I recently became acutely aware that somewhere along the line, I got lost in the woods in relating to heterosexual men. This is a problem because I love them and one day, so the idea goes, I will probably end up hanging out with the same (lucky?) dude most days until I die. Or they die, whoever goes first. Prior to someone’s death it might be quite nice to have a pretty house, go on lots of holidays, have some kids, have lots of sex, smile and laugh a lot and eat some good food. That would be cool, and by the time this happens we’ll probably be able to coordinate a joint Netflix stream directly to the Apple iChips in our brains. Sounds fun!
I know that if I want that to happen, and I do, I need to find some way to forgive men, find a gentler way of relating to them and stop being so cynical about their intentions. For this reason I chose a male psychotherapist, and I am slowly allowing myself to trust him in hope that a masculine influence will help me find a path back to healthy relationships. I need to acknowledge and understand my own role in creating difficult situations. It’s still a murky mess and I have no idea what I’m doing, but hopefully I’ll get there. There are men who want relationships with me, there are men who want to be friends with me, there are men who want to be friends and have sex with me, there are men who only want to have sex with me.
I’m trying to understand that there’s nothing inherently cruel or dismissive about any of these options; I have wanted men in all of these different ways for my own reasons at some time or another. Sometimes the way they want me may not be clear to them straight away and this can make things confusing – it’s difficult for me to be patient with that but it’s what happens in life so I have to try. I am also striving to accept (and here’s the kicker), that someone wanting me in a different way to how I want them does not mean they think I’m unworthy or unloveable. It’s just two people wanting a human connection in two different ways. I’m slowly accepting that the love I give as a friend is worth just as much, I suppose in some ways even more, than the love I could give as a partner. In an even bigger challenge, I’m becoming resolved to the fact that I have absolutely no control over how, or how much, another person wants me.
A mismatch in the ways two people want to be wanted by each other sometimes means it’s too hard to hang out, and the loss can feel really upsetting. It can be hard for both people not to feel bitter about not being able to get what they want or think they need from the other person. It may feel really lonely for a while. In Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés explains the importance of embracing the Life/Death/Life nature of femininity. In her most powerful form, a woman knows when to look at a situation she had previously nourished, and let it die. People are usually scared of this happening and rail against it, thinking that only death can follow death. In actual fact, nature makes it so that death always clears the way for more life. Allowing a situation in which two people are unhappy with how they relate to each other to die gracefully, clears a path for new life. I suppose in the case mentioned above, this could mean a new way of relating to each other that makes both parties happy, or it could just mean being able to move on and find what they want and need from other people without bitterness in their hearts.
I’m tired of being bitter, and I’m exhausted from being so angry for such a long time. I just want to be able to love, and sometimes loving someone means letting them go.
Figs Ahoy 