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I used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that’s when all the forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.
And avoiding eye contact with people is worse than directly telling them they annoy you: It’s your soul telling their soul that it annoys you.
On a more encouraging note, now that we’ve shared our vulnerabilities, Veronika’s actually started looking into Belle’s eyes again when she speaks. Lesson of the day: The quickest route to poly-harmony—and life among the rest of the walking wounded—is truth and understanding.
Life has a sick sense of humor: One of the reasons I felt so trapped with Ingrid was that I resented her for holding me back from sleeping with Belle. But now all I want is a break from her—and it hasn’t even been twelve hours. Perhaps the secret to fidelity is knowing that the grass is crazier on the other side.
It’s these damn feelings. They’re to blame. Why is it that as soon as they descend on someone, they bring ownership with them in the passenger seat? A piece of relationship advice Lorraine taught in rehab rings ominously in my head: “Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”
“True love is when you’re a mother and your daughter is born. It’s that much love and you feel it all the time.” “So it’s feeling that way every second of every day forever?” “Yes. You’re so in love that you don’t want to be with other people.” “I don’t know,” I reply. “Have you ever felt true love before?” “Not before I met you.”
Belle says she had an epiphany last night at Kinky Salon that relationships are about giving, not getting.
“What are you afraid to ask other people for?”
“What don’t you think you deserve?” “If you could experience anything in your next few days together, what would it be?”
“You will speed up your growth by being selfish. So imagine that the people you’re looking at can actually take care of themselves. And if you ask for what you want and trust that the other person will say yes or no powerfully, it will make things very interesting.”
As usual, I’ve been trying to please everyone and sacrificing my own needs. And that’s not what I broke up with Ingrid to do. In fact, in trying to take care of everybody, I ended up taking care of nobody.
Instead, I try not to react. Where there is reactivity, there is a wound.
But maybe expecting to have it all—the deepest intimacy and the most unrestrained lust—is an unrealistic quest, like expecting a human being to be perfect.
In a sudden flash of clarity, I see the truth: I made the wrong decision. When Reid said be selfish, he wasn’t giving me permission to hurt people’s feelings. He was giving me permission to ask for what I wanted.
Her eyes lock on mine, then turn away in disgust. “I thought I was tough,” she says bitterly. “But you really have no feelings.”
I hate her for loving me, for wanting to possess me, for embodying everything I’m trying to escape.
And, most of all, I hate her because I feel guilty. I’ve smashed someone’s already fragile heart to bits.
Everything about this situation reminds me of the final months of my relationship with Ingrid, when her every needy touch and expression made my skin crawl. Set free to make my wettest dreams come true, I’m right back in the same situation. Only it’s three times worse.
we see others not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be. And we impose on them all the imaginary criteria we think will fill the void in our hearts. But in the end, this strategy leads only to suffering. It’s not a relationship when the other person is completely left out of it.
And I feel bad for not seeing her as she is, but through my own distorted, reactionary lens. I should have behaved like this the whole time and seen the beauty in each of my partners instead of the flaws, empathized with their needs rather than feeling trapped by them.
During our time together, we had to make choices. We hesitated and we didn’t always know what was best for us. A great lesson this taught me was that if we place ourselves in our heart to make choices in new situations, we can’t make any mistakes.
When he dropped me off at the airport, Neil told me that he was worried we had wasted our time. And I answered that there was no wasted time but just time. And time is useful to experience and grow.
Fear of loss: It has motivated many weak people to make commitments they shouldn’t have.
“Yes, more than anything. I just don’t want to end up like my parents. I want to find someone who adds to my life rather than limits it.”
What if I quit too soon, just before finding someone as open as Nicole or Sage? What if I found a nonmonogamous version of Ingrid? What if there’s a stone I left unturned and it’s the right stone? And most terrifying of all, what if I return out of fear and failure but not love and commitment?
