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I asked my dad about sex when I was five, and he briefly explained:: āSex is what you do when you are older and you find a friend you want to have children with.ā
It was a good tip, but it left out the whole question of romance: why that friend rather than one of the others, what problems people have in relationships, and how to prevent or handle them.
I canāt expect my dad to have developed a whole guide to all that, because that wasnāt his main mission. So I ended up learning most of it the hard way, and this is what Iād like to pass on to my kids, although by the time they read it, the existence of natural humans, romance, and love might be long forgotten, for all I know.
This guide isnāt universally applicable for everyone even now, since it comes from my particular life experience (including influences Iāve had from friends & research). Iām a straight man, and Iām writing from relationships Iāve had with women, so she and her are going to show up a lot. Most of this has nothing specifically to do with being male or straight. The Primal Attraction section is the exception, because there Iām specifically talking about the man-woman dynamic Iāve actually lived.
What we mean by āloveā ā¤ļø
English isnāt a scientific language when it comes to love. This leads to a lot of romantic confusion because we donāt have one word for one meaning.
One meaning is selfless loveāwhat contemplative traditions call agape, metta, loving-kindness, divine love, and so forth. In Buddhist metta practice you sit there wishing, āMay all beings be at ease, pure of heart, and free.ā Itās not about them being yours.
Then we use the same word for romantic love (eros): I want you. I want your attention and your body. I want to be special to you, and I want our lives tangled up together. I donāt think thereās anything fake or shameful about this.
A good relationship must have both kinds of love at once. Too often, the trouble is thereās a whole lot of I want you and hardly any I want you to be happy.
Most people fail this test: what would I want if she herself thought sheād be happier with somebody else? But if they can get past the initial horror, the conflict starts to fall apart. Being wanted is part of what makes me want someone.
But the horror is unavoidable, because I canāt wait until I know Iām wanted before I let her know I want her. If we both do that, nothing gets started. And it doesnāt stop being true once weāre together. If I start feeling less wanted, I may pull back. She feels me pulling back and starts feeling less wanted herself, then she pulls back too.
Agape or divine love does two jobs at once to rescue erotic love. First, most obviously, it keeps eros from becoming totally selfish and fickle by making the other personās happiness part of the wanting: I want you because I know youāll be happy with me. Second, it gives eros a landing pad. When two people pull away because eros seems unreciprocated for a moment, the backdrop of actual, genuine care, keeps the couple from simply abandoning each other, and then they might even rekindle the eros when they see that itās based on something deeper.
Eros can help build the agape too. It has a drive to it: it keeps pulling me toward this particular person, and over time that closeness can grow an agape that survives the drive itself.
That drive can weaken for reasons that arenāt really my fault. I can get old, sick, depressed, or grieving, and I would hope the agape is deep enough that she sticks by me through some of that even if it puts strain on eros. But if I just get bored with life, stop having much of a life outside her, and make her responsible for nearly all my warmth, meaning, reassurance, and excitement, thatās different. I donāt get to be shocked if she wants me less.
Talk about making love before you do it
From here on, when I say making love, Iām talking about two people who care about each other deeply and feel super connected, using their bodies as part of that connection. If youāve never experienced this, it may be like trying to explain the taste of an orange. If you donāt know what love is, you donāt know. Thatās another conversation, and Iād suggest reading my inner child reparenting guide.
Having sex is just the physical act, whether that deeper connection is there or not. But sometimes it can create the connection also.
What I eventually took from my dadās advice was a bigger question: would we like to raise children together? Are we ready? If we can really talk about raising children together, most of the other important questions come up on their own. What kind of life do I want? What kind of life do you want? What would we want for a child? What would sex mean between us?
What do you actually want? You may know some of it and not the rest. What makes your body relax and open? Is there anything kinky you need to be able to say out loud? What has your past made you want, or made you avoid? What just doesnāt work?
You may not know all the answers yet. āI donāt know, but Iām willing to find out honestly with youā is a perfectly good answer.
And what is sex for each of you? One person may mainly think of bonding while the other thinks of play. Sometimes it may feel sacred; another time it may just be how you come down from a bad day. It doesnāt have to mean the same thing every time.
Itās important to talk about sexual compatibility before getting undressed, even if that kills the vibe. Or even especially if it does kill the vibe, actually, since thatās a red flag if talking ruins things. And this applies whether youāre leaning too libertine or too traditional.
And once you are undressed, the communication doesnāt stop there either. Can you feel comfortable with each other enough to express what turns you on, what this means to you, and what youāre unsure about? Itās that psychological trust & intimacy that builds the bridge between āhaving sexā and āmaking love.ā
I remember reading a Christian magazineās letter from a newlywed Christian woman who found out that her husband didnāt have much interest in sex after she saved herself for marriage. He trapped her, because he knew she would not feel good about divorce due to the religion.
Of course, it didnāt have to be nefarious. I had a relationship with E. that was a bit like that about 15yrs ago. She wanted sex once a week, and it was driving me nuts because my libido was thru the roof. She also had no interest in trying to take a safe herb or supplement to increase her desire. Of course everyone does change over time as well. If our libidos later diverge, itās better to talk about what weād do before either person is already hurt.
Affection and the simmer
Doug Toft, who has been married for fifty years, has a useful list called 50 Things I Learned from 50 Years of Marriage. One of his points is to touch his wife without an agenda. A hug, cuddle, kiss, or back rub should sometimes be allowed to end right there. If every affectionate touch becomes a bid for sex, affection itself can start feeling like pressure.
Kim Anami calls the sexual current between encounters āthe simmerā. Maybe she texts from work, āI canāt wait to touch you.ā Maybe he tells her what he wants to do later. If we supposedly want each other but hardly ever flirt or let each other know it, thatās called taking each other for granted. Great sex probably isnāt going to materialize out of nowhere at bedtime just based on the flirting you did 5 years ago.
It shouldnāt become relationship homework, either: āHey babe, Kim Anami told me to flirt with you more.ā
And if our sex life suddenly changes, keep some curiosity about why rather than automatically going with the flow and creating a potential ānew normal.ā Maybe weāre pissed off at each other. Maybe one of us doesnāt feel wanted. Maybe somebodyās sick, stressed, on a new medication, whatever.
I also donāt want my partner to have to manufacture my desire for me. And if sex is one of the main things separating our relationship from friendship, giving it whatever exhausted scraps are left after everything else seems pretty dumb.
Can Casual Sex or a Situationship Actually Be Honest?
Your body doesnāt know that you picked someone up at a bar and agreed it was only for fun. Then the next morning, youāre wondering why they didnāt call. Well, not getting pulled in any further is the best outcome still available, actually, since you just played Russian Roulette with a potential life bond to a stranger.
āI donāt know whether I want something serious with you. Iām not pretending I do. Iād still like to have sex.ā
That may be candid about what you expect now. It doesnāt settle what either of you will owe if the act creates something neither of you expected. Sex can make a child. If this girl gets pregnant, sheās gonna call you. Then what? You block her? Agree to child support? Try to convince her to abort if she thinks abortion is killing her child? Or vice versa. My first girlfriend, a diehard Baptist, aborted and told me a year later, because she ādidnāt want to trapā me. This is what penetrative sex can do. No contraception is perfect.
The STI part is easy: say what you know, or say you donāt know. Feelings arenāt as easy, unless youāre both really numb or robotic about sex.
You have to care what happens to the person afterward. Otherwise youāre using and abusing them for pleasure. Maybe theyāre using you too. Congratulations, now itās mutual.
A lot of āI only want funā really means, āThis is the only version of the relationship that gets me laid.ā Sometimes I know Iām hoping it turns into love. Sometimes I only find out I was hoping that when it doesnāt.
Situationships
And then thereās the situationship, which is hard to define because thatās basically the point. Usually itās a happenstance relationship based on sex. Thereās less communication, and what communication exists is more superficial. Yet it is obviously some kind of relationship even while one or both people refuse to name it. Youāre regularly having sex, going out together, spending time alone together, and doing things you wouldnāt do with a regular friend. It feels like itās filling a relationship void, but only accidentally and occasionallyāmaybe just enough to keep you from looking for anything deeper.
It can go either way. Often the man wants to keep it undefined while the woman wants commitment, partly because sheās the one risking pregnancy. Whoever keeps it undefined gets the fun without the responsibility. Refusing to name the relationship doesnāt make the responsibility disappear. What they donāt escape is the existential void created by another superficial fix. Doomscrolling entertains you too.
And āWhy are you making this heavy?ā can be a real question. They may actually mean: donāt you want the fun, and are you about to give it up? My answer would be: Iām trying to understand whether this is really fulfilling me or if itās drainingly superficial.
I had something sort of like that with H., although ours was much deeper than what people normally mean by situationship. We were (and still are) BFFs, and spent nearly all our time together. She was falling in love with me, and I wasnāt falling in love with her. She felt more like a sister to me, partly because Iām not attracted to white women. Ours wasnāt superficial. It was just painfully uneven.
Labels Are Descriptive, Not Prescriptive
Hereās the funny thing many people donāt understand: labels donāt create commitment. They can still expose whether two people think theyāre in the same relationship, which matters a lot.
True commitment grows out of relational depth, not a label. If we spend hours telling each other our deepest longings, fears, and problems, Iāll naturally be ready to help when you need me. I donāt need to promise that on paper. If someone says āI love you, I feel you, Iām here for you,ā yet they hardly ever talk to you about what matters, thatās a red flag.
The person getting more of what they want may think the arrangement is fulfilling. Usually theyāre just less aware that it isnāt. In college I had a friend with four girlfriends who boasted about it to girls while trying to get a fifth. I asked him, āBut are you really happy?ā He said, āNo, Iām miserable, dude. I feel empty inside.ā
The full conversation is so big that almost nobody would have casual sex if they took it seriously. Which is why almost nobody has the full conversation. I canāt decide what is okay for anybody else. I can say that most people who defend casual sex are not being very honest with themselves about pregnancy, attachment, or what they might owe the person afterward.
Outside a loving poly community or tribe, I think honest casual sex is almost impossible. If you want something closer to ācasual love-makingā without quite so many ways to damage each other, you probably need to find a free-love community where the people arenāt disposable, the bonds can be acknowledged, and any children have a village. But if the community is specifically designed to prioritize free love, you might find it attracts people who have traumas that produce trouble with connecting deeply, as ex-Tamera leader, Martin Winiecki wrote about after leaving recently.
Should you be in a relationship at all?
This is a horrible catch-22. Wounded people get lonely, and loneliness itself can kill. But the wounds that make somebody desperate for a relationship may also make them a terrible person to be in one with. People donāt only trigger each other and learn lessons. Sometimes they terrorize or kill each other.
