Modern Love
Most people want to have a happy relationship. They’d like to meet a person they really like, who likes them too and get together happily, compatibly, and in a way which meets their needs. This involves a number of aspects: Personality, compatibility, intimacy, availability, and often history, background, and more complex things like expectations, vulnerability, education, and lifestyle. In theory there is someone for everyone, and to each their own.
the ideal relationship, as prescribed by modern professionals is one where two individuals are autonomous. They are able to come together, but also able to separate. Separation is natural, and an important part of coexistence with human beings. You have to go to work, go to the bathroom, see your friends, and all of the things which we do as individuals. Separation should not be a miserable thing. The modern healthy person in a relationship is able to stand apart from their partner, and return to a state of desired intimacy when these activities are complete.
Both partners also enjoy time alone. Private time is important to a person, and doing things without hassle, or crowding is fundamental to many people’s well being.
Intimacy is an important part in the relationship, and based on the person’s social, religious customs, preferences and taste. These begin sexually, and physically in the outside world through all forms of communication, and activities. Intimacy grows and rises to a different level over time. For some, the sensual world becomes less important, for others more so. Everyone is different, but the point is that in a healthy, modern relationship the importance of connection, separation, intimacy and privacy are essential.
[color=grey]Modern Healthy Relationship[/color]
[color=grey]Strong personal connection : Healthy separation skills : Time alone : Compatible intimacy[/color]
I hesitate to continue in this tedious omniscience. Here’s where I’m supposed to go into what the clinical definitions of unhealthy relationships are, and then summarize the whole thing. But I want to talk about my own needs in a relationship. Not because I think I am unhealthy, rather, because I feel that a fair juxtaposition to what is clinically defined as healthy, is defined by those who would prescribe you wellbutrin so that you might be a happy dot, before considering that feelings like longing, desire, hunger, tension, compulsion, obsession, passion and an overwhelming connection with someone within pleasing and considerate limits. Now it’s true that when the guy you’ve only been on two dates with is waiting outside your house in the rain, with that cd you said you liked tucked under his arm, waiting for you to come out of your house it’s probably time to call the police, and encourage creepy to see a doctor. But if you felt the same way about creepy, and hadn’t stopped thinking about him as you stared into the pouring rain, and suddenly there he was. Well that’s a moment out of Sixteen Candles isn’t it? So it depends… There’s really no cut and dry way to define what’s normal and what’s abnormal apart from comparing statistical data and determining the mean. Fair enough, but that doesn’t really account for any of the emotions which wellbutrin is striving to eliminate now does it? If the expectation is that in order to be normal (or happy) we will not have these feelings, then we are making a huge cultural and philosophical mistake.
For me personally, I would like to think that a relationship is based on a strong attraction. Attraction and compatibility operates on various levels for me. I can be attracted to someone’s morality, or their exacting use of language. This can even turn me on sexually. However, for me to really feel that I am compatible with another human being we need to be compatible intellectually, emotionally, morally, and sexually. This includes all kinds of details about my past, my upbringing, my values, and my politics. A desirable connection (really on any level) demands that there be come compelling degree of drive toward one another. So from the outset we are driven, passionate, and perhaps not quite so comfortable with that.
Separation is also essential. for me, I gotta get things done… I go to the bathroom, take walks, play tennis and all kinds of things, but I also feel that a connection can be maintained during separation. To be connected is the ideal, and so throughout the day to feel a longing, or a pull for your partner, a desire to call them, check in, or surprise them is a wonderful and delightful experience to have and to give. Somehow there is an idea in my head that this is childish and I shouldn’t feel this way. In that, as a relationship matures, separation is wanted, perhaps required, and a part of being an adult is letting go of romance, desire, and emotional connections.
Does it border on dependance, perhaps it can. But it doesn’t have to. However, these feelings need to be mutual. Thus the criteria of the initial desire to even be together at all. A one way romance is a slow road to hell. these trinkets of thought, affection, and connection can not be fabricated. We can tell the difference.
