#it’s not unrequited it’s not unreturned and so it’s satisfying

[itspileofgoodthings]

The moment in Stardust when Tristan walks into the witch’s lair and Yvaine who thought he didn’t care about her at all lights up while still chained to the sacrificial table of death

[stanknotstark]

Requested by: @lucywrites02​ 

49: “Are you satisfied now…?”

50: “Do you even know what love feels like?”

The argument had started because of you, you hate to admit. Loki and you had been dating for a couple of years now and while you were head over heels in love with this man and showed it constantly, he didn’t. You respected his choices to not have any PDA in front of people even if they knew you were together but even in private Loki was modest with touching you. Loki would occasionally buy you gifts and he even showed you his hiding spots on Earth in a show of intimacy but it wasn’t enough you felt. This made you feel guilty but also angered you, you shouldn’t feel guilty about feeling more strongly than Loki.

Just a year ago you had told him I love you for the first time and you respected his choice at not saying it back yet but he did state he appreciated it. However it’s running on two years and this man had yet to say it back to you and it’s tugging at your heart that you’re obviously in love with this man but it’s unrequited. 

You’re in the middle of the argument, which started because Loki had refused to hold your hand in private, when you state it, “Do you even know what love feels like?” You say through gritted teeth. “I give everything for you Loki! I constantly state that I love you, I initiate contact with you and try to cuddle and kiss you and you act like it hurts physically for you to do it. Do you not like me? Am I ugly or something? Why am I totally obsessed with you while you merely treat me like a friend! Would you prefer that? Being friends?” You yell, tears falling down your cheeks now. You watch as Loki who stands a few feet from you with crossed arms flinches. 

“No.” Loki growls out, he steps towards you but hesitates and stays in place instead with a look of anger on his face. He brings a hand up to rub at his face as he gathers his thoughts. 

“You mean the world to me-” Loki starts.

“Then why don’t you show it!” You whimper out, your anger is gone and all that’s left is a hole in your chest. 

Loki squeezes his eyes shut and starts talking loudly, “You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of, you’re kind, you’re patient, you make me feel like I belong here!” Loki says getting louder, his hands are now squeezed into fists at his sides, “You give me hope and I love you so much it scares the hell out of me!” He finishes, yelling. 

Taking a deep breath Loki opens his eyes and stares at you and you watch as clouds of fear reside there. You’re breathless at his confession.

“Everything I love always gets ripped away from my hands. When I parade and show off what I love like a trophy someone or something always finds a way to take it from me and I’m left to pick up my broken heart.” Loki is shaking now. “You mean the universe to me and I don’t know if I can piece my heart back together if I lose you too.” 

You and Loki are silent save for his heavy breathing and your small gasps as you cry. 

You now understand. Loki had been keeping you at a distance because he believes he’s going to lose you like he loses everything else.

“I love you.” Loki says, almost whimpers out, “Are you satisfied now...?” The god asks miserably. 

You rush to Loki and hug him tightly, your head buried in his hair and relax when the god hugs you back just as tightly. 

“I’m sorry,” You gasp out, “I’m not going leave you by choice but I can’t live happily with you if I constantly feel like my feelings are unreturned.” You explain with your eyes closed, taking in Loki using so much contact with you. 

Loki breathes deeply in your hair, his hands holding you to him. “I can’t promise to be perfect.” Loki states. 

You squeeze him harder and say, “All I ask is that you try.” 

Loki makes a sound of agreement and you both enjoy holding each other. It’s the longest Loki has ever let you touch and hug him and you’re not going to stop it.

[tipsorrtricks]

DIFFERENT KINDS OF UNREQUITED LOVE.

Having your emotions unreturned is the worst feeling ever. Whether you've been a victim of this unique tragedy or have not yet, here are the five kinds of unrequited love that are sure to be experienced at least once in our lifetime.

The 5 Kinds of unrequited love are:

1. So close yet so far

A huge crush on any individual you might know, but for one purpose or another have not told you about your feelings for them.

2. Hot pursuit

A relationship in which you’re clearly pursuing the character you’re in total love with, however; you are not able to win that person’s love in return.

3. Old flame

An Adorable relationship that ended for some reason, however; one in which you still remember that individual even though there’s no sign of getting back together.

4. Rocky relationship

A romantic relationship you’re presently in, however; one in which you sense you love your soul mate more, are greater committed to, and put more effort into, than your partner. Also, read “UNREQUITED LOVER”

5. The Classic Crush

Starting off with one individual having a crush on someone, but having that someone not love them back, this unrequited love marks back to our primary and teenage years, to possibly even now.

Unrequited love : it hurts...

All sorts of unrequited love are felt much less intensely than equal love, the research found. Unfortunately, that’s true for the high quality things a satisfying relationship brings like passion, intimacy, and being capable to rely on a partner.

