Relationships, Change, and Independence
I have said goodbye to all my relationships in recent months, as they start new lives with exciting new careers thousands of miles away. Relationships are an area of life in which I'm pretty satisfied with my results. While it is particularly on my mind, I thought I'd just put down some thoughts. These are the philosophies to which I credit my lack of drama and turmoil.
Expectations are key to success and failure. From the very start, we managed our expectations well. Imagine the joy of feeling pleasantly surprised every day that your relationship is still happily going on. Now imagine being unpleasantly surprised when it isn't. I decided which one I wanted.
This is not pessimism. Pessimism comes from expectations that are full of entitlement, obligations, and repayment. Instead this is an attitude of gifts.
Life is full of opportunities. I would rather not spend my life looking for only one that is exactly perfect. I'd rather accept joy when joy is there, without demanding some other form of joy, or that it last forever. Why stockpile food when so many wild trees bear fruit?
This attitude makes it difficult to answer "Are you still together? Did you break up?" It never really applied to begin with. What is 'together' and 'broken up'? It conveys the idea of promises and expectations, right? It means: "do you expect to get back together?" "Do you expect to be at each other's beck and call, taking up all your time or attention?" "Does she expect you to get her permission to start a new polyamorous relationship?" Basically the question is asking how much claim we are staking on each other. We never owned any of each other. It was a gift.
Close bonds seem to act like a form of addiction in the brain-- in a good way. For our purposes I am defining addiction as an adjustment to your motivational system. A narcotic substance can't love you back, but people can, and that's why it's productive bonding. It's the good stuff; it strengthens us.
If I may stretch the metaphor, there is also an equivalent to substance abuse. It's not so much love is an adjustment to their motivational system, as an erasure and over-write. This often happens when they didn't have enough of their own motivations to begin with. They didn't keep enough self-determination to go on alone for a while. So a breakup is a huge crisis which they would go to extraordinary lengths to avert.
Even more so when they put up a white picket fence like vampire teeth sucking out their life, and bury themselves under a mountain of possessions.
I tremble to even mention having children. The complications and embroilments are so far beyond one blog post, that I simply give thanks I will never have to confront it, and wash my hands of it. My advice on how to have a peaceful relationship life is to not have kids. If you already did, go with my best wishes and fondest hopes, but not my advice.
So when this is established, a "zombie relationship" often results. This is my term for a relationship which already died but just keeps shambling on, making a mess. In a zombie relationship, the value to the participants is gone. They're unhappy, but it keeps coasting along from over-intense bonding, or financial entanglements, or both.
Relationships require work, but you should expect more rewards than work. When the work grows greater than the rewards, it is a net negative. I observed zombie relationships, and had an odd realization. During that phase when a relationship is no longer happy, but not unhappy yet, what better time to end?
It was considerably earlier this time for me. Some relationships end when one partner isn't ready, so I should count myself lucky that we were all happy in the relationship and wish it could go on. Don't get me wrong, the timing could be better; but it could be worse.
Sometimes when someone's angry or sad or jealous, but doesn't think they should be, they pretend not to be, even though they obviously are. That's just living in denial. I don't want to deny that I'm sad. I just want to run my emotions instead of them running me. I don't want to make myself out as some kind of emotional ninja Zen master. I kept a cheerful outlook, and didn't make it any harder on my loved ones to do what needed to be done. When the moment of goodbye came, and this part of my life was over, I lost my composure. And why not?
Expectations are key to success and failure. From the very start, we managed our expectations well. Imagine the joy of feeling pleasantly surprised every day that your relationship is still happily going on. Now imagine being unpleasantly surprised when it isn't. I decided which one I wanted.
This is not pessimism. Pessimism comes from expectations that are full of entitlement, obligations, and repayment. Instead this is an attitude of gifts.
Life is full of opportunities. I would rather not spend my life looking for only one that is exactly perfect. I'd rather accept joy when joy is there, without demanding some other form of joy, or that it last forever. Why stockpile food when so many wild trees bear fruit?
This attitude makes it difficult to answer "Are you still together? Did you break up?" It never really applied to begin with. What is 'together' and 'broken up'? It conveys the idea of promises and expectations, right? It means: "do you expect to get back together?" "Do you expect to be at each other's beck and call, taking up all your time or attention?" "Does she expect you to get her permission to start a new polyamorous relationship?" Basically the question is asking how much claim we are staking on each other. We never owned any of each other. It was a gift.
Close bonds seem to act like a form of addiction in the brain-- in a good way. For our purposes I am defining addiction as an adjustment to your motivational system. A narcotic substance can't love you back, but people can, and that's why it's productive bonding. It's the good stuff; it strengthens us.
If I may stretch the metaphor, there is also an equivalent to substance abuse. It's not so much love is an adjustment to their motivational system, as an erasure and over-write. This often happens when they didn't have enough of their own motivations to begin with. They didn't keep enough self-determination to go on alone for a while. So a breakup is a huge crisis which they would go to extraordinary lengths to avert.
Even more so when they put up a white picket fence like vampire teeth sucking out their life, and bury themselves under a mountain of possessions.
I tremble to even mention having children. The complications and embroilments are so far beyond one blog post, that I simply give thanks I will never have to confront it, and wash my hands of it. My advice on how to have a peaceful relationship life is to not have kids. If you already did, go with my best wishes and fondest hopes, but not my advice.
So when this is established, a "zombie relationship" often results. This is my term for a relationship which already died but just keeps shambling on, making a mess. In a zombie relationship, the value to the participants is gone. They're unhappy, but it keeps coasting along from over-intense bonding, or financial entanglements, or both.
Relationships require work, but you should expect more rewards than work. When the work grows greater than the rewards, it is a net negative. I observed zombie relationships, and had an odd realization. During that phase when a relationship is no longer happy, but not unhappy yet, what better time to end?
It was considerably earlier this time for me. Some relationships end when one partner isn't ready, so I should count myself lucky that we were all happy in the relationship and wish it could go on. Don't get me wrong, the timing could be better; but it could be worse.
Sometimes when someone's angry or sad or jealous, but doesn't think they should be, they pretend not to be, even though they obviously are. That's just living in denial. I don't want to deny that I'm sad. I just want to run my emotions instead of them running me. I don't want to make myself out as some kind of emotional ninja Zen master. I kept a cheerful outlook, and didn't make it any harder on my loved ones to do what needed to be done. When the moment of goodbye came, and this part of my life was over, I lost my composure. And why not?