I love my private time. I need a great deal of time alone. I pray and meditate, though I would gladly share that with a partner or a good friend. I take long walks alone. I love to sit quietly and watch people. I love to read. Even a good deal of my musical life is spent alone, in silence, listening to the roar in my head and picking through the rubble for musical thoughts and phrases. Much of my professional life is done in solitude and silence. I do not wish to be disturbed during these times, and have a great deal of difficulty sharing this personal space with anyone. To me, this is the essence of my private life.
Without this time, I am less of the person I hope I am becoming.
In terms of intimacy and sex, I know that I am not a typical person. Everyone has drives and desires. The male of the species could dry hump a couch and be somewhat fulfilled, where as the female of the species may also have couch humping tendencies, there is also the drive to nest, and to produce a child, which makes things intimate far less cut and dry either at the outset of sexual life, or as time passes. Nothing’s true for everyone and sadly generalities are all we have to describe things generally. For myself personally, my intimate life is like much of the rest of it: All or nothing. I am rarely happy with casual encounters, or mechanical sex. For me, intimacy is a complex and often overwhelming blend of communication, sensation, and emotion. Without all three in a fiery and frequent measure, I tend to withdraw, and become confused and redirect my instincts into other areas of my life. This disconnection is perhaps my gravest concern in any relationship.
A friend of mine and I talk every day. We are passionate about politics. I send him clippings, quotes, email forwards and text messages. We talk our heads off. Now, unlike intimacy, I take no personal refuge in this relationship. I feel in many ways that there is nothing truly on the line between us. We enjoy our relationship, and when we break, and months pass, to reunite is a pleasure, and we laugh and talk as if no time had passed at all.
When it comes to vulnerable, and intimate relationships, the aperture seems to work quite differently. I open, with thoughtful caution, and flood the relationship with my innermost self. I am a generous and loving person who’s appetites for passion and sharing are pretty heavy. The aperture of my heart’s desires may be difficult and unwieldily, but once closed, it has never been my experience that they ever reopen. Love, trust, and talking are higher on my list of turn ons than availability, schedule, and even visual stimulation.
For me, intimacy is a swirling and powerful thing. Yet its delicacy is always a surprise. What seems to come in a huge wave, like an overwhelming surge of current, can crash upon the shores of silence, rebuff, or rejection and fade in moments, as if they never existed. To trust someone enough to open up at all is dangerous. Once open, the guards at my gates will begin to close off the source even when I don’t want them to.
[color=grey]My distorted view of relationships[/color]
[color=grey]Passionate connection : reluctant separation : quality private life : overwhelming intimacy[/color]
Something else I haven’t mentioned here is conflict. the idea that friends, lovers, or family member will never fight, disagree, or be forced to sweep out from under the family carpets from time to time is perhaps something best left for the cast of ‘Leave It to Beaver.’ The idea that disagreements might be met with a bit of wisdom, a touch of firmness, and a lot of love seems like a goal so far out of reach I no longer believe it exists.
The truth about me and conflict is more like a stark combination of channel changing (goodbye) and the insanity of believing rubbish like “if only you would change… i would be fine.” Though I know better intellectually, and have experienced the pain and punishments of this behavior emotionally, the delusion that either practice may one day actually work persists. I have made great progress, but to what end, I do not know. It seems to me that every person is different, our thresholds of pain, our ability and willingness to communicate, our basic ideas of conflict resolution all vary so dramatically that it may be wise to assume that what you get going into any relationship, be it business, friendship, mentorship, or romance will probably what you have before you at the moment of crisis. I am emotional, verbal, confrontational, defensive, and am equally as willing to talk about you as I am about myself at my worst. To me, this is not the most hopeful personality traits to sport. The idea that if we talk about it one more time, you might empathize with me, let down your defenses and love me again is an old pattern of mine.
Indeed, I was that pathetic ex boyfriend who explained to you in great detail, months after we broke up, just how miserable life had been without you. You got the fuck out of there as fast as possible, but I somehow imagined that you would reach out to me tenderly and caress my face and tell me you still loved me. That we might reunite and live happily ever after.