Iām pretty conservative about this. I would tell most of my friends not to date yet. First love your inner child. If you canāt even do that, forget a relationship for now. Get a cat or a puppy. If youāre dishonest, canāt care what happens to another person, or keep turning every relationship into the same disaster, come on. Youāre not ready.
You donāt have to be completely healed, but the present-day adult has to be able to parent whatever intimacy wakes up inside you, and responsible enough to deal with an actual child if sex creates one. If you canāt be a parent in either sense, you arenāt ready to date.
A good relationship can teach you self-love too, which is part of the problem: you may need one most when youāre least capable of creating a good one, recognizing one, or keeping it good. The odds are terrible.
I wasnāt ready, but I was lucky
At twenty, I thought I was totally fine until I became enamored with Alba. She was Dominican, and warm in a way I didnāt understand. Kissing your BFF on the lips was normal to her. I thought she was in love with me. She did love me and wanted me living with her, but not in the way I wanted. The confusion threw me into a horrible spell for years. I was even a bit suicidal while living with her.
Then Bee cracked me open. My second wife and I were about as in love as two people could be, considering that every other day she would demonize me because of BPD. Before Bee, I didnāt know what In Love meant. Nobody knows until it happens. Itās a completely different kind of reality. Itās spiritual.
Did it heal her? We still canāt understand. During our two years together, it seemed to stabilize and heal some things while provoking her demons even more. Did it heal me? The relationship almost killed me, but I would never undo it. I still love her so much. I havenāt spoken with her in a year, but I love sending her love.
Relationships ALWAYS reveal what I canāt see. My selfishness. The depth that is actually available versus the depth I idealize. The other personās selfishness and dishonesty and superficiality. How deeply I really love. How deep my illusions go. Whether my spirituality survives contact with another human being. Everything.
Spirituality to bypass intimacy
Iāve used spirituality as a replacement for intimacy a lot because intimacy was simply unavailable. As a boy and young man, I was so deprived of female touch that it was driving me insane. Meditation sometimes helped me cope better with the deprivation, but it wasnāt a cure. I remember once as I was entering into an ayahuasca ego death, I said, āActually, I really just want a girlfriend.ā Right then, the crazy trip abruptly ended, and a voice said, āOk then go find one.ā Nobody believes this story when I tell it.
I donāt believe most people can be truly happy celibate. People generally arenāt so serious about spiritual liberation that giving up sex and partnership for life makes sense. The Buddha didnāt advise everyone to become monastics.
If becoming a monastic genuinely makes you happier and more peaceful, stay. It might work for some very advanced people, or if your sexual desire is already low, or youāre old, etc.
But how do you know what youāre not aware of? Inner-child reparenting and self-hypnosis can help a lot with that, because often the inner child is being ignored while the adult is feeling some kind of liberation.
And if youāre so happy and free, what happens when youāre alone in a room with a super beautiful girl and she wants you? Or vice versa for women. Do you feel like youāre losing some control? Are you afraid?
Bhante Gunaratana, a famous Buddhist teacher, tells a story like this in his autobiography. A super beautiful girl at a retreat he was teaching snuck into his room and waited for him in bed, naked. He went nuts and started screaming at her āGet out!ā at the top of his lungs. Obviously he was still repressing something, and she was adept at unintentionally uncovering it.
Robes do nothing. I was mildly molested in public by the abbot of one of Thailandās largest Buddhist retreat centers. In Thailand, parents have very good reasons not to leave children alone with monks. Tibet is worse.
Forced celibacy doesnāt abolish anyoneās sexuality. For most people it eventually sends it somewhere weird. Why wouldnāt it?
There are practical reasons to become a monastic too. In a poor country it can mean free food, a place to live, status, and escape from ordinary responsibilities. In the West, the free food may matter less, but a person who received no particular respect as a layman can become Venerable Somebody and suddenly people bow to him.
Of course, he may sincerely want liberation, too. People can want several things at once.
Practical partnerships
Iāve traveled the world as a (white) guy from a first-world country. Many women have wanted to marry me partly because they figured I could improve their status and comfort. That always makes me feel sad and lonely to think about, but yeah, I know itās to be expected. The funniest time was when a female police officer in India said we should marry because we were both the same age. š
Itās reasonable for a woman to want support, since after all, she has to provide for her potential children, but it muddies the waters for me. Iām not stupid; I understand that she might really love me while still wanting money, stability, children, a visa, a home, etc. Men arenāt a different species, although sometimes I think I might be. A man can really love a woman for who she is while also seeing her as a source of sex, children, social legitimacy, or help running the house. Affection and practical motives often coexist, even if it isnāt the romantic ideal.
And hey, sometimes being objectified is kinda sexy, too. Men like to be objectified to a certain degree as providers and defenders, just as women often like being seen as sex dolls by the men they want. Being wanted that way feels good, but feeling held is important as well.
But I donāt want to be just a provider-and-defender machine, because thatās vulnerable to hypergamy. I wanna know that if I fall ill or lose my job, I can count on my wife still. Guys want a ride-or-die chick. A woman also wants to know that when she gets old, sick, or no longer looks like the fantasy that first attracted her man, he will still happily stay.
It always goes deeper
And the question is more than just a practical one. Itās philosophical. Men have this (often subconscious) insecurity inside the provider role: how much does she love me, and how much does she love what I can do for her?
I donāt need the answer to be that provision had nothing to do with attraction. Being competent, protective, useful, and able to make things happen may be part of what draws a woman to a man, just as her beauty and sexuality may be part of what draws him to her. I want the bond to become bigger than the qualities that first made us desirable. Because as Bee always said, āYouāre either going up, or going down.ā
I had wondered for years how much a woman would love me if I couldnāt really provide for her. Then Bee told me, āI would rather be with you in the forest than with any other man in a mansion.ā Thatās what made me fall in love with her.
I got a smaller and much less romantic test later. Bee gave me some shoes to try that didnāt fit. I wore them for a day, and somehow my knee ended up messed up for about a month. She did nurse me, but a bit reluctantly. She also kept pushing me toward thinking maybe it was partly in my head or wasnāt really that bad. I understood whyāneither of us could believe one day in the wrong shoes could do thatābut it still felt dismissive, and maybe partly reflected what she wanted to be true.
Before me, Bee had also stayed with a boyfriend who was totally broke and crazy and supported him for a while. Later she blamed herself for staying through that, and I agree. Helping carry somebody through temporary incapacity is different from becoming the permanent support system for a man who wonāt take responsibility. Some women are fixer types, which can create the opposite pattern.
What makes me desirable is not the same question as what makes me loved when I temporarily stop being desirable in that particular way.
And deeper is the point
Beyond all that practical stuff, sex is extremely important for building and renewing the connection. I also think that if two people arenāt having sex, it becomes hard to explain how theyāre different from regular friends. There is a real contradiction here. I donāt think it needs to be solved into a rule.
I think sex is especially important while the bond is forming. It may be what turns a friendship into a romance and keeps feeding the romantic connection. But if the connection gets deep enough, sex appeal stops being the basis of the relationship. You donāt stop loving the person because she got old, he lost his job, one of you got sick, or sex became impossible.
Sometimes they may even want you to find sexual satisfaction elsewhere if they canāt give it, because they love you and want you to be happy. Maybe they donāt. Nobody is owed that as proof of love.
How to find a partner
(Insert OKCupid sponsorship here)
Looking for a partner is arguably backward, and can work against you. You canāt help looking if you want one, but once you start seeing every new person as a potential partner, you perform for them and they perform for you. Try to see people for who they are before you think of them that way. Actually it was Bee who kept drilling this into me: āYou see a pretty girl, but you donāt see the ugly stuff sheās dealing with inside.ā
On the other hand, if you arenāt looking for one, then you also arenāt filtering & comparing potential matches, which makes you more vulnerable to someone who targets you with their love bombs, not to mention the potentially good matches may slip thru the cracks of indifference.
Maybe a good compromise is to look for people that match you without directly looking for a romantic match. Join a local group that fits your interests. Go forage for wild plants, meditate, hike, study philosophy, whatever. At least you have fun, learn something, and maybe make some friends even if nobody attractive shows up.
Long distance
I donāt think anyone wants to have a long-distance relationship, unless theyāre not ready for a real in-person one, or it just so happens that their dream partner is currently far away. There is something super romantic about preferring one person no matter the distance. But itās also not something we evolved to feel fulfilled by. And the less youāre physically together, the less you actually know each other. And actually, I would find it more romantic for my partner to say, āLetās be together at any cost, physicallyā rather than āYou should go take that better job and Iāll stay here.ā
If youāre just starting one of these, Iād suggest you ask your partner about how long they are comfortable maintaining distance, to see if it really matches what you want. If youāre already in a relationship of any type, itās worth discussing how much distance youād tolerate and for how long.
Dating App Horror Show
I would never recommend dating apps based on my own experience, although I suppose it depends on the person. Maybe you donāt care much about spirituality or anything, youāre not unique and donāt care if they are, you just ālike big butts and you cannot lie,ā and they want the same sort of thing. Then maybe the app fits what youāre looking for. š
Case in point, OKCupid didnāt tell me my first wife was going to try to kill me and my family, take my son, and then put me on child support that I canāt pay and wouldnāt pay on principle if I could. That was the worst choice I ever made, even though I still love my son and Iām happy he was born.
On the other hand, the app did give me information that I ignored because she was cute and interested in me. Her OKCupid profile almost made her sound like a prostitute, or at least someone who liked casual sex. Both turned out to be true. But once she started chatting with me and I saw the nice photos, I thought maybe she had been joking in the profile or something.
These days almost nobody even has a profile. They just have photos, which is showing you something too.
Ok wait, Judge not, lest ye be judged... An app could be fine as an introduction if you use it as a proper gate. Assume 99.99% of the people there are a bad match for you. If youāre just going to get excited by every cute guy or girl who hits you up, forget it. Thatās such an easy way to find a weirdo, a psycho, a mooch, a faker, or whatever. Those people are easy enough to find in modern society in person anyway.
I always tell young guys especially: donāt worry about not finding a girl. Worry about finding the wrong girl. Girls are usually more selective, but they still need to think twice, because they often go for guys who arenāt respectful or mature.
Iām almost embarrassed to admit, but I recently tried Hinge again for a few days while I was in Kenya after my last breakup. I was getting something like a hundred girls interested in my profile every day, so I looked through a lot of profiles. Some were cute but none seemed deep. So the app did tell me something useful.
