Is it a bad idea to raise a tulpa that I might be in love with?

[IWouldLikeTo]

Okay brand new here, I will try to keep this short/readable but I have questions galore

 

SO I have had a parallel fantasy life since I was a young child; when I was really young it was my favorite characters from TV shows and books that I liked, and as I grew up characters that were originally specific fictional people evolved into original forms. I no longer spend a ton of time with them on a regular basis, but it goes in cycles and it's something that can sometimes be highly therapeutic. I just call them my imaginary friends.

 

My main hangup is this: while I do have female characters who are fairly developed, the characters I truly love (there are only three, and only one is really active anymore) are all men I find sexually attractive. I've never really had much of a sex life in the real world, and I've never felt like I needed one because I have my fantasy world. To clarify, they are definitely not exclusively sexual fantasies; the majority of the time I spend with them is them having conversations with each other about life challenges etc., but there is a sexual element.

 

I don't FEEL like my reasons for wanting to raise a tulpa are primarily sexual, but I don't think they're strictly platonic either, if that makes any sense. I don't want to date my hypothetical tulpa - he already has a fiance that I want him to be with. But I DO feel this kind of vague, persistent LONGING for his presence that makes me worry that my desire to raise him as a full-blown tulpa is not coming from a healthy place.

 

Also, none of my imaginary friends know I exist and I only ever interact with them vicariously through observation, so I'm unsure about, like, inserting myself into the equation.

 

 

Okay that's all, thanks internet!

[Guest Anonymous]

Do whatever it is you want. I don't see anything wrong with it.

[tulpa001]

You are looking to upgrade one of your daydream characters to a tulpa? (I don't think they count as imaginary friends unless they know about the real world.) I see no problem with that.

 

Anyway, it won't matter once you get started. Your new tulpa is probably going to dislike the idea of dating a character. Either he is going to ask you to upgrade his fiancé to a tulpa, or he is going to dump her. I bet on it.

[IWouldLikeTo]

You are looking to upgrade one of your daydream characters to a tulpa? (I don't think they count as imaginary friends unless they know about the real world.) I see no problem with that.

 

Anyway, it won't matter once you get started. Your new tulpa is probably going to dislike the idea of dating a character. Either he is going to ask you to upgrade his fiancé to a tulpa, or he is going to dump her. I bet on it.

 

Yes that's what I mean. Good thought! Thanks

[Faemon]

I don't FEEL like my reasons for wanting to raise a tulpa are primarily sexual, but I don't think they're strictly platonic either, if that makes any sense. I don't want to date my hypothetical tulpa - he already has a fiance that I want him to be with. But I DO feel this kind of vague, persistent LONGING for his presence that makes me worry that my desire to raise him as a full-blown tulpa is not coming from a healthy place.

 

Also, none of my imaginary friends know I exist and I only ever interact with them vicariously through observation, so I'm unsure about, like, inserting myself into the equation.

Full disclosure: I dislike the word tulpa, I'm only here because I've had similar experiences to what's described, if we would only do away with the jargon. I get why the jargon would be there, though, and some of this has been very similar to me-and-mine what fit better with soulbonds. I dislike that word, too.

 

But, yeah, there's the voyeuristic visual thought process while I'm writing...and then there's characters whose composition of traits stir up something surprising that wasn't on the story outline...and then there's characters who sort of impose without my trying like and go "hey" and when I peer at them and go, hey, uhh, aren't you fictional, they just shrug as though we've sort of met and they've figuratively been raiding the fridge for months; they don't care that I seem to have been going muahaha dance my puppets, so maybe I haven't but I really sort of have? But I wasn't by then. She was the one sitting on my wrists at the keyboard and nagging, "write me!" There's another writer on here whose characters were horrified to find that they'd been made to suffer for the sake of entertainment in a fiction, so certainly my characters' worldview is not universal. And some characters remain characters, in the mental stage or television set of the creative process.

 

For me, perhaps because of that weirdness between myself and my (sigh) waifu I think is what kids these days are calling it, there's a different attitude towards possessiveness during romantic relationships. Cap'n Lusmore (he's a pirate) has a boyfriend in the canon I thought up for him, and when I went over the "veil (between worlds)" I guess we could call it, or into the Wonderlands, and when I met this boyfriend of my boyfriend that way, well, he seemed to treat my relationship with my waifu as a non-issue: waifu-and-I weren't real in the ways that mattered to him, as long as I wrote good swordfighting scenes and caught the details of the good "swordfighting scenes" nudgewink (why is this only awkward for me?) then he really didn't care. Which I think and feel is totally okay, and even if I did not brainstorm, outline, script, or otherwise deliberate that meeting...that okayness of mine might very well be where his okayness comes from. That's my cue to get psychological about it.

 

So: If you do not feel that this is coming from a healthy place, you are right, and would probably have more integrity and comfort in your skin if you don't do it. So how about exploring where that yearning comes from, in more abstract terms? Does your character symbolize or embody personality traits that you feel were repressed or neglected in yourself? That sort of thing. I'm not a psychotherapist, though, so if you want to do that then might as well consult someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

 

Personally, I've found that starting something up with some manner of being such as Lusmore has been a more concrete exploration that gets me to much more emotionally healthy places. My therapist agrees.

[TulpaFox]

I would say it's fine, that was my intention with Eve. It largely worked out that way, there havent been any hitches involved with that. If anything our more "intimate" components of our dynamic act as extra forcing. The important thing is setting up rules for how they will fit into your life going forward. Would they just be a friend if you were in a relationship? Would you continue both relationships (that is what I would do). I personally believe in keeping our relationship persistent even if I get involved with other people, largely because it is a more permenent long term thing than what I would expect from a person. I look at peoples relationships, and only a small small fraction stay in love their whole life, and I dont believe in that sticking around if that falls apart. So I consider that an unlikely possibility. If it did happen though Eve would not be going anywhere.