Women and men should look at their biology and be a bit disappointed in it. This is the only way to alleviate yourself of that generational guilt that is imprinted on you.
For guys, commitment is not something that is important to you. Men are biologically hardwired to spread their seed as much as possible. Combined with the testosterone that affects their sex drive, it makes it much harder than women to make them satisfied. They necessitate variety.
For girls, commitment is something engrained into them. It depends on the women that raised you, but most women see their moms or some mentor in their life become stay at home moms for their husbands, and throwing away their careers for their children. This is because women believe their biological purpose is to bear their husband’s child. Women are evolutionarily more selective in their selection of their mate, while men get to do basically whatever they want. Women necessitate stability.
It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to think it’s not fair.
I think about this, and I inherently disagree with it. I don’t want to be a stay at home mom and raise my husband’s child. I already struggled to live this life as much as I could; I have no desire to put another life into this wretched world. It seems like that would be against everything I stood for.
I say these things confidently, yet my voice still trembles a bit when I say it. Even though I completely believe everything I just mentioned, I still feel a tinge of guilt for trying to bypass biology. I look at my genitals, and I know what their purpose is truly for, and I feel terrible for denying them of their purpose.
The problem at the center is I disagree with biology. I wish women and men had equal sex drives and equal sexual assault percentages. I wish women didn’t even have the opportunity to be seen as a hole, but alas, biology cursed us with that too. I felt hexed by my scientific obligations.
All of my friends were getting into relationships, and every time a couple broke up, I would analyze it. I became obsessed with analyzing breakups — any time any famous person broke up, I would watch all of the scandal Youtube videos or the news articles and make a picture in my head. The pattern I found was astounding.
The deal breaker of mostly all monogamous relationships was cheating, and at the core of most of these dilemmas was fear of cheating. I also used to believe that the purest form of love is possession, that possessiveness is attractive and being owned by someone is arousing. I would be terrified of cheating and my romantic partners talking to other girls, because it had been imprinted on me that the worst thing a significant other could do was break my trust and cheat on me. I thought this was encrypted with deceit and wrongdoing upon me, and it is in a relationship where monogamy is the standard.
The more I got into these monogamous relationships, the more I felt drained for no reason. I spent so much of my time trying to make myself good enough so he wouldn’t cheat on me, just to find him do it anyways. I tried my absolute hardest, but the hardwired biology won over. What was I against hundreds of years of imprinting?
The center of this problem was a fundamental lack of trust between the two parties. Before the relationship even starts, the worry of jealous feelings start to arise. During that entire relationship, your head rests on the pillow to go to sleep, and you pray that he didn’t think about any other girls that day. Instead of focusing on the present moments of the relationship, you instead focus on what could potentially go wrong in a situation where you are trying to fight biology. I wonder who is going to win.
All the breakups I had analyzed had to do with cheating — and contrary to popular belief, it is equivalent between men and women, with women on the rise as of recently. That is because cheating has been built to be the biggest wrong you can do somebody in a relationship and has been monumentalized so much when it is in fact simply evolutionary biology.
But, I found as I laid and focused on whether or not he was cheating on me, I started taking the present moment for granted. And when he eventually did, I realized I was all alone; I had isolated all of my friends for this guy who couldn’t undo his biological urges. I put all my eggs into a basket that was still being assembled.
What you didn’t realize when you were living in the cocoon of a monogamous relationship is how much of a monogamous relationship is a favorable breeding ground for codependence. Monogamy perpetuates codependency, and calls it romantic most of the time. It makes possession seem adorable, and the hottest thing someone can say to you is that you’re “theirs.” At first, I found this attractive as well. But looking from an objective point of view, how is that hot at all?
I felt like I had been trained by society to feel this way. I had been trained by my parents, my family, my school system, my literature, my television — everywhere, when I saw love, next to it, I saw infidelity as the opposite. I saw it as the ultimate form as betrayal, because I saw my mom shake in fear every day of her life that my dad would cheat on her. Her codependency was so obvious, but I saw that as love. I thought the ultimate fear of losing someone, that being unable to go without them, was love.
I always assumed love was being unable to live without the other person for as long as their life commands. But, I don’t think this is what love is. I think this is what people want love to be, because ultimately, so many people are afraid of dying alone. If they admit that humans are destined to have many different kinds of partners, then they would have to accept dying alone.
At the center of all of it is suppression.
The more I witnessed the monogamous relationships in my life, the more I realized how much they were truly falling apart behind the veil.
