I’ve been going through a healing lately, meditating on my romatnic relationship history. After a tough breakup in 2014, I was single for a whopping 11 years, but I admit, many of my friendships have not been strictly platonic. I found such an organic grace with defining relationships as “friendship” to simplify the wording, but not like in a way that denies the emotional depth or throws out romance. It’s been polyamory of a certain self-made model — not the typical models I’ve read in books about polyamory that I read avidly in my 20’s. I do have a pattern of doing things in an innovative / creative / self-modelled way :))
I see only now, this approach was needed for me, cause I had had some constructs about partnership in the past that I needed out of, which were just impractical, and in retrospect that’s been the best growth for me to throw out some relationship models. I found standard relationship models involving commitment caused dynamics that would make me rush into it too fast within situations where accountability was not that good. For example, the entire model of a break up - it’s a construct that I find very harmful to people’s feelings. I’ve had fallings out, but I feel drawn to being subversive against break ups as much as I can.
I found my relationships (friendships) were always very meaningful. I observed the feelings of my friends and myself, and my latest breakthrough based on that is this : I think relationships cannot be expected to meet an ideal, they can only be as they are. It’s an organic thing, not something to impose your ideals on. But also, I still find myself not making certain commitments when I don’t see that my ideals would be met, even when I still dream of my relationship ideals all the time. I just believe in spiritual destiny with my ideals, such as marriage, but have emotionally surrendered to not worrying when or how they might be met, so much more.
When a relationship fails to meet an ideal, big or small, I find it’s important not to assume that means the relationship is at fault for that. In my mind, this is turning it around to reframe the relationship, just focusing on what it offers in the positive. I wonder what it would be like for me when I one day step into more commitment, if I would still feel so free to not condemn the relationship. The disappointment of an ideal not met is so real, but I feel it’s best processed inside, because that’s where we do the best processing anyway. I love the model of friendship - you can be mad at your friends but that’s different, it’s not as magnified by these typical models.
In a lot of ways I resent the church, from a historical standpoint. I find that the sociological institution of the church or so many dominant religions and that of the family unit has been essentially one, as institution has been setting social law over relationship models, along with political law. I really get the logic about promoting accountability towards child-raising, but I hate so many underlying assumptions behind that. Like that you must have children, that women are property as servants, and that shame and condemnation are a tool to use for self-improvement. And the lack of historical respect for sexual consent has played into all this so much.
And with this all siad too, I should mention too that I’m surprisingly very old-fashioned about dating. For me, it’s that dating is so important before sex, becuase the conversations you’d have on dates with sex as a possibility / consideration, really are important conversations that teach you things about each other that matter to the situation, which you would not otherwise learn or get a chance to share. There can be danger in being intimate with someone who has, for example, jealous women all around him (in my case), and that’s just one of many examples. I was sad when some men misunderstood how I seem not that into commitment and took me for a slut.
In my case the old-fashioned take on dating first before getting intimate is not about the same reasons as it historically used to be - rushing into marriage or major commitment the second the relationship becomes physical. I’ve just become wiser in my years, now so old at age 42, and so pleased to be more aware than ever of how to foster safety in social dynamics. That’s coming from my value on friendship. It’s all important to me that a lover would also value connecting without phsyical intimacy as well. About half my ex-boyfriends are still my friends, and I wish it was higher than that. I’m about love being a universl thing.
Love, Ba
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