A friend of mine has recently fallen in love. The description of their relationship - how her new love is interested in her inner world, how well they seem to mesh in a way that transcends the day to day - fills me with longings of my own.
That's the main thing I crave in a relationship, "clickiness". I've come close a few times... and yet never quite had it. I've yet to be with a partner who has much interest in my inner world... in knowing the real me.
I have to ask if I've ever been the real me in a relationship. My real, authentic self. Who is my real authentic self? Would I know her if I saw her?
I think I've come closer lately than I've ever managed.
I know that in the past, I've hoped a partner would magically pull the Real Me out of myself, from behind the veil of the day to day, would see who I really was. I was conditioned not to show my emotions by a lifetime of (self-diagnosed) PTSD related dissociation, a father who railed loudly against emotional display of any kind, and a hard-nosed, pragmatic mother.
Eventually, I forgot that I had feelings. Occasionally I would click with someone on an intellectual level - because this is the main way in which I was taught to love - and I would find my feelings being teased out of me... and then my partner would feel swamped by the tsunami they'd unleashed. They would always be caught unaware, unprepared. I seemed so calm and neat and orderly. To people afraid of intimacy, I came without all of that sticky, messy stuff. The perfect partner.
My partners didn't expect to have to deal with the messiness of my emotions. They liked me initially because I was not one of these people who needed coddling of any kind. I would never demand. I was rational.
I could only relate on that level... and yet my emotional and intimate needs existed just under the surface, a seething turbulent sea beneath placid waters. I held it all in, and then swamped whoever came too near.
This was actually standard operating procedure for the person with whom I shared my longest relationship. She resented when I shared any closeness with anyone else - a resentment that ended up costing me most of my community. We were to remain locked up in a little bubble together, that's how things were supposed to be. This is what intimacy was supposed to look like. And yet she herself didn't have that mystery key to unlock me.
In the two years or more since we split up, I've started to open up again... I've become more upfront about my feelings, more authentic. I'm not in a relationship, but I share affection with many people. Some people handle singleness by outsourcing sex to casual partners, but what I'm learning to do is to love more casually. Whoever I'm with at the moment is my soulmate for that moment. I feel that more people actually care about me than ever did.
I don't feel that love is the reason to be in a relationship. I hope that now I can actually connect with someone... can feel real communion. That strangely, I have more hope now of someone knowing and caring about my inner world than I did when I needed one special person to tease it out of me.
I needed someone to know me... because nobody else could, and because I wasn't even sure I knew myself.
I still long for a close, intimate partnership, though. Ideally, I wouldn't have to facet or compartmentalize
this person, sequestering them into specific walled off parts of my life. I would be one person around
my friends, another person around my partner.
I'm aiming toward a more holistic life now. I want my partner to be comfortable around my friends -
to belong to my tribe. It's one of the reasons I don't feel inclined to search the lesbian community
for a partner - because my tribe is mixed-gender and mixed-orientation, and I'd want a partner
who is comfortable around a variety of people. I want a partner who would otherwise be my friend...
except unlike my other friends, actually want to be intimate with me.
Something special that I don't share with other people - I described this to a friend thusly... with the soulmates all presently in my life, they have to
go home at the end of the day with someone else. I want a best friend who will be going
home with me instead.
That's the main thing I want in a relationship. My closest friends and I share spiritual, creative and intellectual
points of commonality... I want someone like this... but to go home to her.
I want to feel like I can just breathe when I am with this person. I can just be myself... like
we can be authentic with each other.
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