Hamish Seamus and the Stoics

I am looking for a word to describe a yearning or need I have in my life of late for Stability. Its not commitment, exactly,  or predictability. I just don't want to go through the process of being savagely terminated for reasons I don't understand again. I want to know that  I can depend on Seamus to be there for me, or give reasons why not. I have been hurt, and one approach, which I understand would be the stoic approach, it just to not allow myself to get emotionally involved.

We grieve because we stake our happiness on things we cannot control. If you think that your well being depends on things that you cannot control then you will become a target for coersion by anyone who does have control over those things. 

" you see, as Hamish said... you love me more than I love you" Hamish was holding all the cards.

So that would be a solution. We need greatness of soul and courage, wisdom and temperance and not to allow suceptibility to grief to make us feel weak, worried, upset, flustered and clouded. We must simply block out any feelings of vulnerability. And this I think is where sex is very handy as a proxy for love, particularly for men. Well you can protect yourself by saying "it's only sex"

but then come variations on a theme of giving into it to properly live.  We have Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"

Or the more prescriptive:

''If you try to love on a limited liability basis, you limit your ability to love at all. It is for these reasons that the church upholds the idea of Christian marriage, lifelong, exclusive and faithful, as the only setting in which human sexuality can be responsibly and fully enjoyed.''Archbishop Robert Runcie 1987

Image: Happiness: giving in to the goods of fortune might be crucial. (Frank Renlie/Getty ) 

And more recently Daniel Russell, talking more broadly than about love sex and relationships

"If the way you approach the happiness of your life is to try to make sure that you're never invested in anything enough that you would ever have anything to lose then you have utterly missed the point" Daniel Russell

So I suppose I conclude that real happiness means having something to loose, something to grieve for when its lost, not making sure you do not become attached to anything.