I saw people with vibrant personalities dwindle themselves down to a fraction of the person they were before they were in the relationship. If we were meant to be with one person for our whole life, why do so many people lose their individuality in a relationship? Is it because they love that person so much, or people are scared of being alone with their thoughts? And why do most people choose the wrong person to meet, and more importantly, why do they stay in a relationship that they secretly hate?
The more I think about the hustle-bustle culture of society, the more I’m convinced everyone is moving to distract themselves. These monogamous relationships are another way to distract themselves — love is a necessity, and if they cannot find it inside themselves naturally in vivo, it’s much easier to get it injected into you by another.
I would talk to people in relationships, and whenever they contemplated breaking up with the person, they would become incredibly unstable. Being alone was that terrifying to them. As someone who loves being alone, I couldn’t understand this, but I know myself years ago would’ve understood, but mostly because she didn’t know any better.
When others say that humans are not naturally monogamous, people get very angry about this, but I find it is not influenced by objective facts but instead subjective insecurities. The first thing people say when they are proposed about a non monogamous relationship is “Oh, but I would get too jealous.”
Jealousy should never be the first indicator of love. It instead underlies a hidden insecurity within yourself. After I have learned to love myself, I have never been jealous, but when I didn’t love myself, I was insanely jealous because of my low self esteem. If I see someone says they have a jealous personality type, I don’t simply write it off as a personality type. I write it off as a red flag.
At the center of monogamous relationships lies a lack of trust. At the center of non-monogamous relationships lies full trust and full love.
Seeing your partner with another person shouldn’t fill you with rage. It should fill you with positivity, that you are happy for them experiencing pleasure. That is disconnecting love from yourself and recognizing it’s not only about you being satisfied, but them feeling free enough to do what they want. It’s the purest form of trust to give complete freedom to someone and still knowing they will fly back to the nest eventually. We preach the quote ‘If something leaves and comes back, it was meant to be.’ Is that not the entire notion of non monogamy? Does distance not make the heart grow fonder?
I don’t see jealousy as ‘cute’ anymore. I find it revolting, that you think you own that person’s body and conscious decisions. Love is not about owning someone — it is about letting them be free enough to be their own person, and trusting them enough that at the end of the day, they will still choose you.
Love has started to be viewed as an obligation, when it is actually a conscious choice every day.
Marriage makes little sense to me as well; it feels like a statement someone makes to prove something to themselves. I don’t see the purpose to spend thousands of dollars for planning, outfits and the party just so you can celebrate a relationship. When you marry someone, you take the choice out of it. You solidify the fact that you will not die alone. I don’t blame anyone for doing it, but I’m upset how much it has been pushed onto others.
The Dead Bedrooms subreddit on Reddit showcases the outcomes of marriage when two people are madly incompatible. The subreddit details those in marriages that don’t have sex for prolonged periods of time because of a difference in sex drive or plainly a dislike or resentment from the other partner. It is the personification of marriages going wrong. It’s the definition of two people not being able to confront their clear incompatibilities, and instead of communicating about their clear differences, they stay together because of their joint fear of dying alone. Neither of them are being satisfied, yet they still remain in the pot that’s burning them alive.
I want to alleviate society of their fear of dying alone. I truthfully don’t understand this fear, as it seems so obvious to me. We are all born alone, and thus, we all die alone.
It seems everyone is constantly moving so they are distracted from the parts of themselves they hate, then when they are in relationships, they project their insecurities onto their partner, shown in jealousy, paranoia and possessiveness.
We should erase the notion that the worst thing someone can do in a relationship is cheat, because that ignores so many other things that are equally important in relationships, but are being ignored because of the emphasis on cheating. We should be worrisome of entanglement, when two people overlap so much that they lose their individuality. We should also be worrisome of projection and lack of communication, as these are learned skills that can hurt good relationships. We should be worried about power imbalances in relationships, no matter how grey and transparent, because those subconscious tendencies steer the relationship either into the water or into the rocks.
I’ve found that the two biggest problems in relationships also happen to be the most common. It is a combination of incompatibility and codependency. It is two people who shouldn’t be together, but are because they were so scared of being alone for any longer. Then, when these people finally have a relationship, they don’t know what to do except give that person everything they have and more until they are drawing a negative in their emotional bank account. The fear of being alone outweighs the apparent incompatibility, and they both stay in this relationship for a long time, because both of them are too afraid to communicate to the other. It is a relationship consisting of small arguments that always escalate to big, overarching incompatibilities in their relationship, of awkward moments and of mostly bland encounters, but bland is better than nothing.