Community makes the match
Sometimes when you donāt go looking, others go looking for you! Some time in my teen years, my dad decided I needed a girlfriend. This was long before dating apps, so he suggested we put up posters around the neighborhood advertising me as eligible for girls to date. I was horrified and we dropped the idea. That gives you some idea of the mildly autistic background Iām coming from: we didnāt understand people. Thatās why it might seem absurd the level to which Iām trying here to help you understand what perhaps is already obvious. š
The advantage of meeting through your community, unlike through an app, is that you see someone over time. Other people know them. You see how they act when they arenāt on a date, what theyāre like with friends, and what happens when theyāre irritated, bored, jealous, or not getting what they want.
Community also supports you regardless of who your baby daddy may be, and you arenāt desperate for just any kind of closeness because hopefully the community already fulfills most of that need.
But if you donāt have community, the move is to find someone who is also looking for one that would interest you both. You can visit communities together (like Tree & Juliaās YT), or at least make a real plan to eventually live in one together. Itās a wide world, and traveling around looking at possible communities is a supremely good way to get to know someone.
On the other hand, you may end up having sex too fast if youāre traveling together, but Iād still rather have sex with someone whoās trying to find a commune with me than someone I met at a party.
The Missing Middle
Modern life barely has an intermediate stage between being interested in somebody and getting sexually entangled. One old example is bundling, a mostly extinct practice now especially associated with the Amish, even though it existed much more widely. Courting couples could spend the night together in bed, usually clothed, with the idea that they could talk and be close without having sex. It sounds a lot like the missing middle Iām talking about.
It also didnāt exactly solve the problem. In late-eighteenth-century New England, bundling coexisted with a lot of premarital pregnancy: 30ā40 percent of brides were already pregnant. So it wasnāt exactly a reliable way to keep courtship nonsexual. I donāt think we need to bring bundling back, but we do need some socially recognized way to explore tenderness and attraction without immediately sliding toward sex, cohabitation, and a life bond.
Starting on the right foot
The window of clarity, and how it closes
For me, the window of objectivity starts closing abruptly once it seems like sex will definitely be happening soon and Iām flowing with that timeline. I begin idealizing her more, and after sex I may suddenly feel unable to leave because maybe sheās pregnant, etc.
Maybe Iām not representative of the modern degen dating scene. If youāre quite numb and used to casual sex, perhaps the window closes later, or even never. But for me, this is the pattern, and it seems like it would be healthy in a healthy, natural, small society.
The attachment theory part isnāt just from my own experience. It comes from reading Iāve done as well. Sex turns on bonding chemistryāoxytocin, dopamine, vasopressināthat usually biases us toward attachment.
People call oxytocin the ālove hormone,ā as if getting more attached should make you feel closer and safer. If closeness was safe when you were little, maybe it does feel a bit like coming home. But if it came with neglect, abuse, or if people disappeared on you, you can get more attached and more freaked out at the same time. You might get anxious or suspicious. You might feel worthless or fight or flight mode may kick in.
There are several main types of brain chemistries that people have, and they determine part of what attracts us, according to Helen Fisherās research:
Peeking thru the window
Before the wisdom window closes, the main thing is to find out whether you are actually compatible. Do you have the same goals and values, especially around children, religion, politics, health, love, and romance? Where do you want to live? Do you both want to find a community? What kind of relationship do you want with technology and money?
Ask deep questions. Conversation-card games may seem silly, but they can help people get past superficial talk and see if theyāre compatible.
But asking, āHow do you handle jealousy?ā can get me a beautiful answer that tells me almost nothing. Iād rather ask what she thinks she would do in an actual situation. If all she can give me is a general answer, I assume she probably doesnāt know yet.
A card game can create its own little high too. If we spend two hours telling each other things nobody else knows, we may feel incredibly understood and close. That may mean the game worked without telling us whether the relationship will.
You can also bring the person to a party and see how they act, bring them around your family or friends, or take them to activities you enjoy and see if they really enjoy them too. Try doing what you would normally do in your day alone, but with them, and see how it feels. Is it weird? Are they wondering why you do this stuff? Do they look bored, like theyād rather just hit you up later than be with you while youāre doing ordinary stuff? Can you guys be normal together and not just romantic or dating?
See their negative side first too. If there is no negative side, thatās a red flag for fakery. Ask whether the spiritual story they tell about themselves survives an inconvenient PMS afternoon. How recent is the healing storyātwo months or two years? Jealousy, abandonment, possessiveness, and the āIām so much better than I used to beā story may not be understood until there is stress and entanglement. By then, of course, youāre stressed and entangled. š
Sometimes the only thing I have is a little āwaitā feeling. It doesnāt prove anything. But if Iām about to ignore a question because I really want this to work, thatās enough reason for me to ask the question before I keep going.
If theyāre nasty to their friends, family, or other people, assume they will eventually be nasty to you. We mostly seem to get attracted to the inner-child part because weāre coming from our inner child and we want to have fun. But you also need to find out whether there is a healthy adult there before youāre too bonded to want the answer.
The conversation about flaws
Card games and social gatherings donāt tell you everything, but I wouldnāt ask someone out of the blue, āWhat did you do wrong in your past relationships?ā That would be a pretty weird date.
At the right time, though, in the right way (especially if they bring it up tangentially), I would ask about their past relationships, especially the recent ones. If every story ends with everything being the other personās fault, Iād ask, āOkay, so what lessons did you find for yourself?ā
āI have baggageā tells me almost nothing. What are you having trouble with now? What might make it hard for you to function well in a relationship?
Iād want both of us to be honest about how effective we actually are at handling our own issues. What addictions or impulsive behaviors canāt we reliably control? How dependable are we? What are we probably going to ask forgiveness for more than once? That tells me more than either of us announcing that weāre healed.
The most recent conflicts are the best place to look. Were you able to regulate at all during the conflict? What did you do to the other person? How did you repair afterward? What did you learn? Has your judgment gotten better, or do you keep falling for the same stuff?
Iād also want to know what their friends or exes would say, because people arenāt always the best judges of their own progress.
And if somebody tells me, āI shut down,ā okay, what does that mean? Did you stop talking to your partner for days? Did they feel abandoned?
My flaws
My own list isnāt especially flattering. Iām impulsive. I idealize too much, although I donāt demonize. Iām very open and not very private. I care more about honesty than the standard romantic ideal. I still love my exes. After being deeply in love, I have overly high expectations, so Iām hard to please with a basic relationship.
Iām also extremely unique and have deeply held convictions many people wonāt agree with. Iām anti-vax, anti-money, anti-civilization, etc. And Iām not yet living the way I want to live (astrology predicts I will by 2030 š).
A woman should know that before she starts fitting me into the life or fantasy she already planned.
Key was an inner-child therapist and Reiki healer. Both Key and Bee were extremely curious and open-minded, which I loved about them. They were open to spiritual experiences, very connected to childlike wonder, and were always seeing what they needed to work on. They both meditated a lot.
I saw all that and thought anyone with that much spiritual depth and curiosity must already be far along on the path.
That was my mistake. Their meditations may have helped them a lot. I still had no idea how either woman would act when a relationship got ugly. If somebody starts with enough trauma, huge progress can still leave a lot unresolved.
My own blind spot is that I have trouble understanding where people are at mentally and emotionally. A partner may agree with everything I say and then tell me later, āDidnāt you understand I was FAWNING?ā
No, I really didnāt. If youāre fawning, tell me when you can, because I canāt know whatās happening in your head just because it feels obvious to you.
Things get tricky fast
Couples withdraw from friends who arenāt supportive of the romantic dyad, and they also stop telling friends the whole truth. Sharp questions start to feel rude. An obvious problem dissolves into, ābut I love her,ā and the small world of the relationship starts feeling more real than the rest of life. The relationship can close off at exactly the point when both people most need a view from outside it.
Sometimes withdrawing isnāt wrong. Telling your friend, āCan you believe what my girlfriend is doing to me?ā can be a privacy violation. Itās just important to realize what is happening.
It doesnāt help if she tells her friends her side while I tell mine mine. We need people who actually know both of us over time, well enough that the relationship isnāt the only reality in the room. Iāll come back to that.
Beware idealization in either direction
Idealization can be pathological, but it can also come very close to real deep love and appreciation. Thatās why itās so easy to get confused.
So far in my life the main experiences of this have been with Bee and Key. Theyāre also the two women Iāve actually been in love with, which is probably not a coincidence. Both of them saw me as their knight in shining armor, and that brought out this divine-feminine beauty in them that made me into a real love slave. Iām not Superman out here trying to āsave a hoe.ā Thereās just a natural director/muse dynamic that sometimes plays out in an exaggerated way.
It shouldnāt have to happen that way, though. Itās a bad shortcut to the divine archetypes.
Legitimately seeing someone as amazing doesnāt depend on what the seeing gives you. Once you start identifying with the way you see themāsheās perfect, this is destiny, Iām the one who finally found herāyouāre already lost in the sauce.
The degree of idealization also predicts the degree of demonization for me. I donāt mean this as a clinical diagnosis, but I use it almost diagnostically in my own life. If a woman says, āYouāre such a great guy. Of course you have flaws like anyone, but I love you,ā that sounds healthy. If she says, āYouāre perfect. I canāt find any flaw,ā Iām already running.
When the BPD splitting happens, private hatred can replace worship. Then come public accusations, rewriting the whole past and treating every flaw as proof that the person was fake all along. Sometimes the woman who thought I was perfect later accuses me of thinking Iām perfect.
Iāve learned to get nervous when somebody knows too much about me too soon. Weāre twin flames. She knows my motives. Iām Lord Krishna. Okay, maybe I really am way better than the other guys sheās found. But if she hasnāt found anything about me that bothers her yet, she hasnāt found all of me.
For example, I still love women Iāve loved before. Sometimes I talk about them because Iām thinking about them. Iām not trying to make her jealous. If she canāt handle that I still love them, she isnāt ready for me.
If she says, āCan you talk less about your exes?ā Sure. Maybe I do talk about them too much sometimes. But they still matter to me. If Iām supposed to listen to everything on her mind, I donāt want to have to pretend that isnāt on mine.
Anti-PTSD Can Be Just As Dangerous As PTSD
When Iām in love, I see everything just from the love angle. I should probably admit that before I give anybody more advice.
A friend in my TherapyCircle chat was talking about PTSD recently, and I said, āI have anti-PTSD.ā I coined it as a joke, but even though it feels nice to have Anti-PTSD, it can leave me at more risk than if I had PTSD. Instead of expecting danger, I keep expecting each new woman and each new situation to finally be the beautiful exception. I see the good. I give the benefit of the doubt long after it has stopped being a benefit. Then the false positive resolves into the same old pattern and gives me actual PTSD, like Ping Pong.
I grew up assuming the best of everybody because thatās what my parents taught me. Now Iām trying to be more suspicious and check for red flags before Iām alone with somebody I badly want to please. Why does she contact me only sometimes? Whatās the pattern? Is she communicating enough for me to really know her interest level and whatās underneath it? Would my twin flame behave like this? Thatās my question. Not everybody is searching for somebody who will naturally channel the divine in their presence.
