4 posts tagged “love”

Why are there things that are painfully obvious to me that no one else sees?

I want to talk about them.

I don't want to tell the world his secrets, but I want fresh perspectives.

Need someone to point out the flaws in my reasoning.

What if I'm wrong?

I don't want to ask, because I don't want to know.

But I want to know.

I'm still trying to make my heart stop hurting.

It was getting better.

Talking to him is going to tear it open again.

Whether he explains or whether he smacks me down, it's going to hurt.

I'm not who I was. And yet I am who I am.

If I don't talk to him I'm never going to get over it.

I'm not sure I'll get over it anyway.

But it's worth a try, right?

Better than some smart-assed comment leaping from my fingers to the screen and making me sorry.

Even sorrier than I'll be for talking about it directly.

If he'll talk to me at all.

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I keep telling myself--

Nothing has changed except what's in my mind.

I keep telling myself --

There will be other loves.

I keep telling myself --

They won't be him.

The past couple days have been very illuminating for me.  Some random thoughts that stumbled across my mind while I was at work turned into several significant conversations that really intrigue me.

While, given my past situations with S, I fully had considered myself to be polyamorous before, for some reason I hadn't attached that designation to the state of the relationships I find myself in now.  Those relationship are certainly more than committed friendships, and through the rather obvious definition of "loving more than one," I finally got things through my thick head.  I'm still living a fairly poly lifestyle--it's just that now my primary, committed partner, my husband, isn't part of the equation.  Duh, Mira.  But hey, I'm allowed a few slips from time to time, right?  Right.

This, consequently, led me to an even more interesting thought regarding N, who was, I realize now, my first serious attempt at maintaining this sort of lifestyle.  He was the first person I had really and truly not only fell in love with, but felt a serious attraction to aside from my now-husband, who I had still been with for quite some time.  There had been other instances where people had wanted me to be in a more serious relationship with them, but that was before I was really feeling safe with that sort of thing.  I suppose it's fair to say that Evan and I had a strong enough relationship by then that I was ready to try again, whether I realized it in such obvious terms, or not.

Of course, given the way that things went with N, I can see now that I just didn't handle it well.  The primary things about being in such a relationship include being open and honest and finding out where everyone is comfortable going, and where they aren't.  I pretty much didn't do any of that, and got myself in a good deal of trouble.  As I told N last night, "I done fucked up good."

Now that I realized that, the solution to my current problem: what if any of the people I feel particularly close to come to visit me?  Secondarily, my concern is how much affection I can give them even over the limited media we have to communicate without upsetting Evan.  So I screwed up the courage to talk to him about it.  With N, before, there was no way he could have really understood, but since we both loved S, he has a bit better concept of how loving more than one person doesn't have to diminish anything.

Time is finite.  Energy is finite.  Love, however, is not.

I have as much love to give as I can find people to love.  If only there were more hours in the day, because Heaven knows right now I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to spend with everyone.

We do not feel that we can't love our families any longer just because we have a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, husband, or wife--at least, not usually.  Society has taught us that those kinds of love are different, and as such, we have no problems allowing ourselves to have multiple loving relationships in this way.

Why not continue this trend?  I realized even after a few "normal" relationships back in high school that the way I love each romantic partner is different.  While there remain similarities to other relationships in new ones, each person is unique, and as such, so are my feelings for them, when compared to my feelings for any other person that I care about.

The implication of this, for me, is the state of polyamory (or, if you will, polyromance) that I find myself living.  If I can love my husband and my mother, why not also love a friend, a girlfriend, or a boyfriend or two?  We only see this arrangement as awkward or unacceptable because we have learned that it is so.  For some reason (jealousy?) the general opinion seems to be that these alternatives are unsuitable.

I tend to suggest that jealousy is the root of the motivation to compartmentalize and limit our loving relationships.  After all, as I have acknowledged, while love may not be finite, time and energy certainly are.  It goes to follow that it's easy enough to reason that time spent together is a recognition and faciltation of love.  This much I can agree with.  But furthering this, many might say that when one ceases to spend as much time with a love, that that love becomes less.  Not so.  It is, however, a matter of security.

If we can be as secure about loving our family and simultaneously loving our significant other(s), then why not learn and help them understand that adding another love is equally as threatening--which is to say, not at all, at least under optimal conditions.

Of course, there are always exceptions, and unless your "base" relationship is stable, I imagine things like this are easier said than done.  I'm fortunate enough to have a husband who knows what it's like to love me with all his heart and still be completely in love with another woman (S), so it's not as difficult for me to explain it to him.  We have the policy of talking about everything, sharing our thoughts and feelings, and working things out to whatever ends necessary.  The stability I know with him is what allows me to love others wholeheartedly.