People stay in relationships like these, because they assume relationships are supposed to be mediocre. They assume relationships are simply ways to keep you stable and are something to brag about at the Christmas dinner table. They assume relationships are just people you bring to a wedding to show relatives that someone finds you attractive and likes you. People need to start having relationships for themselves and not for other people, and then they will find people they actually love.
When you are in a relationship like this, the incompatibility will never truly go away if it is innate, no matter how many years you elongate it. Over time, the incompatibilities will fester into annoyances, then resentment, and then full on contempt. Contempt is a very strong emotion, and it cannot be undone; once contempt is reached, the divorce will be messy, they will stop caring about you as a person, and you will have pushed them too far. This is why you shouldn’t get in relationships with people who you cannot stand for prolonged periods of time. It will never get better, only worse until you become someone you hate.
I also have a lot of qualms with couples’ therapy. When is it a miscommunication and when does it turn into a clear incompatibility? When, I ask, is it a waste of money?
When you are each other’s “one and only,” you can hold things against each other, even the most personal things. When there’s an incompatibility at the center of the relationship, it can never be undone. When you share personal things about yourself in a relationship of that nature, it is not going to be sweet and endearing, but will eventually be used as ammunition later on. When someone feels contempt for you after they have married you, they grow to hate you for everything that you are, even the deepest parts of you. Don’t let someone hate you like that and don’t put them through something you both would be better without. Don’t get into a relationship with someone you wouldn’t want to know deeply.
It’ s not a brag to get married to someone within two weeks of meeting them and still be together for fifty years. It just screams lack of change.
The amount of people who lose themselves in strict monogamous relationships was the first piece of evidence I witnessed that made me think monogamy was not the way we were supposed to be. It seems like people were trying to rewrite the way Nature worked. The purpose of life is to live it your own way, but nobody wants to do that. They want to live it someone else’s way as a sort of safety net. When you follow behind someone on a hiking path, do you not mirror the same path they took to make sure it’s safe? People are so afraid of rock bottom they situated it so they are never, ever alone if a mid-life crisis happens or something of the sort.
The number one question I see on the r/relationships subreddit is whether something is cheating or not. I think this is the incorrect question to ask, and it should instead be why are you upset about it.
One good system to recognize your suppressed beliefs is the technique RAIN.
R — Recognize (what you’re feeling and name it)
A — Accept (that you are feeling that way, without judgment, that feelings aren’t good or bad, they just are)
I — Investigate (why you feel that way)
N — Nurture (what kind of reassurance you need, what can you provide yourself or create without anyone else)
We can be so strong alone, and it makes me saddened that so many people cannot seem to believe that. They think they can only be important if there is someone on their arm, proving to everyone that they are wanted by someone.
One terrible symptom to recognize before getting in a relationship is the feeling of desperation. If you ever think that you really need to be in a relationship, then realize that that is the time that you absolutely should not be in one. Desperation leads to getting with the first person who likes you, and lack of communication and compatibility leads to a lifetime of dissatisfaction, because you guys were not meant for each other, but you don’t know how to figure that out because you never experimented with other people.
If you ate mac and cheese for every meal, you would eventually grow sick of it. But, if you have mac and cheese every so often with other foods in-between, then the mac and cheese can be savored better.
I don’t want people to read this article and get upset. I want them to take a quiz on their attachment style.
We want to believe that each of us are unique and so are our thought processes, but in actuality, they are much less ‘you’ than you think they are. Your view of love is based on how your parents acted around you as a child. I thought this wasn’t true, until it became the biggest beast I had to conquer.
I thought women in relationships were supposed to be terrified of their partner leaving, so terrified in fact that they sacrifice everything to prevent that from happening. They deescalate arguments, they rationalize and they laugh insults off, simply to preserve a ship that’s already sinking. I thought men were supposed to be afraid of affection meanwhile women are the ones who beg for it all of the time. I thought love was a mixing of two opposites, when really it’s just two souls whose hands fit together like puzzle pieces.
I have the disorganized (fearful-avoidant) personality type. That means that I have both anxious and avoidant styles within me, in that I act clingy at times and other times aloof. This is because I am confused on the definition of love, as when I grew up, it always felt very hazy and without depth. I have an intense desire for love while maintaining an intense fear of rejection, which leads to chaotic and sporadic bursts of love and withdrawal. I fear rejection of my true self, so I have difficulty opening up to those in relationships.