My second marriage to Bee is the clearest example. I knew within a week of her visiting that she saw me as her father. I didnāt know where that might lead, and it seemed like the only avenue to her heart, so I went with it.
That dynamic alone isnāt necessarily the main problem. A lot of women have seen me that way. The question is whether they can hold it lightly, playfully, and curiously, or whether it turns into something all-enveloping, and they start taking everything they feel about their dad out on me as if Iām him. With Bee, the main issues were the BPD and that her aunts had badly witchcrafted her as a child. She would tell you the same.
She loved me openly and intensely and seemed to understand me spiritually. Most of all, there was the forest-and-mansion line I mentioned earlier that made it feel unconditional. Best drug I ever had.
I donāt know whether that unconditional love ended up being true. I think it was true in a part of her, and it may also have been the BPD idealization. You have to look at everything from multiple angles. But when youāre in love, you see everything from the love angle. Thatās the reality shift Iām talking about. Itās great if the ground underneath is prepared for it. If the rose-colored glasses go on when youāre with the wrong person, they make it even harder to understand whatās real.
So I became the father in a relationship where I wanted an equal. Part of what happened may have been that she eventually grew up, and a daughter who grows up leaves home. That wasnāt the whole story. The two years in-between contained enough insanity for several lifetimes.
Looking back, Iām grateful I loved her. For three months after we broke up, I trained myself to replace missing her with loving her, and now, any time I think of her, I feel so much joy and love, which I send her way.
That doesnāt mean Iād advise somebody to knowingly enter a dangerous relationship because it may be worth it. Going in, it helps to recognize your pattern, stop idealizing without becoming suspicious and closed, and have some idea what youāre getting into.
Seeing idealization right
You can see something in a person before she fully lives it, but then you have to ask her:
āI see this in you, and I think itās special. Do you wanna reach for it together?ā
If she says no, forget it. Youāre in la la land. If she says yes, ask what is blocking her. Is the block more than you can handle? Or does she mostly need somebody to join her on the journey and believe in her?
Partners should help each other grow. Who else is going to do it? Your mom and dad? Youāre already grown to them. Everybody else will usually be a smaller influence, so youād better choose someone who helps you grow well. Like the FM Laeti song down in the Twin Flames section says, āInspire her to see the best in herself, actualize that.ā If something severe is happening, sometimes a demand or boundary is necessary too.
If slow isnāt realistic for you
I pretty much always intend to wait long enough to have this conversation and figure out who Iām dealing with. Then the heat of the moment hits and I want her to think of me as the guy who pleases her, not the guy who makes her think twice about wanting pleasure.
So my main strategy has been to avoid heat-of-the-moment situations until Iām ready. That has definitely saved me from having ten times the body count, but it doesnāt work reliably because the request often starts out small. āHey, wanna go do something together?ā Maybe she wants me to come to an event, a meditation teaching, or a walk in nature.
Phone or video first can help. So can meeting around other people and deciding beforehand that we arenāt going home together. Islamic and conservative Christian cultures put much stronger barriers around a man and woman being alone before marriage. I donāt accept their helicoptering solution, but they noticed something real. We donāt live in tribes anymore, where people around us might know both of us well enough to slow this down.
Just in case
Weāre human though, so expecting perfect behavior is a recipe for disaster. Thatās where Gandarussa comes in for men. Itās a traditonal Indonesian contraceptive herb that looks about 99% effective, with health benefits (including libido and for HIV), and rarely any side effects. You have to take it daily and it takes a month to become effective. That only deals with pregnancy, though. I can still get emotionally attached to somebody I barely know.
Holding up a leaky dam
Once Iām attached, āIām taking a chance on herā starts turning into āsheās the right personā after weāve been together for a while. Based on what? Sometimes I actually learned something. Sometimes nothing changed except that now Iām attached, and the new certainty is just harder for me to question.
If I have sex with somebody quickly, thatās a reason not to move in quickly too. Moving in together right away is basically getting into a common-law marriage without discussing it. I want us to keep seeing friends, have some kind of community around the relationship, and pick actual dates to ask how itās going. Otherwise itās too easy for me to assume the relationship is going well because weāre already entangled.
I can know I want her much faster than I can know whether I want to raise children with her, live in community with her, or build a life with her.
At some point one of you will ask, āWhy am I special to you? Why are you with me and not somebody else?ā If the answer is basically, āWe had sex and got hitched?ā I donāt know, thatās a damn shame.
Slow & steady may win the race, but turtles have problems too!
Going slowly can show you how somebodyās moods move over time, how they treat you, and how they treat other people. It still canāt tell you how good the sex will be or how either of you will act afterward.
You can know somebody for twenty years and then discover on the first night that the polarity isnāt there, touch or smell feels wrong, your desire levels or kinks donāt fit, one person is sexually shut down, or the bodies just donāt connect.
Some of those things might get better if both partners are committed to helping each other through it. Sometimes bad sexual fit still feels like, āLetās just be friends!ā
Saying, āThe sex isnāt working for me,ā may sound like, āI only love you if the sex is good.ā But universal love doesnāt make someone special. It isnāt romance. Itās the basis of any good relationship of any kind.
I can still love her and not want to be in a romantic relationship with her. Romantic love generally needs good sex too, or weāre friends who care deeply about each other.
Slow & steady isnāt KOād yet
Slow and steady might still apply after the shock of the first night together. At the beginning of my sexual relationship with Bee, she told me, āYouāre going to get a lot better at sex.ā (God forbid I tell a woman that.) Funny thing is, I donāt think I did. She got much better at receiving me.
About eighteen months later, she could orgasm almost immediately from penetration without foreplay, have dozens of orgasms in 5 minutes, and squirt so much we were flooding the bed. We were often making love for at least four hours a day. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry loads.
After we broke up, I was extremely curious whether that would simply transfer to another man. Last year she told me that in the five years since me, she had tried having sex with somebody else once. It felt so bad that she stopped after about a minute.
So ātrainableā doesnāt quite describe what I mean. Some sexual abilities can obviously be trained, but some sexual responsiveness seems to be co-created between particular people.
The strangest part was that Beeās body kept opening more while consciously she was trusting me less and becoming more sure that she wanted to separate. She used to say, āI canāt stand you! but I LOVE you and I donāt know why!ā
Women are always demanding to know why I love them. Apparently theyāre allowed not to know. Those double-standards really bug me, but I also understand our brains work differently. So thatās another thing to learn about over time in a relationship, and it sometimes hits you unexpectedly.
So go slowly if you can. Just donāt imagine that means you know everything. You learn what you can before sex. Sex itself tells you other things.
The Relationship As Crucible
It was during my first marriage that I read about Dr. David Schnarchās Crucible Approach in Passionate Marriage. Schnarch saw marriage as a natural āpeople-growing process.ā His idea of differentiation was learning to hold onto yourself while staying close, especially when intimacy brings anxiety and unresolved problems to the surface.
Thatās definitely what relationship has done to me.
One warning before I romanticize the crucible too much: sometimes (as in my first marriage) this isnāt two wounded people triggering each other but one person terrorizing or controlling the other. If youāre scared to say no or tell the truth, or scared of what happens if you leave, donāt treat that as a mutual communication exerciseāget other people involved and think about safety first.
Toft sees the crucible of his marriage as his main spiritual practice. He also continues his meditation, yoga, prayer, and church activities, but sees them as secondary. I understand what he means. Itās much easier for me to feel spiritually advanced when nobody is close enough to expose the parts of me that arenāt.
Being in a relationship showed me how vulnerable I actually am when I open my heart. Itās really easy to feel invulnerable and strong when youāre alone, or even just with friends. Taking off the masks and showing your inner child is a gamble, but itās required if you want to go deeper in yourself and deeper with another person.
From flow to nitty gritty
Living alone is easy in so many ways. I can make my bed whenever I want. When I have a girlfriend, making the bed in the morning can become one of the ways I show her I love her. If I donāt do it well, somehow it may become a bad omen that I donāt care about her.
A tiny thing can end up carrying way more emotional weight than it should.
Dealing with somebody elseās emotional insecurities can also be exhausting. Itās easy to feel free when I donāt have to do that, especially since Iām a bit of an introvert and 10% autistic. All that works wonderfully until Iām in a romantic relationship and suddenly Iām expected to mind-read, notice every emotional shift, check in constantly, and understand what a silence means, without manipulating based on all that expert āmanagement.ā
Reverting to babyhood
Relationship may activate wounds that were already there. Sometimes it may open a level of the heart that is simply very young and vulnerable, whether you knew there was a wound there or not. You become like a baby again. Thereās a reason lovers call each other ābaby.ā
That can be an incredible therapy opportunity. Every such opportunity also carries a risk of failure and more trauma.
With Bee, Key, and H., there was always some sense that they were remembering how their dad treated them and judging me according to how close to himāor different from himāI was. That puts me in a tough position. I want to play the role they need in some way, but I donāt want to leave the reality of me being me.
A smaller example happened with all of them. They could message me whenever they wanted, even a day later. If I took a day to respond, suddenly it was weird. What was I doing? What did it mean?
The present issue may be tiny. The part reacting to it may be five years old.
Donāt make your partner your whole world
When Iām in love, my partner is my everything. Everything else drops away. I still try to make some time for friends, but really all I want to do is be with her.
That little paradise is wonderful, but it contains the seed of its own destruction. Part of why it feels like a magical wonderland is that you can suddenly stop parenting yourself now that you have someone whoās fully got your back. This makes you soft and weak, kinda like a sweet treat or heroin. It is wonderful to have their love and support, but donāt let that bring you away from your own self-love, reparenting, meditation, yoga, and other healing practices that keep you independently healthy. Otherwise, youāll end up blaming them when you feel bad.
So donāt let your world get so small. Donāt abandon your friends unless they really arenāt good for the relationship. And if they arenāt, ask why. Are they bad friends? Are they slyly interested in one of you romantically? Or is the relationship so weak that it canāt handle anybody with an outside view?
You donāt need to spend as much time with friends as you did before the romance. But keep some room to explore life on your own.
For me, that also means keeping close friends, outside therapy when I need it, a mission of my own, separate interests, some connection to community, and the ability to be alone.
Toft also points out that a man can get feminine energy from nature, music, poetry, art, flowers, food, and other parts of life. I like that idea. A girlfriend shouldnāt have to be my only source of beauty, softness, sensuality, and inspiration.
Iād rather make alone time normal than wait until Iām already overwhelmed and suddenly announce, āI need time for myself!ā By then it can easily sound like I need time away from her.