But how strong your emotions are for the character you want does rely on the type of unrequited love you’ve got. In a wider context, the huge the interdependence, the more extreme the feelings. So crushing on a film star likely won’t evaluate to the feeling of looking to re-ignite the flame with an ex.

Why unrequited love?

So why do we all at some factor pine for romance with someone we can’t have? Why is it so frequent for us to put ourselves via this torture?

There are three theories:

1. Practice makes perfect?

Desperately wanting someone who’s not at all interested in you could give you practice at love, the kind you wouldn’t get from an ordinary friendship even if it is less than ideal. For instance, obsessive ideas are very common to both unrequited love and the real deal. And wondering about a real relationship and wishing about being with that individual might, on some level, sense better mentally than zero thoughts at all.

2. Love study?

Unrequited love may be a sort of trial and error method that helps you research who you are and what variety of accomplice would make an excellent match.

3. In it to have victory over it?

Finally, an unrequited love may want you to have a type of delayed payoff, says studies. Even if there’s non permanent turmoil, the possibility of a pleasant relationship in the future might just be really worth it.

[silviajburke]

It’s Not Just Amazon. Changing Consumers are Killing Retail.

This post It’s Not Just Amazon. Changing Consumers are Killing Retail. appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Retail stocks have been annihilated recently, despite the economy eking out growth. The fundamentals of the retail business look horrible: Sales are stagnating and profitability is getting worse with every passing quarter.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon get most of the credit, but this credit is misplaced. Today, online sales represent only 8.5 percent of total retail sales. Amazon, at $80 billion in sales, accounts only for 1.5 percent of total U.S. retail sales, which at the end of 2016 were around $5.5 trillion. Though it is human nature to look for the simplest explanation, in truth, the confluence of a half-dozen unrelated developments is responsible for weak retail sales.

Our consumption needs and preferences have changed significantly. Ten years ago we spent a pittance on cellphones. Today Apple sells roughly $100 billion worth of i-goods in the U.S., and about two-thirds of those sales are iPhones. Apple’s U.S. market share is about 44 percent, thus the total smart mobile phone market in the U.S. is $150 billion a year. Add spending on smartphone accessories (cases, cables, glass protectors, etc.) and we are probably looking at $200 billion total spending a year on smartphones and accessories.

Ten years ago (before the introduction of the iPhone) smartphone sales were close to zero. Nokia was the king of dumb phones, with sales in the U.S. in 2006 of $4 billion. The total dumb cellphone handset market in the U.S. in 2006 was probably closer to $10 billion.

Consumer income has not changed much since 2006, thus over the last 10 years $190 billion in consumer spending was diverted toward mobile phones.

It gets more interesting. In 2006 a cellphone was a luxury only affordable by adults, but today 7-year-olds have iPhones. Our phone bill per household more than doubled over the last decade. Not to bore you with too many data points, but Verizon’s wireless’s revenue in 2006 was $38 billion. Fast-forward 10 years and it is $89 billion — a $51 billion increase. Verizon’s market share is about 30 percent, thus the total spending increase on wireless services is close to $150 billion.

Between phones and their services, this is $340 billion that will not be spent on T-shirts and shoes.

But we are not done. The combination of mid-single-digit health-care inflation and the proliferation of high-deductible plans has increased consumer direct health-care costs and further chipped away at our discretionary dollars. Health-care spending in the U.S. is $3.3 trillion, and just 3 percent of that figure is almost $100 billion.

Then there are soft, hard-to-quantify factors. Millennials and millennial-want-to-be generations (speaking for myself here) don’t really care about clothes as much as we may have 10 years ago. After all, our high-tech billionaires wear hoodies and flip-flops to work. Lack of fashion sense did not hinder their success, so why should the rest of us care about the dress code?

In the ’90s casual Fridays were a big deal – yippee, we could wear jeans to work! Fast-forward 20 years, and every day is casual. Suits? They are worn to job interviews or to impress old-fashioned clients. Consumer habits have slowly changed, and we now put less value on clothes (and thus spend less money on them) and more value on having the latest iThing.

All this brings us to a hard and sad reality: The U.S. is over-retailed. We simply have too many stores. Americans have four or five times more square footage per capita than other developed countries. This bloated square footage was created for a different consumer, the one who in in the ’90s and ’00s was borrowing money against her house and spending it at her local shopping mall.

Today’s post-Great Recession consumer is deleveraging, paying off her debt, spending money on new necessities such as mobile phones, and paying more for the old ones such as health care.

Yes, Amazon and online sales do matter. Ten years ago only 2.5 percent of retail sales took place online, and today that number is 8.5 percent – about a $300 billion change. Some of these online sales were captured by brick-and-mortar online sales, some by e-commerce giants like Amazon, and some by brands selling directly to consumers.

