Relationships Are Hard
“Oh, no, Mama! Loving is Hard!”
Relationships are hard. And vital. Vital like our vital signs. And like pulse and heart rate and blood pressure, the conditions of a relationship can tell us the very essence of where we’re at, who we are, where we’re going.
I’ve said that Relationships are crucial (on the About page)—for so many reasons. As Brené Brown just said in an interview for On Being, basically: we’re wired to connect. We’re born to need relationships, and we need them to thrive. This is all kinds: work mates, collaborators, artist-to-artist, teacher-student, mentors, parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, friends and lovers.
The last twelve years of relationships cover all of my 30s, plus some. I met someone, got married, had a baby, got cancer, and got divorced. Out the divorce gate I met an amazing man who is now a best friend and godfather to my son. Then I met another man who became a really close friend. Then I met someone I thought could be a soulmate. Then I met a lover-teacher who stretched me farther than I would’ve imagined. Then I dated the “really close friend.” Amongst all that were some good dates and some shitty dates, because: #dating. And in January, I decided to quit dating for a while. Between no longer dating the really close friend as of this fall, and deciding not to date for a while I remembered some old insights I’d since forgotten, and a myth I hypothesized about with a friend earlier this year. And in January, these ideas came together in a new way.
I wanna offer y’all my breakdown of a myth I think is unhelpful:
we have to be “happy” on our own before we can really be with someone with whom we could have something real and deep and with long-term potential.
And I want to offer a triptych I’m leaning into and meditating on:
Temperament, Connection & What Y’all Want.
Mythologies. I don’t know how many of us can be “happy” on our own. It’s possible that some of us need certain kinds of relationships more than others. There are parents for whom parenthood is so fulfilling, they don’t prioritize romantic love for decades. There are career-piloted folks and workaholics who cultivate so much purpose, satisfaction, recognition and/or adulation from work that they don’t prioritize having a romantic love either—sometimes to their own regretful graves. I’ve met some of these men and women. So, knowing which kinds of relationships are most fulfilling for us is… vital. For me, that’s my child, my friends, and my committed romantic relationships.
That said, without relationships of substance and meaning—whatever their nature—for the most part, most of us are not happy—says Brené, and says me. We’re simply not. Because it is who we are as human beings to need meaningful connection, in the forms we need it—it’s part of having a soul. For the sake of this meditation, we’re talking about romantic relationships, because it’s when a friend mourns their lack of romantic love that folks tend to tell them, “you cannot be happy with someone else until you’re happy on your own.”
(above, the amazing friend/my son’s godfather & me, brooklyn artists ball)
My suggestion, then is that we stop saying folks need to be “happy”—because that’s an unrealistic expectation that does harm. And usually untrue. I’ve heard a million stories of miserable people who found the right person, and the impact of that new person was life-changing. But the partner was life-changing because the person in question was ready, was open, let it happen—if not from the get, then when it mattered.
My suggestion here is not that we don’t need to find some peace, accept yourself, know yourself or love yourself. We definitely do need to be working toward these things to enter into a relationship that has a chance. We don’t need to have arrived—because as human beings, we never will. But awakeness is required; we need to be aware and be working on self-love and knowledge—to start a romantic relationship of substance that has a chance of standing the test of time and all the challenges time will bring.
The pressure we put on ourselves to have achieved all kinds of self-growth before we can meet that right person is not only unreasonable, it’s self-defeating. We’ve created a myth in which folks in our lives who have not found “that person” are somehow viewed as deficient in their growth. I’m 41, I’ve been dealing with relationship shit of epic proportions since I was born, and I am not in that relationship yet, despite all the work I’ve done with myself and others—when single and when dating. And some of those relationships helped me work out shit with myself and in romantic relationships I could NOT have learned without the relationship to help me test it, experience it and learn from it. Mirror myself back to me, let me try new things, and find out how those new responses affected him and me.
I think if we stop telling our people and ourselves that we have to achieve happiness or even some level of self-development before we can find our right person, we will almost immediately reduce our own self-judgement, increase our ability to accept ourselves, and likely become much more open to love—from many sources—as a result. Instead, I wonder if we replace that b.s. happiness myth with, “are you in a good enough place with yourself where you’re ready to be affected and changed by another person?” (Right now, I’m not, and that’s why I’m not dating, with the caveat that if a soulmate drops into my life again, I’ll prolly up my game for them right quick, despite the fact that I’m already all types of in it with myself.) In this hyper-independent, workaholic-praising world, I think making good enough the goal could be very freeing, and very healthy, for many of us.
And this is where I think I can offer something more helpful, above and beyond timing. Because Timing is also known as Luck. And it cannot be accounted for by mere mortals. You absolutely can meet the right person at the wrong rime. And for me—very little in life has been more painful.
Temperament, Connection & What Y’all Want.