And bring each other out into the world. See people together. Go places. Donāt just disappear into each other.
Disconnect to connect
Self-reflection is a good place to start, but it canāt see what it canāt see.
A peer can give another angle. Your partner is also usually trying to keep you, so they have an ulterior motive that a peer counselor hopefully does not.
Thatās why I recommend peer counseling outside the couple. If my partner is the only person I bring all my pain to, she also ends up carrying whatever I do when I still donāt understand it.
I also have to deal with what happens in my body. My mind may understand that my partner is going through something difficult and that I donāt have to be dragged down with her. Meanwhile my body feels dragged down, fragile, and sensitive. My breathing gets shallow. It becomes extremely hard to feel okay while she is in pain.
Crying helps a lot, but it may actually be harder for men once they are in a relationship because they are expected to be the shoulder everybody else cries on. That is another reason to have a peer counselor.
Crying also contains a type of automatic erratic breathwork. Breathwork is one of the easiest ways I know to calm down. Reduced breathing or the Buteyko method is especially useful to me when my partner is getting me upset and flustered with drama. Sometimes sheās deliberately trying to do that. Other times itās hard to tell. I explain more of the body-based options in my Somatic Modalities guide.
Meditation is also helpful. For most people, I would still put inner-child reparenting, peer counseling, and body-based work first or make them primary meditation targets. Many people say they cannot meditate or have not gotten to that stage yet. Meditation without grounding in those approaches can easily be a road into spiritual bypassing.
Babies growing up again
Nobody has to be completely healed before entering a relationship. And I think that as we learn more about ourselves through the crucible, we should naturally raise our standards. Maybe at first we need the drama to access our primal emotions, but after years of that, weāre exhausted by what we previously hoped to find.
At the very least, there needs to be honesty, real effort at improving, and some ability to stop blaming everybody else for your own problems.
I already said before dating that the present-day adult has to be able to parent whatever intimacy wakes up inside you. Once youāre together, more of that stuff comes out. Inner-child reparenting means parenting the child part instead of surreptitiously hiring the partner for the job.
It can get pretty entitled when you expect your partner to know what you need without being told. You may barely see your own pattern, and then deny it instead of taking responsibility when they point it out.
Some babies grow up faster
While different maturity levels are to be expected to some degree, it can get out of hand at the extremes. What I noticed in all of my most intimate relationships was that when one person was always the child and the other is always the therapist, guru, doctor, or dad, then itās too unequal, and eventually there will be some kind of pendulum swing or backlash. When I became consistently the responsible one, that also made me responsible for everything that went wrong, not to mention the unhealthy clinginess, jealousy, and all the rest which went along with that dynamic.
Toft says, āSheās not a girl,ā and āSheās not your mother.ā I agree with the warning, but Iād qualify the first sentence. A lot of women enjoy a daddy/little-girl dimension with a man they trust, and I donāt see a reason to deny them that. It can be affectionate, erotic, comforting, or playful.
The problem is when the role takes over the relationship. She can be my little girl sometimes without becoming my child. She still has to remain responsible for her life and keep reparenting herself.
It can run the other way too. If I expect her to regulate me, soothe every wound, organize my life, and keep me functional, then Iāve made her Mom.
All three women told me at some point that they felt like my patient, and I couldnāt exactly argue with them. They asked me about almost every medical, mental-health, and practical problem:
āIām sick. What should I take?ā
āIām sad. What should I do?ā
I usually had some idea, so of course I answered. But enough moments become a pattern.
Key at first asked me innocently, āCan you be my guru?ā I told her, āIām not anyoneās guru, but we can learn from each other.ā A few months later, she was telling me she was much more spiritually advanced than me. I asked, āDo you recall asking me to be your guru?ā She said, āWow, I must have been really confused back then!ā
I also have to admit, I can become condescending when somebody stops taking responsibility for their behavior. I find that intolerable. If someone says, āI feel like your patient,ā both people need to look at their roles.
I know what can happen on my side. Helping feels good. Being needed can feel good too. A lot of the time I really did have the information or perspective they needed, so of course they kept asking me. I also had to look at whether they were trying to take care of themselves without me.
Different levels in different domains can be complementary
According to myself, I was ahead of Bee, Key, and H. in maturity, emotional stability, self-love, and self-awareness. I also had advantages they didnāt, including a happier childhood and more moolah. As you might imagine, all of that affected the balance between us.
They were all ahead of me in childlike wonder and fascinating creative intuition, which is what attracted me. Sometimes their intuition was wrong and they trusted it too much, but I still loved that quality in them, since I tend to be more analytical.
They were also all more social than me. They could organize people for a ceremony or group gathering very easily. I felt like I needed that if I ever wanted to start a commune, because Iām more introverted.
Iām good at talking to people when thereās a purpose. Iām not as good at rousing everybody up and encouraging them to do things or go places with me, because I tend to feel that everyone should simply do as they please.
So I do believe in mutual coaching and complementarity.
I could teach these women about loving and reparenting their inner child, Buddhism, meditation, and other things I understood better. They could pull me into life more, show me where I was missing people, and sometimes be the skeptic when I was seeing the best in someone and missing their hidden motives.
The roles can flip: teacher one day, student the next. Thatās healthy.
Once one person has become the default caregiver and thatās taken for granted, itās time to bring in other support, lest the romance collapse under the burden. Maybe the romance actually does need less intensity, maybe it becomes friendship, or maybe it ends. I canāt answer that for others, and I couldnāt always answer it for myself, but asking the question out loud is usually where it starts.
The next two sections are about masculineāfeminine polarity and Twin Flames. If neither is relevant to you, skip ahead to Two Pillars Donāt Hold The Roof Up.
Primal attraction: channeling the Divine Masculine & Feminine
Everything Iāve been putting forward so far has leaned toward honesty, closeness, and equal dignity. I do believe in that basically for any type of relationship, but none of that by itself explains why two people still want to tear each otherās clothes off each night.
For me, safety gives the space for desire, even if it doesnāt spark it.
When I feel safe with a woman, we can actually tell each other our fantasies without worrying that the other is going to be horrified or weaponize it later. We can imagine pregnancy and really enjoy the thought that we might be making a baby, rather than imagining Iām ejaculating into a condom and hoping nothing happens.
Whenever I was scared of getting a woman pregnant, the sex was usually much more boring.
So why is it that a lot of relationship advice says desire needs distance, mystery, withholding, maybe even separate homes? I suspect they are compensating for a lack of expressed difference while together.
The more safety there is, the more closeness there is, the more polarity there needs to be to keep things alive and poppinā.
Some women may only get turned on by pathology and danger. A woman may also feel her man has become so feminine that there is no contrast left.
A lot of women want to feel that the man is dangerous in some way, but preferably in an exciting and defending way rather than threatening. Beauty and the Beast is a ātale as old as timeā for a reason.
The real question is whether polarity stays alive inside the safety.
Muses & Directors
In ordinary life, I sometimes think of the woman as the engine and myself as the steering wheel. I get motivation from her. She is the life force. She brings inspiration, beauty, intuition, creativity, and this feeling that life is worth doing.
I help give it direction and make it operational.
I find the intuitive mind incredibly sexy, because I canāt fully follow it. During sex, some of the most āwomanlyā women Iāve loved have gone through psychic experiences, memories that felt like past lives, and things I had no idea how to explain. One time, Bee said she almost got enlightened, but I came too fast. Woops...
Key could sometimes start talking and somehow teleport me outside the galaxy. I donāt know how else to describe it. Her voice would become so beautiful that I would shed tears that felt super liberating.
Bee could bring out something similar--she could be talking to me for hours on end, but instead of trying to mute her with the TV remote, I felt I was in a timeless dimension of love.
Maybe women are poetry and men are prose.
Some women barely have that poetic quality, and artistic men can live much closer to it. Iām referring more to feminine vs masculine archetypes. What attracts me is the feminine intuitive leap, because itās hard for me to understand, seems often absurd, yet many times may turn out more accurate than what I could have figured. I hope this feminine quality can be treasured by all girls as they grow, without falling into helplessness or chaos that over-relying on it without calibration could create. Boys should also maintain their access to this, even if itās not primary.
This polarity is attracting, but it also shows up in arguments. Toft says that after fifty years of marriage, sometimes his wife wants to talk while he wants to fix, a la Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus. I recognize that as well. So I ask, āDo you want me to help figure this out, or do you mostly want me to listen?ā Listening doesnāt mean Iām gonna be a doormat tho. If I start listening to her demonize me, thatās the Crucible safety problem I already talked about.
Where I like the polarity is when she sees the Big Picture, and I help fill in the details to make our plan workable. If she micromanages, I start feeling useless. If she earns more than me, although thatās not inherently problematic, it often becomes so, because she will naturally start to feel like she is the one who should make the decisions (āMy house, my rulesā).
She may know much more than I do about some particular field, including a traditionally non-feminine one, and in that case I want her help. āHoney, let me help you with this,ā can be very sexy, until helping turns into doing everything for me and I start feeling useless.
In my experience, women often prefer me to say directly:
āThis is where I want to go. This is what I think we should do. Are you game?ā
She might have a better idea, or just not want to do it, but she still wants me to take initiative.
I donāt think equality means dividing every role 50/50. If I like driving and she likes cooking, great. If sheās way better at something, sheāll probably do more of it. When Iām leading, I still want to know what she sees. Mandar obedeciendoāLead by followingāas the Zapatistas say.
Desire is expressed differently for men & women
Women often show wanting directly. They ask, reach, name what they want, and ask the man to do things for them, even when they could do it themselves.
Men tend to show their wanting through providing, fixing, heavy labor, or trying to become indispensable. Not because men are less needy, but their neediness partly consists of being needed. Emotionally, women express their needs more, but this also allows them to get supported more often and by a wider social net. Men, on the other hand, tend to keep their needs to themselves or put them all onto their woman, especially when it comes to the need for a confidant.
If a man is too needy, it tends to turn women off. The way women see it, a man should be in control of himself and able to satisfy his own basic needs. After all, how is he supposed to provide for somebody else if he canāt manage himself?
Itās not that male pursuit is a turn-off to women (assuming they are interested in the man), but they want to see that the man can pursue strongly while staying grounded. The polarity evaporates when he keeps reaching without satisfaction, loses control of himself, or makes the woman responsible for regulating his emotions.
Romance Shouldnāt Be Adjudicated
The moment I have to prove that Iām the man, something has already become fake. Then I have to defend the identity every time I hesitate, cry, need help, or get something wrong.
I donāt actually walk around thinking Iām some super-masculine guy. I cry, I need help, I get things wrong. Bee once called me her āwife.ā I donāt recommend that as a polarity exercise, by the way.
