrequited” not because the man I loved didn’t love me back. He professed that he did. I use the word unrequited because he was unavailable to me. Whether the object of our love is unavailable--emotionally, legally or otherwise--or our love is unreturned, the end result is the same: love attachment to someone to whom, for the sake of our emotional health, we should not be connected. To provide brevity for the reader, let’s call the object of our love “the Beloved” and our own role as “the Lover.”
I tried everything to free myself: therapy, self-help books on ending love relationships, journaling, confronting the Beloved--you name it, I tried it. I became something of a lay expert on the subject! I longed to be, not in the opposite mindset of love--loathing or hate--but in the middle; that of indifference, or "out of love." I needed to help myself move on but I didn’t want to fill the space with anything less powerful or authentic than the love I felt. I needed to quiet my heart but maintain my capacity to love, both him (in a new way) and someone new. Being in love with someone we can’t have, or isn’t right for us, or who may be the right person at the wrong time, or for any other reason, requires dedication to freeing ourselves of love’s emotional bonds--bonds that often withstand the rigors of time and distance. Indeed, time stands still, and no geography is out of bounds, for those in love.
Suggestions?
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