To love someone without possession
“ Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.”
Hey sis, how are you doing? Are you taking care? Are you nurturing love? Isn´t that a powerful quote on love?
It took me a while to get to writing today´s post. Mostly because I have been trying to really figure out how I feel about the subject but also how to share it in an open and curious way.
When T and I started dating 3+ years ago, I remember a conversation that I had with him about loving free or open or even without expectations beyond what we freely chose to share as our love evolved. I also often reflect and talk about whether we are being love or performing love and what is expected, or what we´ve been trained to see loving and coupling as. It is a constant reflection but one thing remains true; that being with someone, committing to someone requires you to constantly be mindful of what it is that you are committing to and what it is that you are evolving into: Is it freer, more confident, secure, mature, conscious and supported people? Or is it about the “lock-down”, the disguising of each other’s insecurities, the protection of each others’ fears, the abandoning of one another’s responsibility for ourselves? “What are we loving each other into?” is a perfectly important question to throw into the mix every now and then. Just like how we check in with ourselves on our own growth and self-love journey, the same should be applied to the way we couple up and stay coupled up.
I want to love you enough to keep you free to roam this earth on a foundation of love and support. I don´t want to have found you as a beautiful free-flowing creature only to now decide that in order to feel secure, I needed you to be bound to me, I needed you in a cage built from our insecurities and fears of losing each other. Would that be love or fear or a mix of both? Let´s keep talking about it.
I heard something interesting from a couple that was exploring being in a polyamorous relationship – they were marvelled at how despite the fact of having been polyamorous for a while the jealousy didn´t disappear but rather, it just didn´t scare them as it used to anymore. It was similar to how you could randomly find yourself feeling blue or insecure, but because you have been around the life block a few times, you realize that it is only a reminder to check in with yourself or even to simply ride it out since you know perfectly well that it will pass. As we grow in life, life doesn’t get problem free but we simply have more tools and experience to face it with. It becomes less scary.
I never saw myself as a jealous lover, but then again, I haven´t dated people who put me in positions where I would have to feel jealous or fear losing them to someone else. Despite all other relationship-related demons I have had to fight on my journey to loving better and not bitter, one thing that always seemed clear was that I never had an urge to compete for someone´s affection. Perhaps it is the prideful Taurus in me or maybe I just knew? I never believed that there was anything I could do to prevent someone from falling in love with someone other than me. Someone falling in love with someone else and wanting to leave you for them, as painful as it might be, has less to do with you and more to do with them and the other person.
To love freely is to believe that someone is choosing to be with you for you (because honestly, that is all you have to offer, YOU) and whilst there are so many other combinations of relationships and compatibilities that they could share and find with multiple other people, there would be no connection that could duplicate what the two (or more) of you share. None in this wide world – and so, what is there to fear or compete for? They either love what they have with you or they want something else with someone else and there isn´t much you could do about that most of the time.
The hardest thing about loving freely is realizing that you or your partner might one day decide that your coupling is no longer working or bringing out the best in you. Or even that it has done what it could and brought you as far as it could. It is hard to be aware of the fact that you might one day have to separate and that you don´t love them any less or are any less committed to them just because you also know of the very real chance that it might not be the two of you forever and ever. Yet, here is the tricky or magical part; that despite knowing all of that, you will stay present in the moment and love the best you can, give the best you can, bet on the two of you and keep putting in the love and nurture. Loving for the now and without believing that it is only worth it if it is for forever.
T and I often talk about how despite where life might take us, we will cherish each other for life – not for what is to come, but for what has already been. Our success is not in the “death to us part” but the people who we have supported each other to become and continue becoming on our journey together so far. In this moment. That is our definition of success; what we have created with each other; a safe space of growth and becoming, a relationship not based on performing love but creating mindfully what we both desire it to be and evolve into. One day at a time, one issue, one curiosity, and adventure at a time.
So, that is this Sunday’s post, on a subject I look forward to exploring even more here: to love and love freely and from liberty balanced in belonging. I hope that whatever bonding or coupling you create that it is yours, that you remember that you get to decide what works and doesn´t work for you. Most of all, that all the love you engage in, makes you a freer, braver and more empowered you by creating a safe oasis for you to explore not only yourself but life and love holistically. That it encourages you to keep blooming and growing in all its shapes, forms and durations.
with love,light and courage
