Loneliness and that random lawyer guy
Yesterday afternoon I met a fellow at the post office (I struck it up: blame his french cuffs), and he asked me to dinner. It was surreal, as if it were being played out for the entertainment of an audience. There was a good spark to it, and he turned out to be far more handsome of a fellow after the sun had gone down -- and far bolder. I forget that the average mainstream guy tends to react to the knowledge that I teach classes about sex with the assumption that I'm sexually casual. He was attentive, engaging, a good listener, who assimilated new concepts quickly, but also quite titillated by my life (which always sounds like I get far more "action" than I actually do; in reality, 'action' doesn't interest me, but connection). He wanted not only a kiss goodnight, but he wanted me to come home with him.
This morning I woke up thinking that the noise in my head sounded like one of those people that posts at the top of a personal ad that they've given up.
It isn't that I think practicing good relationship skills is too much work. It's far easier than bullshit and fear. I have a workable share of developed relating skills, and I know from consistent experience that improving these skills is always worth it, if you want to be authentically close outside of yourself. Or inside...
But what's the point in relating when the passion for it that I hold waiting is never fully expressed, or not for more than fleeting moments? I remain fundamentally unsatisfied. Finding a place to be in relationship seems such a long shot, all the giving and sharing and building, and it's all so transient in the end, is there even one person with whom I will have a deep and wide connection someday, outside of a ritual moment? This universe inside of me is vast, and I want to share it and I want to know of someone else's, I want to help each other explore and make new places to adventure together. I want to be with someone who understands making room to be, to be anything you are, to feel anything you feel, to be small without being less, to be big without being too intimidating to recognize, to be any age or gender, or age-not, or gender-not, or . . .anything. Even if it's small or simple or complex or dark or contradictory or silly or impractical or secret or obvious or desperate, etc.. Really anything. To be known. And not just to be with each other, but to be inside each other. These are dangerous blasphemies for which teenagers get scoffed at for inhaling too deeply the strange chemicals in black hair dye kits.
The average unconscious relationship-seeker tends to repel me. Chosen polyamory or chosen monogamy have their attractions both; I like seeing relationship values that are predicated more on a possibility of adventurous union and satisfying intimacy, rather than focusing on defensive or offensive values "protecting against" an outcome. Surely I sound fey to say it, but oh for the fantasy of love that one is drawn to, which needs no artifice to protect its sphere or those who dwell in it, for which the mortal world is just the bare stage and beauty is the creation of love's awe.
I don't know if I am a better fit for monogamy or polyamory anymore, I just know that I have an insatiable drive to go really deep, and I feel pessimistic (today: thus still optimistic?) that such a thing will happen. Once I worked to develop my skills at creating safety, at listening, at being my own caretaker, at various things that would make it "less overwhelming" to be with someone like me who can feel so passionately, I worked at being a remarkably competent tourguide to the realms within myself or the person with whom I was relating. But it seems like Not The Point. Unless I am with someone who has a drive to be that passionately intimate, it's an unstable equilibrium. I no longer want to develop skills like that, it sets me up to be a mentor and a guardian of everyone's safety when what I need is a partner.
As if I stand turned away from my own heart and passions, it feels like a tidal roar behind me, and as long as I do not turn to look at it, it will not roll forward and crash into a deep loneliness.
Why be a generous but tragic figure when it comes to love? Is it a long shot to be with someone? The missteps of getting there, the pains involved, it isn't so much fear of feeling that disappointment again as a dreaded boredom with that.
When I ask what I am supposed to do, the answer is: Wait. Wait and listen. Listen carefully.
This morning I woke up thinking that the noise in my head sounded like one of those people that posts at the top of a personal ad that they've given up.
It isn't that I think practicing good relationship skills is too much work. It's far easier than bullshit and fear. I have a workable share of developed relating skills, and I know from consistent experience that improving these skills is always worth it, if you want to be authentically close outside of yourself. Or inside...
But what's the point in relating when the passion for it that I hold waiting is never fully expressed, or not for more than fleeting moments? I remain fundamentally unsatisfied. Finding a place to be in relationship seems such a long shot, all the giving and sharing and building, and it's all so transient in the end, is there even one person with whom I will have a deep and wide connection someday, outside of a ritual moment? This universe inside of me is vast, and I want to share it and I want to know of someone else's, I want to help each other explore and make new places to adventure together. I want to be with someone who understands making room to be, to be anything you are, to feel anything you feel, to be small without being less, to be big without being too intimidating to recognize, to be any age or gender, or age-not, or gender-not, or . . .anything. Even if it's small or simple or complex or dark or contradictory or silly or impractical or secret or obvious or desperate, etc.. Really anything. To be known. And not just to be with each other, but to be inside each other. These are dangerous blasphemies for which teenagers get scoffed at for inhaling too deeply the strange chemicals in black hair dye kits.
The average unconscious relationship-seeker tends to repel me. Chosen polyamory or chosen monogamy have their attractions both; I like seeing relationship values that are predicated more on a possibility of adventurous union and satisfying intimacy, rather than focusing on defensive or offensive values "protecting against" an outcome. Surely I sound fey to say it, but oh for the fantasy of love that one is drawn to, which needs no artifice to protect its sphere or those who dwell in it, for which the mortal world is just the bare stage and beauty is the creation of love's awe.
I don't know if I am a better fit for monogamy or polyamory anymore, I just know that I have an insatiable drive to go really deep, and I feel pessimistic (today: thus still optimistic?) that such a thing will happen. Once I worked to develop my skills at creating safety, at listening, at being my own caretaker, at various things that would make it "less overwhelming" to be with someone like me who can feel so passionately, I worked at being a remarkably competent tourguide to the realms within myself or the person with whom I was relating. But it seems like Not The Point. Unless I am with someone who has a drive to be that passionately intimate, it's an unstable equilibrium. I no longer want to develop skills like that, it sets me up to be a mentor and a guardian of everyone's safety when what I need is a partner.
As if I stand turned away from my own heart and passions, it feels like a tidal roar behind me, and as long as I do not turn to look at it, it will not roll forward and crash into a deep loneliness.
Why be a generous but tragic figure when it comes to love? Is it a long shot to be with someone? The missteps of getting there, the pains involved, it isn't so much fear of feeling that disappointment again as a dreaded boredom with that.
When I ask what I am supposed to do, the answer is: Wait. Wait and listen. Listen carefully.