I hope that he’s worthy of her heart, that he doesn’t have doubts, that his skin doesn’t crawl when she dotes on him, that he doesn’t text random women or jerk off to PornHub at the slightest provocation, and that he loves Hercules instead of seeing him as a symbol of the hypocrisy of monogamy. I’m sure Ingrid looks back on our relationship as one long mistake.
“Your problem is that you still think of love and sex as things that have to go together,” his friend said. “You need to separate them. Start a family with a good platonic friend who’s your own age and keep sleeping with whoever you want.”
He had learned too much about trauma to be comfortable bringing a child into the world out of desperation rather than love.
“You can’t force a relationship to happen,” he finally understood. “You just have to make a space in your heart for one, then let go of all expectations, agendas, and control.”
Everything I enjoy—sex, music, surfing, reading, writing, learning, traveling—she now enjoys with me. And everything I don’t enjoy—cooking, driving in L.A. traffic, transcribing my Rolling Stone interviews—she’s started doing for me.
I recall asking Lorraine in rehab what was wrong with a single man enjoying his intensity, but I never imagined that two people could be in the same box enjoying that intensity together:
It was a lesson in projection. We hadn’t truly seen each other that night—just reflections of the stories we were telling ourselves.
But I see it in the way she looks at me. It seems not loving anymore, but like someone trying to play the part of loving.
“If you’re feeling insecurity or jealousy, that’s for you to manage,” Lawrence answers. “It’s not her job to manage your discomfort—unless she’s doing something that’s disrespectful or hurtful.
Maybe I just have to eliminate my scarcity mentality about love, which is telling me right now that Sage has only so much to give and could run out. Lawrence’s point of view makes much more sense. Perhaps on some level, the demand for exclusive love is an immature demand, the desire of the needy child who hungered to be the sole object of its parents’ attention, affection, and care.
There’s nothing good that comes of jealousy. If someone’s going to leave you, they’re going to do it whether or not you’re jealous. In fact, they’re much more likely to do it if you are jealous.”
“If you’re in pain of the heart, enter into the pain and try to find its source rather than letting the pain drive you, or trying to escape from it or overcome it.”
“Just remember,” she adds soothingly, “that the only people who can be abandoned are children and dependent elders. If you’re an adult, then no one can abandon you except you.”
Perhaps she’s discovering that she’s happier without me around or, even worse, she’s barely thinking about me and the call was just the obligation of a love avoidant acting out of guilt.
My ex-girlfriend Lisa once said that every woman wants the same thing in a relationship: to be adored.
No, I don’t use rules to control people anymore. Now I just pretend to give them freedom, then use guilt and passive-aggressiveness to control them instead.
For a guy who doesn’t want to be controlled, I never noticed how controlling I actually am. I’m acting just like my long-suffering mom.
“At least it’s an honest relationship,” he tells me. “And that’s a good thing. But my question for you is: Is it real?”
“I’ll tell you, Neil, I think about her every day. And I can’t say that I wish it never happened, because it was the happiest part of my life. That’s unfortunate. And on some level, my wife knows that.” Adam, and most people, seem to believe that if a relationship doesn’t last until death, it’s a failure. But the only relationship that’s truly a failure is one that lasts longer than it should. The success of a relationship should be measured by its depth, not by its length.
“When you’re not happy in your marriage, you’re vulnerable. So I just stay busy with work and she stays busy with the kids.”
that a man needs five basic things from his wife: sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, domestic support, and admiration. “I don’t think she’s meeting a single one of those,” Adam says.
These underhanded attempts at control stop today.
“It is but a long sleep.” It is time to wake up.
Life is a test and you pass if you can be true to yourself. To get the first question correct, all you have to know is who you are. A life is just one letter away from a lie.
Sex is easy to find—whether through game, money, chance, social proof, or charm. So are affairs, orgies, adventures, and three-month relationships—if you know where to look and are willing to go there. But love is rare.
