The Ambivalence of Relationships...
I've been having deams about a certain person a lot lately, and it has
made me look once again at the whole sex-romance-realtionship thing.
ItÍs actually been a long time since IÍd dreamt about someone. By this
I mean actually transposing a real person in my life to a dream, in
a realistic setting. I always know that someone is making a profound
impact on my life when my dreams switch from freaky fantasies to everyday
whimsy.
At least, that's been one sign.
Others types of signs tend to revolve around my (often overactive)
analytical approach to interpersonal relationships. I like to think
that I can just go with the flow, regardless of who IÍm with. But more
often than not, IÍm always integrating people into my larger ïscheme
of thingsÍ.
Before this current situation began to unfold, there had been four
ïromantic milestonesÍ in my life. Each one I look at as a distinct turning
point - due both to the way the relationships went, and due to they
ways in which they ended.
The drama began with Girl A. First loves always have a place in oneÍs
heart, and Girl A was no different. My friend L once commented that
I wanted to ñbeî Girl A. This is true. When you feel so strongly about
someone, you want to experience everything about them, and you donÍt
want to let them go even for a second. You want to own, possess and
imprison them. Just being around them isnÍt enough, especially when
youÍre a 15-year-old virgin. To put it bluntly, you want to consume
them, because your feelings for them are what consume you every day.
Unfortunately, this gets even cheesier: it wasnÍt just first love,
it was first unrequited love. Girl A found my constant panhandling for
her affections annoying and quickly became sick of seeing it. We had
classes together, and many of the same friends, so she didnÍt try to
avoid me completely; but once the situation had lasted 2 years and high
school was over, she made no secret of her desire to have me out of
her life.
I have put forth the argument that my homosexuality is in part related
to this experience. I couldnÍt find another girl that met my idealized
picture of Girl A. So I stopped trying by the time I was 17. By then
Girl A had moved away, and IÍd hooked up with Guy S.
It went deeper than merely seeking a different sexual object: I was
looking for a shallow, low-maintenance relationship. Unfortunately,
this is something few people reveal from the beginning, and when an
emotional imbalance becomes evident, the person whose feelings are the
lesser must bite the bullet, break a heart and move on. And so it went.
Not only had I passed from heterosexual to homosexual and from virgin
to experienced, I had passed from heartbroken to heartbreaker. Like
the first two, the third didnÍt feel all that bad.
Unfortunately, it left much to be desired, and I was rather ambivalent
and disillusioned with homosexuality as a whole (still am, come to think
of it). I spent the whole of my undergraduate college years celibate
and disinterested. Many opportunities arose for relationships or sexual
encounters, with both guys and girls, but I left the book closed, knowing
that my own psychological issues would have resulted in unacceptable
conflicts regardless of which I chose.
Then I graduated, started working full time, started living on my
own, turned 21 - all within about a 1-year period. As a consequence,
my self-image began to change, resulting in a renewed desire to explore
relationships again.
I began going out, hanging out with more friends, finding social circles
I felt comfortable in. But none of these circles included individuals
I was really interested in romantically. In addition, even though I
realized that I was no longer interested in attempting heterosexuality,
I didnÍt like any of the scenes or people with which I associated homosexuality.
Thus my strange celibacy continued for a little longer.
I had always seen relationships from a very traditional perspective.
Not necessarily that I saw homosexuality as unusual or deviant,
but I did see sex and love as codependent needs, and to be taken only
from one source (monogamy).
It was whilst under the sway of this premise that I met Guy G. Late
one night at Club Fred after an especially excessive ska show, I sat
at the bar, waiting to be thrown out after my 15th Guinness. My excess
was apparently obvious, as I ended up taking home some random stranger
who had just happened to meet my fancy.
Excess... yes... that describes it best... Guy G was a one-night stand
that my relationship premises had made me attempt to turn into a legitimate
love interest. Needless to say, it didnÍt work out well, regardless
of how hard I tried working on it. Very applicable to the episode was
the old quote that rejection is a great aphrodisiac - or that playing
ïhard-to-getÍ is a real turn-on to many people. This is exactly what
happened to me.
Guy G, being far older and far more experienced, saw me as a reliable
trick. I, on the other hand, fell in love with him. He eventually noticed
the emotional imbalance, and understandably had little choice other
than to break my heart and remove himself from the situation - just
as I had done with Guy S several years prior.