Temperament is crucial. It’s the easiest to get out of the way, so it’s first. Either you’re compatible enough, or you’re not. For example: either y’all are able to communicate well-enough before some conflict y’all need to work at arises, to set a healthy foundation for when communication does get more difficult (because it probably will), or you aren’t. I’ve experienced this in long-term relationships and short-term dating. Temperament is important there and elsewhere. How does someone affect you? What do they bring out in you? Is that how you want to feel? Is that a part of yourself you want to amplify? One man made me feel I had to shrink my power, he didn’t see my magic. Another man talked nonstop for hours overwhelming all my HSP sensibilities. One man made me feel at peace, comfortable. And the soulmate… that was magic. When I’m with him I feel seen, understood, peaceful, strong, free and beautiful. And I can see how a piece of that is the temperaments being what I need them to be: harmonious. The harmony creates the safety I need for when challenge enters. I dated another man who doesn’t need harmony. He loves conflict and debate… more than me. That was a temperament mismatch.
Connection. We’re doing the hardest in the middle, so we can end on a more tangible note. There are so many kinds of connection, right? So many kinds. Sometimes we meet someone and we don’t know what it is yet. And we enter into the relationship to discover what the nature of that connection is. One man became a very close friend. And we’ve never fallen in love. Because the nature of our connection is simply friends. Another man, we had the connection, the friendship AND the lover pieces to make it the long haul, but he didn’t want to go deeper. So, I don’t know if we had “it” (hence timing, y’all—there’s no accounting for it)–but I still believe we do. Both of these relationships showed me these things over time. Early on, I thought the connection I wanted might be there; shared time showed me well-enough two very different dynamics. The possible soulmate was different.
(above, my grandparents on their wedding day)
There have only been two men in my life I thought–from meeting–might be soulmates. The first one disappeared too fast to know. I’ve seen the second a few times over a few years, so I can say with confidence that he felt like a soulmate. With both of these men, I knew immediately what the nature of our connections were. They both went deep with me, they both used words and phrases (words are my magic) I’ve used in the same way. I wasn’t able to hide my true self with either of them. Right from the get they saw me and they named me and they were right. With both men there was an incredible, terrifying and elating feeling of being seen. With the second, that feeling had never left. It was there every time we saw each other. That’s my experience, but I do think for many couples (including me in a different dynamic with someone else), the connection they (we) need is uncovered over time via exploring the relationship. But for me, the connection I want to build on seems to be either there and felt like electricity from the beginning, or not. Connection, though, of the depth any given two people want, mutual seeing one another, mutual generosity, seems to be a vital piece of the triptych.
What Y’all Want… This one can be so incredibly hard because it’s tied up in timing: what we want changes. And it’s especially important because it’s interwoven in those pieces of self-knowledge, vulnerability and communication: do we know what we want—now, and can we communicate it honestly and accurately in the relationship? Do we have the courage, and the words? But what-y’all-want is the one of the three that I have repeatedly screwed up, so I have some space to speak on it.
I usually know what I want. And, for the most part, when I start something with someone (c’mon, we grown now), he has known what he wants. So, what’s the problem? Me. I’ve allowed myself to start down the road with men riding on temperament and connection when the “what y’all want” part was not aligned, hoping that the connection would carry us. That eventually, they—too-would be so moved by our connection that they would want to go deeper with me. I am here to tell you: that has generally ended in heartbreak. One man really just wanted to keep things more casual. Another wanted deep, he just wanted other people involved at levels I didn’t. Yes, as the relationship grows what one or both of you wants in life, in the relationship, in anything—will probably change. Especially over the long haul. But if you are not starting to create and grow the relationship from a place of basically wanting the same kind of relationship, sharing clarified values, etc, I’m just not sure it’ll go well.
So, if you want that dope-ass, intimate, romantic relationship of long-term possibility, I think it’s possible you need all of the three triptych pieces on a “good enough” foundation of you-with-you:
*You feel generally in a good place of acceptance with yourself and are working on your shit, wherever you are in that process. Enlightenment and “happiness” not required. 1. You and your potential boo have a solid potential foundation because your temperaments mesh well and make space for vulnerability, 2. you have the connection you think you want, and 3. y’all want the same kind of relationship—or at least have compatible relationship ideas.
There’s a symbiotic relationship in our human lives between coming to know ourselves—finding out our life purposes—and then beginning to find our places in this world. Through our relationships, we discover and work toward our life purposes. Friends and family reflect us back to ourselves so that we can see more clearly who we are and who we want to be. Through our relationships, we find our places in the world: what we have to give, where we give what we are here to give, and how our gifts are received. Romantic relationships have done this for me in so many crucial ways. And even the ones that were not here-to-stay were vital to my path. But I still believe in finding that romantic relationship that ultimately helps me live my life purpose for the long game. So, I wish that for y’all–if you want it. If all of this helps, then I’ve given some of what I’m here to give.
Mitakuye Oyasin,
Mariah