On relationships

I find myself caught of late between numerous conflicting desires; between the bearability of the present and the authenticity of the future; outside of sanity. School’s conclusion and the prospect of only one week free from work have driven me into deep contemplation, reading and journaling. Ideas are spilling over in my mind too quickly; it is impossible to develop them all with any thorough treatment. And amidst it all, one thing is missing: the ear to share, the kiss of passionate lightness, the voice of supporting balance that has so much to offer if only because it really knows me. The present and the future are at war still, and the space makes me notice.

It seems ironic that the concept of Darwinian trade-offs posits a kind of balance between the present and future interests of an organism that, in regard to the interests of my own relational happiness, I find impossible to attain with even the most meticulous teleological efforts. An approach to relationships — specifically, to the relationship of eros, of sex and romance — that preserves my ideal for the future and concurrently offers a livable present is ever-elusive. Since I have real potentials to offer the selective mechanism, perhaps this offering will lead me down a good path. In this I trust God, I pray for honesty with myself, and I try my weak best never to do anything I know to be wrong. It is incredible to me that these “wrong things” are so very narrow in scope, and yet are the only things ever offered me. Miraculous, perhaps.

There are a few key principles I have settled on, though. The first is that I must never surrender my ideal; to do this would be to render its fruition impossible. I suppose this is encapsulated in a personal application of Ghandi’s oft-quoted, seldom-lived “be the change you want to see in the world.” What is my hope? It is for real love. It is for a relationship that is not motivated primarily by my need and yet fulfills my needs as a byproduct of its existence. It would be motivated by adoration and values, by a common approach to life and a common idea of what it is to do good. I want to find a person whose passions also resonate in the fiber of my own soul, a person I will want to explore and would want to explore even if we were only friends. I want a relationship that is real. After all, virtually any two animals on Earth can have sex; it takes something else, something qualitatively different, to make a relationship real.

So I must live my present in a way that is consistent with this hope. I think I am a person who desires this health and love with remarkable tenacity. If I settle for something less, who will persist? Who will be there to make such a relationship possible? We who hope must not settle. We must be the kind of person we hope to meet, or we will never meet such a person.

I have also come to believe that I am not exactly my own property, and neither are others theirs. Elizabeth, Michelle and I spoke about this over late-night pizza recently, and its effect on me was deep. The bodies of others are truly sacred ground, as is my own body. I must make my decisions about relationships with at least some semblance of discretion for the good of the other person. It is not that I must take their interests into my own hands; surely that would be very unhealthy. But I must respect that this person is an incredible, eternal creature of greater wonder than I meet in any other aspect of the cosmos. I firmly believe that humans have been vouchsafed the Imago Dei; we are eternal and somehow special. (In his brilliance, Berlinski remarks that, “beyond what we have in common with the apes, we have nothing in common.”) But that does not much matter for the point I am trying to make; it is simply that we do influence one another, we ought at least to respect one another, and thus we should act in a manner cognizant of these things. And may I suggest another unorthodox idea: we ought to respect ourselves. Despite our great (arrogant) conviction that we have as a culture reached the epistemological bottom, we should make a candid admission that we know virtually nothing about real love. Or about what is good for us. We really do not know how relationships affect us, how sex and physical intimacy can hurt or heal, or about the spiritual realities that underlie our attractions and relational connections.

The present remains difficult. I kick in bed and punch the wall and scream into my pillow. Each season brings a unique sense of incompleteness. Yet I am still alive, and these pains are, in a sense, a privilege to have — stress about love is only possible for a person who is well fed and has experiences that are pleasant enough to be shared (or, as the case may be, not shared). I also have a number of friends I do not deserve, people I can only be thankful for. I share much with them, and am solidly convinced they will love me for as long as I’m alive. I have been given innumerable opportunities to learn, experiment and create. Remarkably, I have money in my pocket. Though I am alone with my longing, I trust that God will guide me to the source of my need and to sources of its fulfillment. There is only the charge to be authentic now, to watch my feet as I follow the One who is wiser than I. Who knows where I will arrive to begin?