Another notion that strikes me about the ease that I have in loving others is that, in my mind, eventually they are going to find a more traditional romance and move on.  It's happened to me a couple times already, and once I got over the one who can't even talk to me anymore (long story there, but needless to say, the girl is very insecure), it kind of became understandable.  I know that I'm able to love them wholly and completely, perhaps even more so, because there is no fear of loss--it's almost implicit in the relationship, at least as far as romance goes.  I don't have some fatalistic assumption that most of them are going to turn out like the one, and I presume that a great friendship will still remain, even when I'm not allowed to snuggle on them any longer.

Why do my close relationships evolve this way?  I really don't know.  What I do know, however, is this post (which is two days in the making, at least), has had enough on the subject for now.  There's more on my mind, so I'll probably add another entry on the subject at this point.  But for now, this'll do.  Comments and questions are, as always, appreciated, as long as they are posed respectfully and intelligently.

The topic came up in one of the Aeon chats I inhabit not too long ago.

In case you haven't heard of it before, the general gist of the idea is that there's a Chinese (apparently) proverb that says that when a child is born, red threads are tied around their fingers which connect them to the people fated to become important in their lives.  Sometimes there are knots and tangles, and threads can be severed, but it led me to consider how many people I would truly say I am 'connected' with in this way.  And, even more so, the lengths that these ties span.

• Obviously, my husband.  We discussed this a long, long time ago and agreed wholeheartedly.
• My best friend, J.  I love her, and we're the sisters we never had.
• L, in California.  Another great love in a fairly non-conventional way.
• S, in Washington.  My first and only real "girlfriend," a woman who will always have a piece of my heart.
• J, in Ohio. A brother and then some. My advisor, and one who comes to me for advice.  Giving and taking.

Ties that have been severed...

• N, in California.  My great mistake, but it would be a lie to say I hadn't loved him.  And a lesson learned.
• J, here in WV.  A first love, a childish love, but the beginning of the discovery of me.
• Mr M.  My band director in high school.  A father figure and an inspiration.  A separation forced by time instead of pain or fighting.  Though it still kind of hurts to return, but only because you can't go back again.
• T, J, A, J...high school friends when friends were few and far between. Again, time and distance pull us apart instead of strife.

Ties still being forged...

• S, in Missouri.  He's a great friend and I care about him a lot. He's grown up a lot in the past year, and I appreciate that more than he knows, probably.
• B.  Virginia.  You know who you are.  I suppose it's high time to tell you that you mean a lot to me too, and I'm really enjoying the time we're spending working on our RP and just generally hanging out.

I guess it all comes back to Mira's theory of love, and loving all the important people in your life differently than the last.  Each and every one of these people is special to me in their own way, and I feel lucky to have so many special people to surround me and hold up and to hold me up.  You guys rock.

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On a separate note, today was D's last day at work, as well as the other manager who was leaving.  I attempted to write him a humorous yet heartfelt note but decided it all came off as a little bit cheesy and/or obsessive.  Which I'm totally not.  Uh huh. (this is me not being convinced!)

Anyway, I commented to him that it was very much like the last day of school--the attitude they both had of goofing off, taking it easy, letting people get away with stuff they wouldn't otherwise.  It was fun.

I also did a little doodle of Claire, my gypsy, as the Queen of Cups.  She embodies the card to that very extent, and made me ponder on a comment made by one of my other RP partners.  Now I'm curious and trying to classify characters on the server as players in the Major Arcana and the face cards.  Spectrus, Claire's co-guildmaster, is almost certainly the Hanged Man, and another character could quite easily be The Fool.  If I had the artistic abilities to depict them as such, I would.  But alas, I am limited to crappy pencil doodles that look far less impressive twenty-four hours after the fact.

I digress.

I had really good RP tonight.  RP that was good enough that I felt like not only did I learn a good bit more about my character, but that I also felt like I learned something myself, along the way.  It was most satisfactory to, for once, walk into a battle, head held high, and have not only confidence, but cool, clear logic on my side.

Sure beats fighting with those bloody emotional types.

Mira, by the way, was also a Queen of Cups, but slowly morphed into Judgment as time progressed, especially after her 'rebirth,' as it were.  Claire is also the Queen, and it may be no surprise to anyone that I also consider myself an embodiment of the card.

Anyway, that's probably enough ramblings for me and now I've lost my train of thought anyway.  Royal Assassin continues to be interesting, but I'm not done yet.  My apologies if this post's a little discombobulated.  It's getting late indeed~  I shall go now and come up with much more babbling tomorrow.