When a woman appreciates that masculine side of me, it tends to come out by itself.
The same is true for a woman. She should not have to perform softness, helplessness, or cuteness every minute to prove she is feminine. Surrender means so much more when she could take control but prefers not to at that moment. When a strong woman surrenders, she is choosing to, which is sexy.
Women can get pulled in two directions here. She may worry that I donāt find her beautiful enough, or that sheās too emotional, too difficult, not logical enough, or too needy. Then she can over-correct into needing nobody and make receiving care or letting a man lead feel like weakness.
Toft says that after fifty years he still tells his wife sheās beautiful, including finding new kinds of beauty as she ages. Anami talks a lot about women learning to receive. Letting a man help, lead, or give her pleasure doesnāt make a strong woman helpless. A man receiving care doesnāt make him a child either. Sometimes thatās as ordinary as a woman who knows perfectly well how to drive asking me to drive because she likes how it feels when I do; sheās choosing the experience. I might ask, āHoney, how do you see this intuitively?ā because I actually want her use her power, and she might ask me to help think through the practical side because she wants that from me.
Thatās called invitational: Would you rather go to a party where you were invited or a war you got drafted into?
When a woman doesnāt know how to gently invite a man to lead, she may manufacture a crisis until the man is forced to take charge to get the same outward result.
Unfortunately, Iāve seen a lot of the latter.
Fantasy
Inside real safety, people can turn the polarity dial all the way to the right.
Fantasy is one of the best ways to experiment with that. Domination fantasies are common in many forms, and they enable extreme masculine-feminine polarity without actual harm, because the real person still has consent and can stop.
Nobody is entitled to another personās fantasies. They are private until the person decides to share them. When somebody does share one, it can be an extraordinary act of trust.
Esther Perel makes the distinction that fantasy is play rather than a real-life request. A rape fantasy is not a request to be raped in real life.
The couple can leave it in imagination or agree to bring some part of it into the room.
Fantasy should also add to arousal rather than become the only possible route to it. I want to be able to enjoy the actual woman and the actual experience too.
The Queen of Orgasms
Most people are not even aware of how incredible sex can be when the polarity, trust, love & safety are all where they should be. Women have shown me that the cervix can open during sex and become intensely pleasurable for both of us. After you experience cervical sex, regular sex doesnāt even seem like itās really āsexā anymore. It seems more like foreplay.
However, Iāve not yet very deeply āresearchedā these experiments, because ālifeā often got in the way, and building up to this actually takes a lot of āworkā (ahem..).
Women describe cervical and whole-body orgasms as something very different from building friction toward releaseāmore like being taken over by a profound energy running through the whole body.
Although the peanut gallery critics and lazy fact-checkers often cry fiction on this topic, it actually has been documented in studies. That laboratory evidence establishes the biological validity and uniqueness of the phenomenon. Kim Anami, Diana Richardson, and other popular educators and promoters of cervical orgasms further claim that these can provide days of afterglow, as well as spiritual and physical healings.
Can making love be a spiritual practice?
Iām Buddhist, and the early Buddhist texts donāt teach tantric sex as a path to awakening. But they also donāt show serious awakening as something reserved for monastics.
In DN 16, the Buddha talks about people who had died in the town of NÄdikÄ and mentions 510 lay stream-enterers, 96 once-returners, and more than fifty lay non-returners. Those are the first three of the four stages of awakening.
SN 55.24 has an almost comic complaint. When the Buddha declared SarakÄni a stream-enterer, other Sakyans grumbled, in effect, āWho isnāt a stream-enterer these days?ā
And when the married couple NakulapitÄ and NakulamÄtÄ asked the Buddha how they could remain together in future lives, AN 4.55 gave this advice:
āWhen both husband and wife are faithful and generous, restraintful, living righteously, speaking pleasant words to each otherāthey come together in the future, sharing the same desires and living in bliss.ā
Marriage, sex, and household life are not automatically on the opposite side from serious spiritual development.
Kim Anami goes further and treats sexual energy itself as a path into healing, creativity, worldly action, and spiritual awakening.
She has also collected a ton of stories from students who say the effects spill out of sex into health, work, money, creativity, the rest of life. Her jade-egg practice is a preliminary training for the cervical O: pelvic-floor strength, attention, and arousal without needing a partner.
Brad and Pam Keene are the example I really like. Pam says her Kundalini process completed while they were making love and opened into a lasting universal-consciousness awakening. She later helped Brad awaken too, so the marriage itself became part of the path.
Twin Flames?
In the previous section, I mentioned the divine feminine and divine masculine energies that you can channel to keep eroticism alive. But thereās really something more special about the in-love paradise that Twin Flames (TFs) experience than a simple Divine Masculine + Divine Feminine formula. Maybe a better way to put it, as my friend Cody says, is Yin/Yang, which still has the masculine/feminine in it, but allows for a more broad type of complementary symbiosis since, each contains the seed of the other.
There are a ton of people who donāt want to believe in twin flame theory because they havenāt found someone they could call their twin flame. Thatās fine, and I am not trying to rock their boat. They might be the people who suggest that you should marry your best friend (or āsoul mateā in the TF lingo). Then there are the folks who are deep in the TF theory, believing there is literally one person on Earth who is made for you. Iām also not trying to rock their boat. But I do want to tell my story.
I used to fall into the former camp, then into the latter camp, and now that Iāve experienced two twin flame relationships, Iāve jumped into a new camp I never knew existed.
What two Twin Flames taught me
I used to think there was absolutely no way I could ever fall deeply in love with another woman after my 2nd wife, Bee. No other woman ever connected to me on such a deeply spiritual and deeply feminine level. I always said, āBee is the ultimate woman in every sense.ā But I also suspected I felt that way because of what I conceived a woman should be, and because of the shape of my own inner being. I could list her qualities which made me feel that way, but the sum total of the qualities would not produce what she represented. There was something deep and ineffable that I connected to with her. I truly understood the belief that your TF is really a half of your own soul (or of your own mind-stream in Buddhist terminology).
I wish I had a video to show you of me and Bee, but she was very camera-shy, and the only video thatās online of her is from when she graduated high school, but I still see the divinity in her in that short clip where she is the only one expressing that she wants to save others from going through what sheās gone through. I did make a video about how I learned to love her instead of missing her after we parted ways in 2020.
Then, in 2026, I met another Ultimate Woman, who even called herself āWOMANā on her whatsapp profile, which I thought was hilarious and maybe a sign for me. You can see the video we made together while in love:
Falling in love with Key really blew my mind. How could it be possible to fall in love with a different woman? I thought Bee was my forever, only Twin. The conclusion seemed inexorable to me: Bee could not have been the only person on Earth with whom I could experience this. Key did not share that conclusion. But if both partners can accept it, I think de-ontologizing Twin Flames actually allows for a deeper sacred relationship.
De-ontologizing Twin Flames FTW š
This part might seem unromantic to the TF community, but if people understood this, it would actually lead to much deeper unions and deeper love, in my opinion. Iāve basically synthesized the dialectic between the romance pragmatists who donāt believe in fairy tales and the fairy tale idealists who canāt understand why their relationships never work. If only I could find a woman who was on this same page with me. š
Basically, the Twin Flame experience is not about two unique people who must find each other against all odds. Well, they are uniquely matched in some ways, thatās true. But whatās really unique is that they are able to connect to each otherās deepest, most vulnerable corner of the heart.
When Key felt understood by me and safe with me during that first month, she would naturally slip into her divine-feminine sacred-partner archetype. Bee did the same every other day. In that state I was the ultimate treasure in the universe to them, and they seemed able to reside safely in every part of their minds and hearts. The safety brought out their infinite cuteness, beauty, innocence, gratitude, inspiration, creativity, and even a particular voice that emblematized all of it. It made me like a love-slave with no sense of free will!
Anyway. If we donāt understand that the Twin Flame is an energy that a person can accessā¦ if we conflate the personās egoic flaws that actually annoy us with their deepest, truest, most beautiful self, then we end up playing John Legend on loop like my first wife, Ann, who held me up to this standard, wondering why I didnāt praise her for her imperfections:
Ok, Iām not trying to bash John Legend nor All of Me. Itās one of the most beautiful, most hopeless romantic songs in history. And thereās a part of it which really does apply to what Iām talking about because for your partner to feel truly safe with you, they have to know you accept all of them. But thereās a toxic part there which is that if you just accept everything, youāre a yes man, a doormat, nothing actually special, and youāre inviting them to shit-test you.
This goes back to what I said in ādoing Idealization right:ā If you really loved them, more than just wanting to enjoy them or keep them, youād want to be a good influence on them. That means showing them the infinite appreciation you have for their divine, inner-child-higher self, and holding their hand to gently guide them back to that deeply authentic part of themself when they get off trackāif that is where they want to go. Making it clear that thatās why youāre in love with them. Not because they are imperfect, not because youāre crazy and desperate. You accept the imperfect person and help them move toward the part of themselves they chose, because you want to āMake them move with confidenceā like the Faker song āTalk is cheap.ā
Two Pillars Donāt Hold The Roof Up
Even if I found my twin flame, sheād still be one person. The polarity could be perfect and weād still need other people around us.
Let me show you how this looked for me. Iāve noticed in my own relationships that whenever a serious issue arises, both of us tend to turn to our separate circles of friends for support. Then I resent the one-sided story sheās telling, she resents the one-sided story Iām telling. Some of the friends may even be exes who want us to break up, and eventually neither of us wants to talk to the otherās friends anymore. Thatās a pretty terrible time to be trying to run the rest of life with two people. Housing, money, children, health, emotional crisesāif one person goes down, the other becomes the whole backup system. Who even has time for the relationship itself at that point?
Maybe an unusually strong couple can get away without much outside support. I think thatās rare. But often, a friend who actually knows us both sees the dysfunctional pattern before either of us does. On the other hand, If both people are falling apart, there is only so much anyone else can do.
Separate confidants can be helpful and harmful. Sometimes you need privacy from your partner and somewhere else to say what youāre feeling. But if your confidant doesnāt have a good connection with your partner, the conversation can turn into an echo chamber very easily.
Having the same confidant creates the opposite problem: now you may not have a release valve when you want privacy from your partner. There isnāt one perfect arrangement.
If you do have separate confidants, you need enough emotional maturity to remember they will automatically be biased toward you. Take what they say with a grain of salt. They are hearing a partial story, usually while youāre upset, and they may be trying to protect you rather than understand the relationship fairly.
I lived all the permutations of this with Bee, except that we never lived in community. I suspect if we had, we might still be together. She would not have been capable of demonizing me when everyone already knew both of us and knew I wasnāt a narcissistic abuser. It would have contained all the insanity. Baseless accusations only work with friends who only know one side.