This is, of course, totally insane. The idea that anyone outside of myself could make a shift in their behavior which could alter my inner disfunction is irrational, and a worthless pursuit. I am who I am, and that’s certainly not your fault. How to shift this conversation into a vulnerable two way street of honest self disclosure and healing, I do not know. But it is my goal. Whatever relationship we’re describing, with the exception of business relationships which can be pleasant with personal feelings but more often than not ask no quarter, and offer even less, this idea of personal disclosure, honest self appraisal, and a willingness to be truly vulnerable and assertive seems to be the only way. A breech between friends can not be healed with empathy and forgiveness alone. It takes a real effort. And even with that, I’ve never seen it work. We seem to cling to the negative and the destructive automatically, and the positive, the loving, the healing is much more like water… it comes, and it goes, but it does not stay.
Success with relationships which have passed the known territory I have described in this essay is not yet a part of my experience. I possess empathy, kindness, love, and desire. I know not where the road ahead of me travels, but I am willing to walk it. I am willing to try.
4 Comments
great essay, bucko, you know we are on the same page. perhaps i am more of an “experiential learner” as i am taking chances alot more than most people i know. i am trying to steer clear of “crazy people” as that has been my downfall in years past. dont we try to do these relationships with people and trust that they are who they appear to be? and that does seem to be the wild card when the true individual comes out and its a genuine surprise to all involved…
Well, crazy people need love too. It’s possible that your “crazy” is someone else’s “perfect.”
For me, what’s growing ever more obvious each day is that people are who they are. I can be, as described above, turned on by someone’s use of words, or their wild lust for life… if the feeling’s mutual, much the better. Way.
Still, while this may make fertile ground for lots of great sex, good-times and party-pants, it’s not love. And it’s important to remember that.
Further, being who we are and it’s value or potential is purely a matter of opinion. The quality of your current love, as opposed to your former love is a relative experience that only you would know about. The feelings would begin and end with you, and have little (and often nothing) to do with the other person, or the rest of the world. Call it a chemical response, or a basic incompatibility. Acceptance is the answer in the end.
But that begs a good question: Why is it always so hard to accept that your partner is who they are? I have found myself so often asking questions like “I love them so much, and yet look at how they treat me. Nothing’s changed!” And yet, my behavior is interesting: I stay.
Having found myself in this emotional place in many of my relationships (personal, romantic, business, and friendships) throughout my life, I have to ask myself what I get out of hoping someone will change. Will that finally make me happy?
I mean, when Stephanie told me she love mushrooms and my response was “Yuck!” I might have taken that in honestly. Rather than imagine that “if stephanie loved me she would never eat mushrooms again… ” see the insanity of that? I do…
Another good example is drinking and drugs. I don’t drink, and I don’t take drugs. Somehow, when I was dating, I found myself in non stop sexual flirtations with women who loved to drink a couple beers, or do bong hits to relax. At an arm’s length, that’s fine. They don’t do it around you, and you definitely don’t want to be around your new girl friend when she’s baked. At least I didn’t. But sooner or later she’ll arrive at your apartment stinking of white wine, wanting to have sex. You say “no” (I do) and they cry… it’s ugly.
They think that if i wasn’t such a tight ass, we’d be really happy. I think that if they would stop drinking and smoking weed that we’d be happy.
What’s the truth?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me the truth is that anyone who wants to be with me should consider that my commitment to sobriety is the single most important thing in the world to me. That I would not even be alive without so deep a commitment. And if they want to drink and party up, even a single beer, then either I don’t want to know about it, ever see it, or be a part of it, or we’re simply not compatible.
That can be a very, very, very hard decision to make on one’s own behalf in the face of strong sexual, intellectual, or emotional attraction. It’s hard enough to take up for ourselves…
Finally, the idea that love is something i will get is pretty funny. Clearly love is devotion to another person’s growth and well being; Acceptance in depth, if you will. So we see that “love” is many things, but above all else it is something to give, and not to receive. You can try to boil me, and fit me into your crack pipe, and we might have a total blast along the way, but I’d be willing to bet that in the end, we’d feel like we were watching re runs of sanford an son.
