reflection: `love`, `désir` and the unknowable `Other`

love, as an experience, is never simple. it's a tangle of emotions, language, silences, misunderstandings and above all, désir. one might reflect on love through the lens of philosophy, especially the ideas of Lacan, Hegel, Deleuze and Žižek, it becomes clear that love is a complex, even that is to be known ahead of time, often contradictory phenomenon that resists easy definition or resolution.

navigating a delicate, fragile connection over distance and conflict, one might find these philosophical ideas provide a surprising clarity, not about the other person specifically, but about the general nature of love and désir. c would like to share how these thinkers illuminate the paradoxes.

Lacan’s objet petit a: love and the unfillable lack

for Lacan, love is never the gift of something whole or complete. it's, famously,

« donner ce que l’on n’a pas à quelqu’un qui ne le veut pas. »

this phrase might struck one deeply. it points to a fundamental absence at the heart of désir therefore of love. this absence is encapsulated in his famous concept of the objet petit a the elusive “object-cause of désir.” it's not an object in the usual sense, but rather an impossible remainder, something always just out of reach, that keeps désir alive.

Lacan explains that what we désir is not the other’s presence itself but the lack in the other, the gap that signals something missing, something to be filled. this objet petit a haunts one's relationships, ensuring that no matter how much closeness or affection is exchanged, something essential escapes full capture.

c reflects on experience, recognize how désir was never fully about the tangible moments c shared or the affectionate words exchanged. instead, désir seemed tethered to what remained unsaid, to a mysterious absence behind the other’s silence or emotional withdrawal. the distress over unclear messages and the waiting for feelings to be “sure” felt like trying to grasp something that by its nature slips away.

Lacan’s teaching reminds c that this lack isn’t a failure or a flaw; it's the structure of désir itself. one does not love because the other completes us, but because the other is a site where our own lack is projected and made meaningful.

Žižek: catastrophe of "falling" in love

building on Lacan, Žižek describes love as a kind of catastrophe something that violently disrupts the ordinary order of one's lives. "falling" in love is not a gentle unfolding but a radical event that overturns how one see the world and oneselves.

Žižek argues that love is like discovering a “treasure” (agalma) hidden within the other, a mysterious core that transforms the be loved in our eyes. this treasure is not the sum of their qualities but the secret place where love suddenly “makes sense”, it's both enchanting and destabilizing because it reveals that love is less about the actual person and more about how we displace our unconscious désirs.

in C's story, this rings true. the sudden shifts long calls at strange hours, texts heavy with double meanings, emotional silences felt like glimpses of that “agalma”, a deeper unknown that could neither be fully grasped nor ignored. Žižek’s framing makes the emotional turbulence less like failure and more like the necessary shock of love’s revealing power.

Hegel: love as mutual werden

where Lacan and Žižek focus on the psychic structure of désir and its disruptive force, Hegel offers a path toward resolution not by filling the lack, but by moving through it in the process of mutual recognition.

in phenomenology of spirit, Hegel argues about the kampf um anerkennung as the fundamental dynamic between self-conscious subjects. for him love is the dance where two selves seek to recognize each other as free and autonomous beings, not as mere objects or projections.

"this is love. i have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. i am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other and i am only because i have peace with myself; if i did not have it then i would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. this other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me; and both the other and i are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling, and knowledge of our unity. this is love, and without knowing that love is both a distinguishing and the sublation of this distinction, one speaks emptily of it."

Hegel insists that love shalt evolve beyond the initial stage where each subject tries to impose their own désirs. instead, love’s true progression lies in the aufhebung a dialectical movement where conflict and différence are preserved and elevated into a higher unity. this sublation means that love becomes a shared synthese, an intersubjective bond forged through recognition of différence, pain and freedom.

reading this, one might realize the painful phases of mistrust and emotional distance in one's experience are not just setbacks, but moments in this dialectical process. the slow rebuilding of trust, the complex negotiations of affection, and the recognition of mutual wounds are part of a larger movement toward love as a living, evolving relation.

Deleuze: production désirante

Deleuze’s philosophy challenges the notion that désir is primarily lack or absence. instead, désir is a force productive an agencement of flux, intensités, and werdens.

in anti-oedipus, Deleuze (w/guattari) argue that désir does not seek to restore something lost, but to create new connections and possibilities. ruptures and conflicts like those that disrupt affection are not failures to be mourned but des occasions de devenir and new modes of connexion.

this perspective might encourage one to see the emotional uncertainty and waiting not as a dead-end but as a space for experimentation. rather than trying to “fix” what was lost or regain a past feeling, there is creative potential in embracing changement, différence and the unknown future of connexion.

C: love as an ongoing movement

combining these philosophies, c see love not as a destination but as a dynamic movement between absence and présence, konflikt and synthese, projection and reconnaissance, entfremdung and selbstverwirklichung.

the waiting, the uncertainty, the emotional pain these are all part of love’s architecture, not evidence of its failure. love is the paradoxical act of giving what we do not have, being struck by the other’s unknowable core, struggling to recognize one an other and embracing les flux productifs du devenir.

in this light/dark, perhaps the most authentic act of love is the willingness to live with the tension of not knowing, to keep engaging the other without the illusion of fullness or certainty and to trust that the movement itself fractured, painful, beautiful is what makes love real.