But as you can see, online sales are just one piece of a very complex retail puzzle. All the aforementioned factors combined explain why, when gasoline prices declined by almost 50 percent (gifting consumers hundreds of dollars of discretionary spending a month), retailers’ profitability and consumer spending did not flinch – those savings were more than absorbed by other expenses.

Understanding that online sales (when we say this we really mean Amazon) are not the only culprit responsible for horrible retail numbers is crucial in the analysis of retail stocks. If you are only solving “who can fight back the best against Amazon?” you are only solving for one variable in a multivariable problem: – Consumers’ habits have changed; the U.S. is over-retailed; and consumer spending is being diverted to different parts of the economy.

As value investors we are naturally attracted to hated sectors. However, we demand a much greater margin of safety from retail stocks, because estimating their future cash flows (and thus fair value) is becoming increasingly difficult. Warren Buffett has said that you want to own a business that can be run by an idiot, because one day it will be. A successful retail business in today’s world cannot be run by by an idiot. It requires Bezos-like qualities: being totally consumer-focused, taking risks, thinking long term.

Looking for stocks that will triple tomorrow? They’re the ones that are hated today.  Here are a few case studies to convince you.

Fantastic Fantastique

Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was not a child prodigy; at age 12 he was a latecomer to music (by that age Mozart had already completed his first performance tour). His father discouraged him from studying piano, so he did not. His parents wanted him to be a doctor (every Jewish mother wants her son to be a doctor), and Berlioz was sent to Paris to study medicine.

At the age of 23, despite his parents’ objections, he formally abandoned the study of medicine and focused solely on music.  Berlioz never received classical musical training, and thus it was easy for him to break the rules of music composition since he didn’t know them.

It’s hard to say whether Berlioz’s musical adventure would have amounted to much if he hadn’t fallen in love. When he was 27 he attended a performance of Hamlet. There he saw her: Harriet Smithson, Irish Shakespearean actress. He was fatally smitten. He wrote her love letters, but his love went unrequited. He rented an apartment across the street from her and then wrote her the ultimate love letter: Symphony Fantastique.

Fantastique was written in the pain of unreturned love. Berlioz wrote:

Oh, if only I did not suffer so much!… So many musical ideas are seething within me.… Now that I have broken the chains of routine, I see an immense territory stretching before me, which academic rules forbade me to enter.

In another letter he wrote:

Sometimes I can scarcely endure this mental or physical pain (I can’t separate the two) … I see that wide horizon and the sun, and I suffer so much, so much, that if I did not take a grip of myself, I should shout and roll on the ground. I have found only one way of completely satisfying this immense appetite for emotion, and this is music.

As a side note, the topic of pain and creativity is very dear to me. I strongly believe most creativity in the world is unleashed by pain. If it was not for pain we would not have Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which he wrote after suffering a three-year depression from the failure of his first symphony. Or think about this: Beethoven was deaf the last ten years of his life, and this is when he composed his best work.

Back to Berlioz. Either Berlioz could not take the pain or he needed additional stimulants to access his newfound creativity; in any case, he consumed a lot of opium in the course of writing Fantastique. Fantastique premiered to incredible success in 1830 and turned Berlioz into a huge star. Harriett was unfortunately not at the premier and only heard the symphony two years later. By then Berlioz is famous, and she recognizes his genius. They get married and… are unhappy and separate.

Nevertheless, we should all thank Harriet for this incredible masterpiece.

Here is how Leonard Bernstein summarized this symphony: “Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.”

Final point. Fantastique is a five-movement program symphony. (Program music means that the symphony follows written program notes; think of them as silent opera.) It’s the love story of Berlioz’s unrequited love for Harriet – on psychedelics.

There is a glittering ball, a lonely idyll in the countryside, and other visions induced by opium. (I kid you not; here is what Berlioz wrote in his program notes: “The Artist, knowing beyond all doubt that his love is not returned, poisons himself with opium. The narcotic plunges him into sleep, accompanied by the most horrible visions.”)

The symphony continues with the murder of the artist’s love interest, the execution of the artist after a stirring march to the gallows, the artist’s funeral, and the artist’s love interest’s reappearance as a witch).

Regards, Vitaliy N. Katsenelson for Contrarian Edge

Vitaliy N. Katsenelson is chief investment officer at Investment Management Associates in Denver, Colo. He is the author of “Active Value Investing” (Wiley) and “The Little Book of Sideways Markets” (Wiley). This article first appeared on Katsenelson’s Contrarian Edge blog.

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The post It’s Not Just Amazon. Changing Consumers are Killing Retail. appeared first on Daily Reckoning.