Commune friends could also have helped her in ways I couldnāt, because she was projecting onto me, which made me the wrong person to help her see beyond the projection. And itās actually natural to be a bit BPD when your entire survival depends on one person, because if they arenāt perfect, and especially if you need a lot of support, how will you survive? One fairly normal but large flaw in them could make your life really difficult. We were left alone inside something that needed other people around it, and thatās whatās happening to most people these days.
H. taught me another part of the same dyad problem. I learned not to treat what either of us thought the relationship was as a guarantee of what it would remain, because feelings can and usually do change over time. In our case, the relationship continued to naturally deepen while our outside relationships often felt more shallow, so it was natural for the dependency to increase. She was never into monogamy, but that didnāt stop her from becoming possessive once she found someone really worth keeping. And then she began demonizing me when I refused to be possessed. Because we did not have a shared community capable of supporting us, her friends heard her side and affirmed her truth. The accusations couldnāt have survived among people who knew us both.
So if you donāt have a real community already, what can you do about it practically, right now?
Make as much community as you can wherever you are. Go to Meetups together. Make deep friendships together. Find some shared purpose beyond maintaining the relationship. Introduce your old friends to your partner and try to mutualize those friendships as much as possible, so they arenāt experienced as slyly antagonistic or partial to one side. You donāt need to spend all your time together, but two completely separate social worlds will automatically start taking sides when something goes wrong.
What are you actually choosing together?
A lot of romantic pain starts with two lovey bunnies entering one of the biggest arrangements of their lives without ever discussing their ideas, dreams, and fears about it.
āWeāre togetherā ... what does that mean exactly? I can hear a whole future in those two wordsāsex, exclusivity, living together, money, children, caregiving. She might mean, āWe really like each other; letās see what happens.ā I actually like letting a relationship flow without naming every part. The problem is when weāre using the same words for two different futures.
Sometimes what two people want is much more practical. They want to share a home, raise children, support each other financially, take care of each other, maybe have sex, and not pretend all of that depends on overwhelming romantic love. Iād call that a practical partnership. Thereās nothing inherently wrong with that arrangement if both people know thatās what theyāre doing. But I suspect they simply have never been in love, so they donāt have that expectation. And that becomes a problem if they ever do fall for someone.
Another honest option is a romance with humility, even if romance and humility seem to clash. Two people really are in love and want to build something together. They can choose exclusivity, shack up, have children, and plan a life without pretending they can guarantee what either heart will feel ten years later.
Then the questions change for me. If the romance changes, which parts are still supposed to remain? Are we promising actions, or low-key pretending to promise permanent feelings? Which needs are we still going to meet outside the relationship?
And the biggie: what happens if one of us falls in love with someone else? What counts as betrayal, and what just means we need a serious conversation? If our lives change, can we revisit the agreement honestly? If we separate, what do we still owe each other, and what do we owe any children involved?
These are just a few questions I could think of to start the ball rolling, but be creative and see what you come up with! You can make a card game out of this and have some fun with it. If thereās real love, it will survive a bit of honest curiosity. And again, community can make all of this a lot less scary.
Which marriage vows are honest?
Conventional marriage vows are dishonest, and most people know it. You canāt promise how youāll feel in the future. You can promise actions if you really believe youāre capable of delivering them. So for example, you could promise to tell the truth, to keep showing up, to support the children, or whatever else you genuinely believe you can do.
We also find something like my warning in the New & Old Testaments. Ecclesiastes 5:4ā6 says it is better not to make a vow than to make one and fail to keep it. If you tell the priest you didnāt mean what you promised, the passage warns that God will be angry and destroy your work.
Matthew 5:33ā37 and James 5:12 are stranger still beside wedding vows: let your āYesā be āYesā and your āNoā be āNo,ā and anything beyond that comes from evil. To me, the extra promise itself starts to look suspicious. If your yes is trustworthy, why does it need another layer?
Where did the idea of promising to have romantic interest in your partner come from, anyway? It turns out it never existed in any culture Iām aware of until the 19th century, when people in England began citing romance as their reason for marriage. That trend has continued evolving like a snowball until today. But what our ancestors knew was not wrong: You can sign a contract about what youāll do, but feelings arenāt contractual.
Attraction and exclusivity
Itās hard to find sexually monogamous animals; have you ever looked? And as it turns out, we humans arenāt a natural exception to the rule, either. Plenty of tribal cultures were (and some still are) much looser about this, while still generally retaining the primary-partner āsocial monogamy.ā Sexclusivity started gaining sway around the time we started planting crops and owning land. Thatās when it made sense to keep track of how to keep our land in the family bloodline.
By the the 17th century, when England began mass urbanization by forcing peasants off their land, this ironically bureaucratic basis of romance became the legal definition of marriage. Iām not trying to say weāre just like bonobos, but the academic consensus is that humans tend toward flexible pair-bonding, with a propensity for occasional infidelity.
Jealousy on trial
These days, even the brief inkling of attraction to another person becomes almost a sure sign that sexual infidelity is next. Thatās why I felt I had no choice but to address the issue head on when B. wanted to marry me. I told her, āI canāt fully commit to you if Iām still attracted to other women, so before I do, letās see if I can fix that.ā
I meditated for a while and surprised my own self to find something like a switch in my mind. It felt like evolutionary programming around whether I had found my life mate and true love. I asked myself, āIs she the one?ā
The inner Magic 8 Ball came back YES, and I flipped off the mate-finding switch.
It worked about 99% of the time. I was no longer interested in other women, aside from one extremely beautiful girl who grabbed my attention once.
That amazed me, although B. never quite believed the switch was real. She even started hallucinating that I was looking at or talking to other women when I wasnāt. So her jealousy was not simply tracking what I was doing in the present. More likely it was insecure attachment from childhood trying to justify its continued existence.
Jealousy is always insecurity, but sometimes that insecurity can be an important indicator that the relationship actually is not secure, rather than just a remembered script from childhood. Although, either way, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Instead of stewing in jealousy and throwing out microaggressions now and then, speak your heart without hiding the insecurity behind anger, as in the above video I found on IG. In a monogamous relationship, you might say:
āI notice you pay attention to this other girl more than me, and it makes me feel unloved and insecure. Can we talk about it? Do you really want to explore things with her? If so thatās fine, but donāt make the decision lightly, because itās irreversible.ā
Maybe he really is neglecting you or wanting to be with someone else. Maybe the āattentionā was one glance and your baseline insecurity inflated it into a threat that it wasnāt. That part should not be projected onto your partner. Every couple has to work out for themselves what actually feels healthy.
I do believe two people can choose sexual exclusivity honestly. They can admit that attraction to other people exists and decide not to act on it each day.
I would rather make every attraction possible to mention casually, including the low-stakes ones. If only the serious attractions are supposed to be disclosed, each disclosure becomes such a major event that people are less likely to say anything at all.
A foundational, permanent, exclusive romantic partnership is promised far more often than it is actually lived. In a polyamorous relationship the boundaries might be more negotiable, but that actually means negotiating is required.
Thatās not to say that polyamory is automatically better, because it can be dishonest too. These days, I believe it is often a way to cope with an inability to connect deeply with one person, or a way to admit a lack of self-control without necessarily doing the self-development that would make the arrangement ethical. If you canāt do monogamy, saying so is still more honest than pretending you can. Sometimes the pretending does more damage than an outside connection would have.
Doing it consciously š§
I learned most of this by screwing it up. Some of it I just thought through, and Iām still not sure about all of it.
Imagination as a discernment tool
We all fantasize about a new exciting person we just met, right? The useful thing about the fantasy is that it shows me what I want. But I usually make the mistake of playing out just the first part of the fantasy. So I might start with the regular lovey sexy stuff, and thatās fine because thatās whatās drawing me in. Then after that, when I have a bit of wisdom available, I continue onto the mundane and difficult scenes. Iām not trying to force anything or oppose anything. I just try to open my eyes when they want to close, ignore, look away. Hereās my checklist:
Whatās it feel like after we have sex? Do we feel comfortable and happy about that, or do we feel guilty that we gave in to temptation too quickly and now thereās some weird feelings? Name the feelings and explore.
How about a week into the relationship? Whatās starting to get annoying perhaps? What are we trying not to say and not to notice?
Get in the ring before the ring gets on you. Letās imagine we have a real fight about money, jealousy, or something else important. What do we do to handle the conflict?
Fast forward. Now weāve got kids. What might be the values conflicts in how we raise them? Schools, screen time, vaxxes, religion, helicoptering vs freedom, food, gender & sexual orientation issues.
Rewind. What if we disagree on having kids?
Fast forward five years. What has each of us gained or given up, and do we have any resentment about it?
This isnāt to make predictions and weāre not consulting the magic 8 ball nor doing Istikhara rituals here. I mean you can do that too if you want. Distinguish between fears and what really seems likely just as you do between wishes and reality.
If every scene is beautiful, consider that you may be, and almost certainly are, still rehearsing the relationship you want. Thereās nothing wrong with expecting the best, but it takes work to get there in a wise way.
Psychedelics can make this same problem of idealization much stronger.
Psychedelic Timing
This section will be relevant to some readers and easy for others to skip.
Before I say anything good about psychedelics for relationships, the warning has to come first. I donāt think sexual consent should be negotiated for the first time while high. The drug is changing how safe, loving, open, and connected everything feels. Advance planning doesnāt turn getting high and starting a relationship into a safe procedure. People need that warning before they take it, because once youāre inside that feeling, sober caveats may sound ridiculous.
Starting a relationship through psychedelics has another danger. Key and I met and then spent a few days taking iboga with friends. We got to know each other very deeply that way, and that was great. But it was especially her higher self I was getting to know. I tend to idealize people even sober, and that gets worse when Iām high. It was still beautiful to see the real higher self potential in her, Iām not denying that. But that information didnāt help me understand how we would get along in normal life.
Iāve also had friends get together at MDMA parties and stuff. Itās rarely a good idea. The intimacy can be completely real without telling you whether the two of you actually work together sober. Or you might even sometimes have the opposite problem, like I had with H.D., where the connection continues to deepen while sober, and it becomes something that one person might cling to desperately, never imagining they could find that again.
The obvious advice is to wait before making large promises and spend time together sober, around other people, and in ordinary situations. Write down what each of you learned, do some peer counseling, check with friends to see if youāre too pie-in-the-sky. But the problem is, you wonāt necessarily be interested in sober advice when youāre high. Youāre ābeyond all that.ā And the high can continue after sobriety because intimacy itself is like rose-colored glasses.
Returning to the heart to get unstuck
Psychedelics, especially certain types of shrooms, very pure LSD, very pure therapeutic-grade MDMA, ayahuasca, loveyhuasca haoma, and iboga, can be extremely useful when a couple is trapped in defensive stories.
