I’m a bit of an oddball: I took ‘solo flyer’ to a high art form, being almost continuously and faithfully in relationships with men throughout my adult life, and yet managing to stay unmarried and separate. Not because I was looking for greener grass, but because I was not looking for any grass at all!
I’ve always felt a sense of what love means, but not seen it in the world.
I’ve always felt a sense of what love could truly be, with nothing around me to point to and say: ‘That’s it, that’s real love.’
There’s so much that was labeled real love, and didn’t feel like it to me.
Many of my relationships with men have been envied by others, considered to be wonderful, well-rounded and desirable in more than one way. I’ve gone into them deeply, too deeply for most men’s comfort. I loved those men and still do. They loved me, and still do. And there’s plenty of regretting of loss in all of it. But something never satisfied me; there was always a feeling of this elusive ‘it’ not being there, no matter what exalted heights we seemed to be going to.
The love we shared seemed to be lacking that ‘it’, even though it was ‘love’ by any societal standard.
Sex was often awesome by most people’s measure, and yet… there was almost always that elusive ‘it’ missing there too. A feeling of not being truly loved, not truly felt, not truly seen, a lack of commitment to truly connect in love with ourselves before connecting in body with each other (true intimacy) – of there not being the openness to truly let another in, or to truly love when the hearts are crying out to do it but blocked from expressing it.
I felt complete within myself by all the standards of general life. I wanted neither the monastery, nor loveless relationships of convenience; marriage (the way it looked to me in the world today), nor children (the way parenthood looked to me).
Actually I did want the ‘divine marriage‘ – the ‘stars’ – which has nothing to do with rituals, contracts and the form it is expected to take in the temporal world. It is the inspiring, sacred connection and understanding between two people that I could feel to be possible, but never attained in any consistent way with anyone. Had I found it, I may have married in the conventional sense.
Instead I discovered that to be a solo flyer and a woman and to not want to ‘catch’ a man for marriage and babies, was considered so unacceptable, so ‘weird’, so ‘abnormal’, that I separated even further.
The man-woman hooking game felt so wrong to me that I did not want to play it at all and the only way I saw to not play it back then was to keep myself separate and apart even when in relationship.
And although it rightly annoyed the men, I don’t relinquish one iota of their responsibility in it. They wanted to play off multiple women, and some of them did. They wanted to take off the (metaphorical) wedding ring when they were out and about on their own. Yet they wanted to have the possessed woman at home – wife, secretary, nurse, maid, assistant, mummy – all less-than-equal, a sub-set of their manly lives. And all the while not fully committing even to a relationship of that kind, not walking side-by-side with a complete equal human of opposite gender, which is what I wanted in my relationships. Men always seemed to have an eye out for greener grass, (ironically, when some of them felt they had found that greener grass, they discovered to their dismay that they’d actually had it all along and regretted having lost it!).
Am I being too hard on the men? You bet! If I take the flack for saying it, so be it, I’m used to that.
However this is not just a call-out to men; it’s also a call-out to the women of the world.
We need to hear it too, not as a self-righteous justification of why we’re rotten miserable and unsatisfied in relationships, but as an exposure of the shared responsibility – for our part in it.
The problem I keep coming up against personally is that just about everyone looks for the ‘outer form’ in one of the form-filling categories of relationships, assigned by society based on age, gender, social standing, etc. …
Either you’re a legally married or a de facto couple (and either way it’s assumed to be long-term, even in the face of the reality that it often isn’t) in a straitjacket-like commitment even when often in your hearts you’re not committed.
Or
You’re flying solo – casually dating, ‘bed-hopping’, leading the bachelor life, etc. because you don’t want to commit.
Or
You’re ‘just friends’, with or without ‘benefits’ (the ‘with’ meaning you have sex for relief but don’t want to commit).
Or
You’re confirmed celibate, leading the spiritual life (which could mean you’re retreating into a cave because you don’t want to commit).
All these Or’s and none of them lived as true relationship, with spouse, partners, self, friends, or God.
All these Or’s and none of them truth.
All about not wanting to commit, connect, stretch beyond limitations, heal hurts, or deal with uncomfortable truths, none of which can be done to their fullest extent without commitment to relationship with self and others.
I can feel within myself the divine marriage, and that with two people in it, every moment spent together could be cherished as both the first and the last.
Not one moment to slack off, or not be present, or take anything for granted.
By Dianne Trussell, Goonellabah, NSW, Australia
You might also enjoy:
Making A Relationship About True Love
“… an audio presentation from Annette Baker and Gabrielle Caplice about the choice “to not live a lesser quality than love in your relationship”.
Marriage vows: a commitment to myself and to humanity
Marriage vows with a difference. Michelle Sheldrake shares her marriage vows……. to herself!
Single By Choice – Does It Really Exist?
“….where I am coming from is a very conscious commitment to what relationships are truly about … LOVE.”