309. straying
Why do relationships go wrong? Likely, when we show up as someone other than ourselves with unrealistic expectations. When we hide away parts of ourselves or feel they’re unappreciated, we seek to have them actualized elsewhere, leading to infidelity as a way to prove that those parts of us are still alive.
The only way around this situation, and to cultivate a relationship worth having, is to show up as authentically and honestly as we can. Only then are we able to fully be ourselves and seen for who we truly are. It’s the only way to transcend the stagnancy that has become the status quo within a majority of relationships; where poor communication and worse sexual chemistry, ultimately push us or our partners to look elsewhere. It’s a search to fulfill something that is missing, but if we can transition away from the commonplace idea that we need to hide parts of ourselves from our partners, or settle for partners that don’t allow us to be seen for who we are, we’ll never find somebody who allows us to cross the threshold into the extraordinary territory where boundless magnetism and infinite potential exist.
If we’re able to find a person who fits us just right, and share in the life changing results of cataclysmic self-actualizing sex, things like infidelity do not happen. It cannot happen because there is no room for it. The only place infidelity can happen is within a relationship where the couple are out of sync, to the point where their relationship has devolved into lies or worse, deception, in an effort to hide parts of themselves or their needs. Of course, we all need a place to be our full selves, and if we can’t get it within our relationships, we stray.
249. the ultimate connection
The ultimate connection has us linked together both physically and emotionally. Yet, there are still some people who continue to argue that the more emotionally open and available you are, the worse the sex gets. But how does that even make sense? The more open and honest you are with yourself, the more you can communicate the things you like and wish to see from your partner. Don’t read this the wrong way, carnal pleasures can be great, but they’re limited to their physicality, whereas anyone who has experienced pleasure driven by emotional connection knows that it can be some next level shit.
Study after study show how emotional intimacy increases both sexual desire and sexual libido. And if you really take the time to sit down and think about it, it makes sense. Truly great sex is all rooted in the same categories as emotional intimacy: openness, communication, and trust. Being able to open up so that you can communicate specific desires while trusting your partner isn’t going to think you’re strange or crazy allows for the ultimate connection. Knowing the desires of another and the comfort to explore them openly creates experiences that never stagnate, but instead continue to build upon the last.
Simply put — showing your emotions can lead to some of the best sex of your life. And while we may think that passion and sexual chemistry fade over time, does it really have to? I think that if we can let go of our fears, and stories that prop them up, we will be able to connect on that deep emotional level, allowing us to grow together with each experience so that we can have the best sex of our life each time we have it.
241. sustained desire
Unfulfilled desire will always be met with disappointment. It’s frustrating to be denied a raise or turned down by that person at the bar. But, fulfilled desire also comes with its own flavor of loss. In getting what we want, we lose the thrill of wanting it. The yearning, the elaborate strategies, the fantasies, and all the energy wound tightly into wanting are exasperated upon acquisition.
Sound familiar? It has too. Just think about the last thing you had to have until you got it. Now that you have it, you may enjoy it, you may even love it, but do you still want it? How does that want compare to the first time it crossed your mind? It is definitely harder to want what you already have, for the obvious reason of owning it. It’s the law of diminishing returns telling us that with increased frequency comes a decrease in satisfaction. The more you use a product, the less satisfaction you’ll get with each subsequent use.
So if desire is always more intense than its requiting, are we doomed in our quest to find the one? Are our attempts at a loving relationship destined for staleness for lack of longing?
It is often said that people only want what they can’t have. This makes sense from the perspective of buying a new gadget, article of clothing or even sexual conquest, but I think that logic breaks down when it comes to love. You see, we cannot own a person in the same way we own our iPhone. People, the ones who we make our partner, are not finite entities for consumption, manufactured in a certain form to fill a specific function. They are organic individuals who think, learn, and grow from their life experiences. This gives them the ability to continuously transform throughout their lives.
If not, then yes, trade that mother fucker in. But that speaks directly to the point.
Because you can know the in’s and out’s of your iPhone, you will want a new one. This isn’t the same for people, because unlike a product, people change with new experiences and grow with new challenges over time. They have the capacity for growth which allows them to continuously transform over the course of the relationship.
The problem isn’t that love is doomed to fail based on the loss of desire, it’s in finding a partner that grows in the same direction as the path you’re walking. In doing so, you will realize their mystery is forever ungraspable. And as soon as we can understand this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility.
232. the dance of love
The paradox of love is that it requires a balance between two opposing forces: surrender and autonomy. We can only find togetherness, if we are able to maintain our separateness. As Esther Perel says in Mating in Captivity, “with too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter.”
In this way, love is a dance. Watch any dancing couple, you will see that much of the time they exist together as one on the dance floor, while they’re isolated from one another at other times so they can fulfill their unique movements that create the performance. Holding each other in a tight embrace, not moving, is only interesting in the contrast of the separateness and explicit movements that follow. When people come together — in a relationship or in the expression of dance — connection is no longer able to happen as there isn’t anyone to connect with. Thus, separateness becomes necessary to create the potential for connection.
i just want to wake up with you
the world turned to bring us closer
it spun on itself and within us
and joined us together in this dream.
separated from reality, we fell for each other
in the twilight hours we explored
ourselves, our feelings, our future
You, and I, quickly became Us
in that transformation we grew together
broken in all the right places, we fit.
we were the completion of a circuit
setting each other free, to feel, to love
to see, to experience electricity.
it is all so real, but unrealized
as our love is left in the darkness of the night
and that’s the problem with dreams…
i just want to wake up with you.
off topic: saying “i love you”
Saying, “I love you,” never came easy for me. Until it did. Why is that? My previous 2 relationships lasted a total of 15 years, and they had to pry those words out of my mouth. Looking back, I’m pretty confident it wasn’t love I was in, but denial that I had simply grown comfortable in a situation I didn’t want to leave. That’s not love, and it makes sense why the words never came easy. Fast forward to my most current relationship/situation (its complicated, I’ll write a novel about it one day)… I not only want to tell this person I love her, but I want to tell everyone else I love her, also. It’s as cute as it is ridiculous. So what’s the difference? Well, to be honest, I found someone who I want to make happy, whereas before I was looking for someone to make me happy. And that right there makes all-the-fucking-difference.
It’s rare to find someone you genuinely care enough about to break your own heart to let her go so that she can live the life she wants. It’s rare to find someone who inspires you to change your ways so profoundly that it causes you to see the world differently, and yet cannot imagine a world without her. It’s rare to find a person you truly and selflessly want to make happy. I think that’s why I love her, and I find it so very easy to say to her, “I love You.”
Find someone that makes the words come easy.
214. love or lust
The real differentiator between love and lust is how you feel when you’re with that other person. Shared between love and lust is the necessity of physical attraction, but unique to the experience of love, is that you genuinely like who you are when you’re with that other person. They’re able to reflect back onto you the person you enjoy being, or inspire to become. In either case, you like the mirror the other person provides because the reflection offers possibility and promise to the mystery of coming together in a way that lust would never be able to create. It’s the difference between finding a foundation you want to build upon, and overcoming an obstacle to get on with your life.