My solution was to rebound. Even though I had behaved slutty, I still
functioned on the premise that one could not separate the desire for
sex and bonding from the desire for ïmarriageÍ and ïcouplingÍ, or as
I have enjoyed hearing it termed: ñthe first-person-pluralî. It seems
that everyone wants to be a ñweî. We all want to be a ñmy spouse and
Iî.
My rebound was with Guy B, someone whose premises matched mine at
the time - to the core of his being. I credit him with helping me get
over it. Like I with Guy G, Guy B fell for me whilst I was just sort
of using him.
After spending 6 months with guy B, all the while trying to maintain
that sex, romance, love, coupling and marriage were synonymous, I finally
realized how such a premise had left me emotionally bastardized. I had
turned Guy B into a passive-aggressive manipulator who could neither
leave me, nor make me love him, nor understand why I continued to stay
with him.
Eventually, I had to end it. Guy B had become a charity case, since
I was providing a relationship without really receiving one in return.
A song by Everything but the Girl comes to mind: ñThe love that you
bore/that thing that I once adored/was no gift that you gave me each
time/thinking again what a fool I was then/it was a trophy of yours/a
burden of mineî.
I ended up relieving myself of two burdens at once: the charity case
which I had made of Guy B, and the "coupling"/"first-person-plural"
premise I had possessed. I realized that I had never actually maintained
my romantic life on that premise after all, and that I preferred others
who didnÍt. I finally understood why I felt so stifled and tied down
with every relationship - because I was trying to find a husband when
what I wanted was a mere accessory.
Thereafter began the period which has been the least stressful and
most satisfying for me in terms of sex, love and romance: no committments
and no more serial monogamy. I have learned to be happy by discarding
the idea that every sexual or romantic encounter must be entered into
on the "first person plural" premise.
I have never gone for that which was stable or convenient, anyway.
Pretty much describes why IÍve made every single relationship as difficult
as possible. When consistency and stability appeared imminent, I had
to sabotage the situation.
You'd think I had it all figured out. But along comes this new guy...
I really like him...
I like the fact that he doesnÍt seem to need me, but does seem to
like me. I like the fact that he doesnÍt call me all the time and that
at any time he could decide that he doesn't feel like seeing me anymore.
I like the fact that he doesnÍt live in Fresno, so I donÍt have easy
access to him. ItÍs perfect, because the situation doesnÍt allow
me to repeat past mistakes.
This scares me a bit: would I be likely to fall into the same trap
of 50s sexual politics combined with yuppie queer groupthink, as has
happened before, if I was able to call him up every night or see him
several days per week? Am I getting attached or sappy? Why has my pickiness
in regards to messing around with other guys become more intense since
I met him?
I must say that, ultimately, these fears are not as warranted as I
make them out to be. After all, the only times IÍve made the mistakes
I describe are when I am not giving the situation the analytical stone
washing IÍm doing now.
ItÍs easy to conclude with something like ñgo with the flowî or ñgive
it timeî or ñjust see what happensî, But that would mean evading my
paranoid analytical nature. I must be in touch with every shred of information
on where my life, emotions and psychology are going at all times. Call
it OCD, if you like; I call it intelligent self-awareness.
Ultimately, I do always approach sex and romance as something which
I genuinely enjoy and derive an immense amount of pleasure from. My
complaint is in the fact that I have so little control over outcomes
and consequences. I have built my life around that which I can control
and my entire philosophical system is based upon the concept that I
have free will and possess the ability to control my life in every way.
In a case like this, IÍm at a loss. IÍve directed a good amount of
effort at getting my foot in the door with this person, so to speak,
and IÍve found him to be a very valuable thing for me to include in
my life. Unfortunately, my desire to "accessorize" rather than "couple"
is problematic, because I have no real power in cases where my accessories
are other individuals, since they have free will as well, and
wouldnÍt hold the intrigue they do if they were mere static possessions
subject to my manipulation.
Thus continues the drama, and I realize in a case like this, I still
donÍt seek stability or consistency or marriage. Relationships, in truth,
never provide this type of thing unless the individuals involved
are completely codependent. In any relationship between two (or more)
independent entities, there can be no real "stability", and thus I approve
of my current infatuation. Indubidubly.
...A wonderful person that I cannot control in any way. Not wanting
to control this person in any way, as that would destroy the very features
which make him significant. Scared that IÍll contradict my philosophical
discipline by valuing that over which IÍve no control. Realizing that,
in a case like this, itÍs not a contradiction...
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