I feel that is an indispensable ingredient to a healthy relationship, a situation that is mutually supportive to the growth and evolution of the respective partners. It is wonderful when two people meet each other and are compelled to get into a partnership of some kind, whether business, romantic, friendship or mentorship, and both parties provide something for the other that is right on the path of the evolution of the other in whichever field. More wonderful when both are open to growth and can leave old patterns behind. There is an energizing and propelling exchange that has been mutually beneficial in the exchange of love, information, talents, community, knowledge, or wisdom, and both grow towards the light.
Lois, I so feel you. I mean that in many ways that’s what it is to love someone in any capacity whatsoever. To be devoted to their growth, and being is to take the actions of one who is devoted to that person’s growth.
My mentor often says things with some degree of mystery like “Do you love them?”
To which my reply is “yes.”
And he will say “Then everything is going to be fine.
A trick he loves to pull on me. A trick I always fall for. The idea being that if you truly love someone, then you will do what someone who loves someone will do. That this is the only action to take. And then our job is to let go, and allow that love to be whatever it is. The hardest part of any relationship I have ever had being the latter portion of this suggestion.
Questions like “but what about me?” are the only obvious reply… and my willingness to rephrase, and trick myself into stating this again and again in some other way is astonishing to me.
I think this is my real motive for pulling this out and examining it in the first place. That for me to then expect something, or continue to hope for anything other than what is is, as i have described previously, quite insane. It is also clear evidence that I have not given whatever I had to give unconditionally. I have retained some expectation which will inevitably be my undoing.
It feels selfish to look at “what I want” or “what I know” about anyone else. It feels somehow like I examine the problems of my life as if the solution to them where there in. You can’t solve a problem with the problem. Acceptance is the answer. We are who we are, and if that is so, then what is is what is…
From there, anything is possible.
This is a no brainer when it comes to the individual. But framed in the context of relationships the question is like a festering boil to me. Because it only addresses my own heart, my own needs, my own self, and the conclusions I have come to based on my experience. I am so tired of people telling me that they “love” me, when what they do is either consistently reject me, idolize me (which is far worse in terms of intimacy than any possible critique could ever be,) or flatly demand that I be someone other than I am, claiming to know the true and the false about me can be an interesting conversation between friends and family, but is, sadly, more often than not simply abuse, and manipulation. a good example which is inappropriate to tell here about my family disliking me, deeply, when i am truly myself and applauding my “progress” when i pretend to be what they would like me to be suddenly unfolds before me…
I have simply had enough of this false pretense in my life and would like to examine my heart, and my devotion to individuals with some degree of truth about the nature of these attachments. For me it is easy to be devoted. To give love is natural for me. It is what I would do for even the foulest of my enemies. But to then expect anything of that devotion would bring suffering…
I am always amazed at what happens when I am in pain. Amazed by who runs from the scene and who remains. I am amazed by who appears. Life is such an interesting and mind-blowing journey… there is really no adequate measure for gifts or for love. Ours is to become other centered, and give what we can, and only take what we need, and consider what is given a blessing.
To walk away from offerings of any kind is a very hard thing to do. Even when these things are destroying us. To evacuate the hell of self obsession and desire is the last thing anyone would ever do. Can you imagine a proactive, and assertive step toward healing and true self love? I can. and yet, to abandon this entire subject, and then proceed in another direction, caring for myself, and seeking reciprocity in my life has proven to be, under even the most casual of circumstances, something I have been reluctant to do. The hollowness of music without an audience, the emptiness of longing without an object, the futility of desire without a subject. These are radiantly tempting spiritual figure eights which exist in the sensual word. We all feel them. We all desire them. We covet them in a way which seems to precede all suffering.
I long to know peace, acceptance, and the nature of the world free of these boring conventions and contrived weights which seem to leave me face down in the dirt every time.