The other personality types are avoidant, anxious and secure. I recommend taking a quiz of your own to figure out which one you are. And don’t write this off as mumbo jumbo — there are reasons you chose all of the answers that you did, and it’s hard to mold a definition to something you don’t already have one for. Your brain filled in the gaps of where it has witnessed love in your life and those you have seen to complete the picture of what love is. It’s your responsibility now to take ownership of this imprinting and logically tell them to subside. This is where nurturing comes in — or as I like to call it in my previous article, “re-raising yourself.”
Mentally, you will want to be jealous and fearful of your partner abandoning you, but scientifically, there’s no reason to be jealous, but instead, happy for them and grateful they choose to spend any time with you. This makes you appreciate them more and not take them for granted. Every moment is special, as no moment is for certain, but every chance you do spend together was consciously decided by the two of you. You both wouldn’t be here if you both didn’t want to be here.
It’s one big compliment, just to sit there and spend time with them. It’s not out of obligation or fear out of not doing so.
That is pure love.
Don’t you want to know what it feels like to be loved, and not have it tainted by humans and their petty definitions and rules? I want everyone to feel the love I have; it has changed my life, but I had to rewrite my definition of it to properly appreciate it and make sure I didn’t take it for granted. In doing so, I have absorbed every ounce of love that has been tossed my way from the people that I want to toss it to me. I can die and say that I have been loved in my entirety. I hope that you can do the same.
As Alan Watts said, “We hunger for the perpetuity of something that has never existed.” We want infinity, but have been limited to finite results. Your love might die and you might have to remarry. And you might be happier that way. There is nothing wrong with that — it just means that you accomplished what it means to be human. You figured out how to love.
Love is our last adherence to our fear of dying alone we held as children. Some people never grow out of this mindset, as the love they have in their lives is not love, but other things — codependence, obsession, limerence, resentment, dislike, annoyance. We cannot be picky about certain things, like our jobs, our families, or our life circumstances. But we can choose who we love. Love is a painless choice, and if it hurts you, choose to not let it engulf your life anymore.
Love should not overwhelm you; it should comfort you. Love should not upset you; it should teach you. Love should not make you question your worth; it should make you question how you lived your life without them until now.
It’s not that you need them to live. You needed them to teach you how to live properly.
You are not too much or too little to love. You are just being clouded by fear of not being loved. As Richard Siken said, “If you want something to chase you, run.” We do the exact opposite, and chase them instead and wonder why they aren’t chasing us back.
Imagine a love where nobody is running, nobody is out of breath… where you instead catch your breath in their presence. Imagine a love where you don’t go to bed afraid of what they are doing at the club without you. Imagine a love where you can fall blindly, and you know they will catch you.
It’s not that we are bad at love. We are humans, for gods’ sake! We are meant to love! We are bad at overriding our imprinting. We let it run our lives for us. We were born with easily fixable cataracts and we get accustomed to them, instead of trying to surgically cut them out. No, instead we make everyone believe that it’s normal to have these cataracts, to be blinded day by day.
People make fun of psychologists for tying everything back to trauma, but I instead laugh at people that make everything tie back to their suppressed trauma and then make it the societal norm.
I know this one, specific love is not supposed to last forever, but it taught me something very important that I would be stupid if I ignored. It taught me what love really is, so for the rest of my life, I can have high standards for myself. It's not one and done -- but it might be one person that changes your entire perspective of love. It reminds me of finding a wild rabbit -- you want to keep it, but it would be happier in the wild, so thus, you set it free because you love it that much. Love is being happy seeing them happy, not because they simply do things that make you satisfied, like spending all their time with you or do things solely involving you. Love is seeing that someone has another life, and being elated that they choose to spend their short time on this Earth with you.
I don’t know a better way to end this than my favorite quote of all time. It’s, no surprise, by Alan Watts. I want you to sit, and think on this quote. Love should be as natural as the breath; if your love is on a ventilator machine, it’s time to pull the plug.
“If you hold your breath, you lose it. If you let it go, you find it.”
I do hope you find it, and when you do, you find yourself and everything you’ve been looking for. But in order to find it, you must stop trying to find it. To maintain all of your high expectations, you must in turn have none. To get everything you want, you must give up on wanting.
As Sylvia Plath put it, love is a parallax, and that’s the most simple way of describing non monogamy. A parallax is the point in space that two viewpoints see the same object, but have different overall perspectives of the object. In other words, love is seeing the same object from two different perspectives and them combining together to form a whole picture. Love is separation before it is connection. You cannot know full connection before you know full separation.
