TMI: I have four kids in part because someone would not have “felt complete” without three kids. I believe she feels complete now. And then some.
I hear this talk of “feeling complete” or “feeling whole” or similar verbiage quite often. I have never understood it. Can you explain to me what it means?
Well, one possibility is having a life so filled with activity and emotion that it drowns out the sound of the whirling black vortex of annihilation that is our own deaths.
People who want other people (or objects) to make them feel comfortable with themselves can look forward to a long life of sadness, since neither people nor objects actually deliver that feeling.
I don’t think it means anything.
I do not feel “complete” without coming home to my wife at the end of a long day. I’m sure my life would be fine if never married but there is a completeness to it when I have someone to share my life with.
I don’t feel “complete” unless I regularly see my kids. They can be in their rooms all day and I may only see them at mealtimes, but there is a completeness to it when I know they are around.
I don’t feel “complete” unless I have a job that I enjoy and where I’m challenged and learning new things and even appreciated now and then.
I don’t feel “complete” unless I know our cars are in perfect operating order and are cleanly tucked into the garage with a full tank of fuel.
I don’t feel “complete” without the perfect grey suit, perfect white shirt and great Italian shoes, all hanging clean and neat in my closet.
I don’t feel “complete” if any of my watches have a dead battery.
It’s my completeness sliding scale but it’s the things that make up a life that one envisions for one self given what’s reasonable and possible. People wishing/wanting the impossible is where things can go wrong but that’s just a matter of learning to adjust one’s expectation of “complete”.
On the other hand, there’s something or other about one’s grasp exceeding one’s reach…
Complete = satiated. Like having a itch scratched, a hunger fed. Like you can’t be happy without the thing you’re lacking.
I have come to conclusion that although I am quite capable of living without a female companion, I do not feel complete without the one who chose me.
Does it help any to say that feeling complete is the opposite (or complement ;)) of feeling like there’s something missing, or is that just a restatement?
Maybe, but “There is something missing in my life unless I get X” seems to be just a way of saying “I want X,” while saying “I feel incomplete without X” seems to be trying to say something more than simply “I want X.”
I could see saying it more about some things than saying it about needing *three *kids. If someone couldn’t be “complete” with an otherwise happy life and two happy, healthy kids, that just sounds ridiculous. If you couldn’t feel complete without any loved ones at all, then that’s totally understandable.
To me, it means more like “There’s a hole in my life where X should be.”
Some people have a list of things they want in life. I’m not that way so I don’t really understand it, but I’ve been surprised by how some have these very detailed concepts of what makes them complete. I’ve heard things like a house of a certain kind or in a certain location, a particular job title at work, or a job at a certain company or in a certain field, some number of kids, some type of car, a summer home, a trip to an ancestral home or just some other country. I haven’t seen that these people are any more satisfied with life than those who have no such list though.
Sure it’s wanting X, but for me it was wanting X so badly that I would regret not having it for the rest of my life… if I hadn’t gotten what I wanted. A loving husband and a kid were my X, by the way. I’d like a second kid but if we don’t have one, I’ll get over it. It would have taken a lot of years and a lot of work to get over not having a first kid, or not finding a good partner in life.
It’s a good question. I really wanted a third kid. I’m fairly sure I never said “I won’t feel complete without a third kid.” but I definitely felt a “not-rightness” to just having two. I think I just said things like, “I would really like a third child.”
Maybe it’s as simple as I grew up in a family with three kids so that feels like the right amount of kids to really be a family to me. My husband grew up in a family with only two kids, and he didn’t have any particular desire to have a third. He also didn’t have a big problem with it.
I had the third kid and I felt good. I felt no desire for another one. Sometimes we’re good at guessing at what will make us happy and sometimes we mess that up. Sometimes we get lucky and are able to acquire exactly what we want and sometimes we miss the mark.
So you have four kids when you only wanted two. Sometimes that’s how it goes. Sometimes times are tough. My first kid died. (so my “third” was actually my fourth) When I had two little kids my husband lost his job and we had to live with his parents for six months. Stuff doesn’t turn out how we wanted and we cope. We work with what we have. We deal.
Tell here you won’t feel “complete” until you have had a threesome, that doesn’t include her. Maybe then she will explain how your complete is different to hers.
May clear things up, but no guarantees.
There are only a few things that significantly add to my feeling of completeness:
Working on my art, or just beginning a piece, or having just completed a piece.
My partner, without whom I’d be single. Nobody else could replace him.
My favorite music (mostly classical), which is uplifting.
Re-reading The Fountainhead.
When all of these things are “in alignment,” the sense of completeness is quite powerful. It has much to do with my deepest values, and having them expressed in reality. It’s fine to have dreams, but unless you act on them and see them expressed externally, they are meaningless.
Probably not ‘more’ satisfied, no. But having check marks on that list sure feels like something’s been accomplished. No matter how trivial some of those things may seem.
True story: I was filling the car with gas this afternoon (on my list) when I hear this loud rumble of exhaust. My wife rolls down the window as I’m looking around for the source of the noise and she is laughing her head off saying, “Get a load of this jackass!”. Sure enough, jackass pulls up beside me in a GOLD Lamborghini Aventador. I don’t mean that fake gold flake almost beige colour you find on cadillacs and buicks. I mean brilliant GOLD. Like a gold Rolex watch GOLD. Like the car was dipped in molten 18K GOLD. Goldfinger GOLD.
Made me wonder if that was one of the things on his “feel complete” list:
GOLD Laborghini - Check!
…and if perhaps my “feel complete” list is lacking in ambition.
Great question, if for no other reason it made me think a bit. I have not achieved what I would consider totally complete but in the past 20 years I can feel myself headed that direction. Sometimes I wonder If I am not becomming a recluse of sorts but at the same time I feel extremely happy and excited to start each day. Doing my best to simply make the serinity prayer my way of living seems to work. I have the freedom to practice my creative urges with my hobbies. I get my mental and social needs handled right here on the internet. I am just happier than a pig in shit.
I wonder if completedness is something that one becomes aware of only after it has already happened.
Or maybe it’s something people don’t feel comfortable discussing until everything has fallen into place? “I won’t be complete until I get X” sounds desperate and pathetic in a way that “I wouldn’t feel complete if I didn’t have X” doesn’t.
Personally, I have never experienced this feeling. Certainly I have felt like I can’t imagine life without a specific something or someone. But I have never wanted something so badly that my continued existence seems to depend on me acquiring it. So it is hard for me to relate.
I don’t think we are meant to feel complete. I think we are meant to yearn for our spiritual connection. For me, being a Christian, I believe we are meant to yearn for our connection to our Savior and will only feel fulfilled when we fill ourselves in the spirit.
The kid thing…I didn’t feel like I was done growing my family until we had our 5th child. I just felt like I didn’t have that sense of ‘someone missing’ anymore after she was born. And, I strongly feel I was meant to parent each one of my kids. Then we added one more for good measure.