Expiration Dating
Recently, a friend of mine conducted a brief flirtation with a twentytwoyearold. This was good for her for all of the obvious reasons, and good for me, as an opportunity to learn, secondhand, a phrase or two that has entered the lexicon while I've been at home, on the yogamat, otherwise focused.
My friend's jeune beau has skipped town, as planned, with the changing of the academic calendar. Their consciously ephemeral affair was referred to, in his circle, as Expiration Dating.
Typically I enjoy witty euphemism. But there's something unsettling about this one.
Upon reflection, I think that my discomfort has to do with the reduction to commercial terms, of what's a rather romantic phenomenon.
The exuberant infatuation, known in some circles as New Relationship Energy, is one of my favourite emotions. Horror at the notion of eschewing it, is an important component of what makes me a polyamourist.
While I can enjoy a number of other kinds of Love, in some way I privilege this one intellectually, see it, subconsciously, as higher, more genuine. Perhaps, craving it and wishing I had more of it in my life, I elevate it over those equally important Loves, of which I get plenty.
The particular beauty of new Love unsullied by commitment or expectation, is that it must be its own reward. Should the rewards cease to hold the attention of one or the other of the parties, it simply ends (expires?) Sad, surely, as whenever something beautiful dies, but not tragic as when a Covenant has been Broken, or, put another way, when one's more or less conscious expectations, have begun to interrupt one's present moment experience of connecting to another human being.
To apply to a relationship whose framework holds it pure, a label that we customarily read, stamped on perishable commodities, seems, to me, to cheapen it.
My friend's jeune beau has skipped town, as planned, with the changing of the academic calendar. Their consciously ephemeral affair was referred to, in his circle, as Expiration Dating.
Typically I enjoy witty euphemism. But there's something unsettling about this one.
Upon reflection, I think that my discomfort has to do with the reduction to commercial terms, of what's a rather romantic phenomenon.
The exuberant infatuation, known in some circles as New Relationship Energy, is one of my favourite emotions. Horror at the notion of eschewing it, is an important component of what makes me a polyamourist.
While I can enjoy a number of other kinds of Love, in some way I privilege this one intellectually, see it, subconsciously, as higher, more genuine. Perhaps, craving it and wishing I had more of it in my life, I elevate it over those equally important Loves, of which I get plenty.
The particular beauty of new Love unsullied by commitment or expectation, is that it must be its own reward. Should the rewards cease to hold the attention of one or the other of the parties, it simply ends (expires?) Sad, surely, as whenever something beautiful dies, but not tragic as when a Covenant has been Broken, or, put another way, when one's more or less conscious expectations, have begun to interrupt one's present moment experience of connecting to another human being.
To apply to a relationship whose framework holds it pure, a label that we customarily read, stamped on perishable commodities, seems, to me, to cheapen it.