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Relationships take their own shapes, but the best ones tend to share some basic principles: good boundaries, mindfulness, and a mutual desire for the well-being of everyone involved.
Yet many folks find that they’ve gotten into a habit of letting their relationships slide inexorably into life partnership without much thought or intent on their part. (Some clever person coined the term relationship escalator for this pattern, because once you step on, you can’t get off until you reach the end.)
It’s a very good idea for everyone to learn to live single—to figure out how to get your needs met without being partnered so you don’t find yourself seeking a partner to fill needs that you could equally well fill yourself.
The key is to build your own sense of internal security. If you like yourself, love yourself, and take care of yourself, your other relationships can arrange themselves around you as perfectly as crystals. We hope that if and when you get coupled, you do it on purpose.
Perhaps if being single were an acceptable, even valued, lifestyle, partnerships might develop more out of choice and less out of a sense of necessity or a desperate grab for salvation.
Living alone leaves you free to explore any kind of relationship that crosses your path. You can love someone who wouldn’t make a good partner. You can love someone who already has a partner and who doesn’t need you to help with the mortgage or taking the kids to the orthodontist. You might choose singlehood because you love the joy of the hunt, the magic of flirtation, all the mystery and excitement of newness. Or you might want to explore how to develop sexual connections with people you like but do not love, or to learn to love without possessiveness, or to explore any of the innumerable
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You are responsible for being straightforward about your intentions. When you practice being openly affectionate with your lovers, they may expect more from you than you are offering, and you must be willing to speak out and make yourself and your desires clear to all concerned.
You are responsible for finding ways to say what another person might not want to hear. Single sluts may need to state uncomfortable truths in relationships that might not have the customary intimacy for such vulnerable discussions.
I am confident that this approach can work for everyone, whatever their lifestyle: wouldn’t it be a fine world if we all made it a point to honor and cherish and openly value every person we make a connection with? I live in the country, and I feel this same kind of heart-opening love when I walk on a beach or look at the world from the top of a small mountain or discover, around some bend in a trail, a two-thousand-year-old tree standing in majesty. I feel no desperation, nor any desire to cling. I just feel happy.
What is important to remember is that most relationships break up because the partners are unhappy with each other, and no one is to blame: not you, not your partner, and not your partner’s lover. Even if someone acted badly or was dishonest, your primary relationship probably isn’t falling apart for that reason—relationships tend to end due to their own internal stresses.
any problem belongs to the relationship itself, not either of the people in it. It is useless to try to ascertain who is “right” and who is “wrong”: the question is, what needs to happen next?
Some people habitually bear the burden of being responsible for everybody’s emotional well-being and feel they’re somehow at fault because they’re unable to magically make everyone’s pain and trouble disappear. Such people need to learn to own their own bit and let everybody else own theirs.
People who have a lot of their self-esteem connected to their ability to maintain a relationship may feel the need to make their partner into the villain to justify their own desire to leave. This strategy is unfair to both of you: it gives the “villain” all the power in the relationship and disempowers the “victim.” Deciding that you have no choice but to leave because your partner is so horrible is denying the fact that there are always choices.
A relationship with an ex is real security, a friendship with someone who has seen you at your worst. When we know someone as deeply we do our exes, with their complete complement of flaws and failings, we have the foundation of a truly intimate and important relationship that can continue to change, grow, and provide support for many years to come.
Someone who has happily given themselves as many orgasms as they want is unlikely to approach their other relationships in a state of sexual desperation. Sexual self-sufficiency is an important slut skill that makes us far less likely to play with the wrong person just because we’re so horny. Be your own best lover.
Instead of fretting about what’s right or what’s wrong, try valuing whatever is in front of you without viewing anything as in opposition to any other thing.
