Considering that I have a sex blog and considering my lifestyle a lot of people ask me about my perspective on relationships. By this, meaning boyfriend/girlfriend, and then we get married. That needs to be defined because really, we are all in a relationship to everything. My relationship to the sun is at x degrees and y miles. I have a relationship to all of you who I've never met before. And every relationship is different. All of your friends, family, lovers, were any of the relationships the same? And if a "relationship" that people are usually talking about, bf/gf/marriage, is really just really close friendship that you have sex and spend a lot of time together... well then, why can't you just be friends who have sex and spend time together? What does the label mean? When there are such things as open marriages you can't tell me that everyone means the same thing by marriage. If there's all this variation, just because you give it the label is it any different then when it doesn't have the label?
I don't know. The labels have never made sense to me. My perspective on relationships, you could say is organic. Let them go where they will, they'll naturally grow and change as life does, or die off, where they're meant to. Every relationship is different, the distinct mix of personalities, where people are in their lives, external circumstances... life has a way of working itself out naturally, the relationship will settle into what suits right. When two people like each other, enjoy spending time together, then they'll make time to spend together. Time will tell how meaningful that relationship becomes. When it's not so worth it to them, then the relationship wanes with it. The problem seems to come about when people try to force a relationship to be what it isn't, script it out, force it into an idealized label, or try to hold on to a relationship that used to be though it's necessarily changed over time.
The labels aren't so important to me. For me it is enough to say they're all friends, each one special and unique in it's own way. How meaningful that relationship is over time is the point I think, not the labels.
So now if we strip off the labels and they're all friends, can we only have one? So far as I know, love is not exclusive. Loving one person doesn't mean that you'll love another less or that you can't love anyone else. That makes absolutely no sense! Honestly, monogamy does not seem natural to me. Does anyone really practice monogamy? How many people do you know who married their childhood sweethearts, never with anyone else and will probably never separate? It is more the exception than the rule, don'tcha think? Social scientists call what most people practice serial monogamy. But when most marriages don't seem to last 5 years, what does that mean? So if I swear I'll only go out with you this week, and only one guy next week, can I still call myself monogamous? Well I rarely sleep with more than one guy at a time so I guess that makes me monogamous too.
I've done a little reading up on this, monogamy and marriage as has been idealized and crammed down our throats...? Is actually more of a mythical creation than anything that's existed throughout human history. (** couple references mentioned below)
Now I have a simple motto for relationships I live by: I love all my friends, some friends are lovers, all lovers are friends.
It's an interesting side note on how I got to where I am that I should also mention. First was that I was never going to be a marrying gal. For as long as I have known, since a wee little girl, that was not what I wanted. I never really got into dating or boyfriends. From the beginning I've always slept with guys who were my friends, and of course the occasional tryst. Friends who like to hang out and sometimes have sex. By the time I was an adult I was sure I did not want to be in a monogamous relationship.
I'm not going to say that there's no "Mr. Right" out there for me, just that if there is such a thing he'd have to be my kind of Mr. Right. Meanwhile, I'm not holding my breath.
I've gone about it from all angles, I've done the long term, thinking maybe he'd see the light. Mr. Right in just about every way... but not that way. Miserable failure. Tried dating guys with the promise of not getting too serious, open relationships only. Great guys but that didn't work either, they'd always want commitments, give it about 2 months. Tried meeting guys on the premise of polygamous relationships. Found out there are way too many ideas of how that would work but mostly that starting on that premise didn't work very well, there was never any personal chemistry to it or they weren't good looking or whatever.
Meanwhile I found some other things I have a lot of fun doing that led me off on a tangent, which if you've read my other blog you can figure it out. At first I dabbled but then at some point it's not dabbling anymore. There came a point when I had to take an honest look at myself and what I had been doing. I found I was ok with that and didn't bother hiding it so much. Funny thing is, once I did that and that's the "who I am" that I meet people as, funny thing is I've realized now I have pretty much exactly what I wanted. Minus The mythical Mr. Right anyway but over time I've grown quite a few friends who mean a lot to me and who like me because I am the way I am. Wow, I came full circle and ended up right where I wanted to be.
Damn, if this isn't long enough already but now I have to put in this second interesting aside. See, most every guy wants the perfect sweet, smart girl... who's also nasty in bed. BUT society has this stupid, psychotic dichotomy between the Madonna and the whore. Sooooo... typically guys will marry the sweet girl and take them home to mum, and the the other one's the mistress, right? BUT if that girl really is the fantasy both?? Guys I swear are crazy! If the girl is "sweet" then any sign of nasty and she's somehow damaged goods. Oh yes, don't say it's not so! I am saying this from experience. The look of shock, disappointment, then slight disgust. Suddenly you're not good enough anymore. So now, funny thing I've recently found is it works better from the other way around. Seems it's easier for guys to find the sweetness in a whore than a whore in a sweet girl. Silly isn't it?
** Off the top of my head, 2 really good books on the topic:
Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz, and
Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
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Monogamy is a strange thing. My wife and I at one time discussed that human beings are not meant to be monogamous, but sometimes I believe that we are. Maybe it is due to the contraints of society, but it certainly makes "relationships" easier to deal with if there are not guilt or hang ups about it being sexual as well as friends. There is no reason it should be this way, it is something we've learned through our upbringing, but it is something that would be hard to break free from.
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