With Bee and Key, there were many times when we could argue forever sober, then take something and finally understand each other. It could feel like we were telepathically synced. Instead of each person defending their version, we directly understood what the other was perceiving, feeling, misunderstanding.
But the problem is most people are lazy about integrating what they learn during this window of clarity. We enjoyed the understanding while it lasted, and then the same defensive story would resurface later. In neuroscience, this is called state-dependent learning. What you learn in altered states doesnāt automatically translate into your normal sober mind state without the work to do that.
Measuring the benefits
Probably one of the most important benefits we can hope to get long term from any therapy is the ability to express what we feel in a non-combative way. Otherwise, people tend to ping pong between not expressing or downplaying their feelings and expressing them combatively. MDMA can make this temporarily much easier because all the problems can look so small and silly. The question is what happens when youāre sober again.
So I would say the therapy worked if a week or two later, you and your partner can comfortably say, āHoney, Iām feeling unappreciated right now. I know youāre not trying to make me feel that way, and maybe you feel like Iām making you feel that way, but Iād like us to take some time soon to discuss the issue beneath this in a kinder way. What do you say?ā
If you donāt have a partner, you can do the same thing with whoever you tend to have trouble relating with, in a less lovey way but still with compassion.
Itās not always possible in that moment to change a defensive posture into non-defensive loving communication. Thatās why I suggest setting a time soon with a nice intention, like a ritual. Sober is fine. You can put some rose petals around you or something to build the feeling, or play some song you both like.
Why all of this sounds artificial
By now this probably sounds terribly artificial. Is anyone actually going to do scheduled check-ins, delayed cohabitation, conversations about hypothetical disasters, imagination exercises, not to mention resisting the heat-of-the-moment stuff and continuing your own reparenting practices when a warm body is available to do some of the soothing?
Well, yeah. It is painfully artificial. In a healthy communal society, the couple would have access to witnesses, elders, friends, and other emotional outlets and resources. Most of us these days donāt have that, so weāre trying to recreate consciously and clumsily some of what the wider field would have done without a checklist.
If youāre already in it
Most of this article is about what to do before jumping head first into head over shoulders. But if youāre already married with children, advice about slowing down arrives a little late.
I wish I had a special method for fixing that. Mostly I learned the obvious thing the hard way: one person canāt fix the relationship (unless theyāre the main problem in it).
With Bee and Key, the biggest thing sitting underneath everything was trust. They wanted to be with me and would say they trusted me, but really they didnāt trust me, themself, or anyone else. It was all or nothing: blind trust, or none. I kept saying, āItās not possible to have a relationship without trust.ā I think that rigidity came from trauma and never really growing up.
Even dishonesty was sometimes hard for me to define in these relationships. Bee once opened a door and, a second later, said she hadnāt opened it. That drove me crazy. Why would she lie like that? She was lying, but āshe liedā only named the momentary behavior. There was no strategy behind it, and she was usually quite honest. Looking back, I could have understood the lie in the context of some kind of mental illness instead of treating it like strategic dishonesty.
Some things were less mysterious. They were acting as if the trust problem wasnāt there because they still wanted the relationship. Attractions to other people sometimes went unsaid too, and sometimes got imagined from nowhere. Some people keep a relationship like this going for a long time, just sweeping everything under the rug.
On the other hand, sometimes I was more honest than my partner could handle, which was its own kind of damage. Ask whether both of you actually want to prioritize radical honesty, first. But the other person also canāt keep saying ānot nowā forever and think thatās going to save the relationship.
This is the time for agape to shine, because the best thing for both of you may not be holding onto the relationship pattern you originally committed to or dreamt of.
When did you two last dance? And not the āwe dance around our problemsā joke (LOL).. If thatās where things are at, the trust is out the window. Ouch. I know that one from experience with my first 2 wives and K, too. That generally marks the point of no return, so try not to wait for that. Because once youāre there, as my dad explained a thousand times whenever we had a visitor, unconscious resentment begins to snowball, and we feel colder together than alone. Pretty soon, old Romeo & Juliette might get wandering eye syndrome.
Outside help can sometimes break the loop fast
Bee and I were once desperately misunderstanding each other, so we called my friend Eshwar, the only friend of mine whom she respected. He told a related story about something that had happened with his sister. Somehow, Bee immediately understood what I had been trying to say. It was like magic.
So, donāt think of outside help as a formal last resort. I think of it as a part of building community when we learn to rely on each other for this kind of intimate, real-life support. It could be calling up a mutual friend, peer counselor, couples therapist, doing Imago dialogue, Restorative Circle, and/or joining a menās or womenās group. The key is that both people need to respect the person or process enough to hear something new.
What they say is also partly true: āThe only one you can change is yourself.ā Not fully true, because we do have influence, and changing ourself does ripple out. Restart whatever you stopped doing because the relationship was soothing you: inner-child reparenting, meditation, body practices, peer counseling.
What will honesty produce?
Many people ask this question of honesty, but itās unfair. Honesty doesnāt produce a certain outcome. It is its own reward. It might repair the relationship, open it, turn the romance into friendship, preserve the family through separation, or show you that ending it is better. Temporary separation helped Bee and I. It also became more permanent, although Iāve always thought maybe we would get back together in a few decades. If the other person wonāt look, you canāt make it mutual. Then you have to decide what you can live with.
Children
I think everyone generally agrees that parents have more responsibility to children than they do to each other, since children canāt take care of themselves.
Before having or adopting children, sit down for an imagination session to figure out whether you two lovebirds can preserve some civil co-parenting capacity after a terrible breakup. Thatās the actual long-term commitment.
When it comes to stepchildren, even if they arenāt technically your children, they still become attached. If youāve been acting as their parent for years, itās not right to vanish from their life just because the marriage ended. You donāt have legal parental rights, but you can stay a mentor or close friend, and hopefully your partner would agree with this. When children have parental figures come and go, it can damage their ability to have securely attached relationships as adults.
Itās standard advice to never recruit children into the adult war. They get their own relationship with the other parent. However, this was particularly difficult during my first marriage, because Ann was very much unfit at the time to care for our son, Bear. I did fight for custody, but, as my lawyer told me, there was no point, because men generally lose. Eventually I exhausted my options for fighting, and I was left with weekly supervised visits.
Ann was brainwashing Bear into believing that I was ābreaking his bonesā at these visits even though he didnāt know what bones were. Thatās when I told him I had to stop the visits before I end up in jail. So it was for my protection, but his as well, because if he realizes one day his dad is in jail because his mom manipulated him into telling a dangerous story, that could really wreck him.
As it is now, he may miss me, but he is well cared for (I think) by his grandmother, and probably soon heāll seek me out when he gets his own phone.
I know I sound like a broken record, like my dad, but still: It takes a village. The nuclear family, built on parentsā romance, can often be the worst arrangement for children. If thereās trouble in paradise, parents will try to protect the kids by hiding their tension. But the truth is, children absorb that unresolved tension and integrate it into their very being. In a community, romance is one bond among several, and adult stability for children doesnāt rise and fall with it.
Ending consciously
Whether to leave and how to leave are separate questions.
You donāt owe it to them to try counseling unless you also owe it to yourself. If you actually donāt want a good relationship with them anymore, go. No amount of counseling will fix something that has nothing at the base of it.
If you love them and wish it could work, ask if they feel the same, and then go to counseling. On the other hand, even when you love each other, sometimes you already know the issue is beyond what counseling could fix.
Gaslighting in the dark
Do you have irreconcilable memories of key events? I did with both my first and second wives. I took my first wife, Ann, to two counselors. The male counselor eventually told us, āIāve never told anyone this, but you guys need to split up for at least six months.ā
Thereās no way to resolve a situation where one person remembers that you ruined her life on purpose, while you remember that she was having a manic episode and had to be committed for her own safety. We also didnāt have mutual friends who could corroborate what happenedāonly friends on each side who were partial.
Many say itās best to save face and work things out privately, but Iād disagree. If you donāt have friends who can help with the conflict, then youāre really stuck (and you might wanna find some new friends). But do it honestly, with the goal of helping the conflict, not just getting approval for your own interpretation. Both people should have a chance to speak, and good friends shouldnāt automatically validate either side.
I can believe a friendās experience and still tell them that my ability to know what is really going on is extremely limited. If someone says, āI donāt have all the evidence,ā I trust their thinking more. Living in community would help because your friends would not only hear two stories afterward. Sometimes they would actually see how the two of you treat each other when you argue.
If youāve been there for someone, donāt abandon them in a crisis unless itās unsafe for you to stay or theyāre creating the crisis to keep you, or they arenāt willing to help themself. You may need to arrange other care. That doesnāt mean you have to pretend the romance still has a future.
After leaving
Often times the breakup is hard, but the aftermath is worse. Public demonization should be avoided, but I donāt think that means hiding the truth about the relationship to save face. Sometimes the truth is abuse, coercion, or serious deception. How much you say, to whom, and how publicly depends on what happened and why youāre telling people.
A breakup can expose things you genuinely couldnāt see while you were bonded. Look at what you contributed, but also try to understand whatever was true in your exās perspective, including the conflicts they were carrying inside themselves, rather than one-dimensionalizing them.
Sometimes the easiest story is that they were fake all along. Donāt grab that story just because it makes everything easier to explain, and donāt reject it if it really is the most parsimonious explanation. Ask people who arenāt heavily invested in seeing your innocence. A therapist, pastor, or even a stranger may see the evidence more clearly than a lifelong friend. Even the curiosity itself can be therapeutic for you.
Spiritual practice during an ending is critical, but donāt use it to get around the feelings. Pray for your exās wellbeing. Remember what was real and good, and donāt use your pain as permission to hate them. Avoid the New Age belief that everyone is simply a mirror of you. No, that isnāt true. We partly mirror one another, but each person was formed by plenty that had nothing to do with you. No matter how enlightened the Buddha was, his cousin Devadatta still kept trying to kill him. Looking honestly at your part doesnāt erase theirs. Sometimes it helps to ask, āWhat would Mr. Rogers do?ā (if youāre old enough to remember that show).
I also learned that public demonization doesnāt always have to be the last chapter. If you avoid contact forever, they might never apologize and learn honesty. But it can help to keep distance for a while until cooler heads prevail. It can be tempting to let them back into your life after a private apology, and especially after a public one, but keep in mind you deserve a stable love. Youāre not a yo-yo.
What I gained from loss
At this point, I can say Iām better off because of what happened with Bee, Key, and H., without pretending every part of those relationships was beneficial or destined. Loss taught me things love alone never would. And to paraphrase Rumi, āYou must keep breaking your heart until it stays open.ā (The real quote: āThe reed must be torn from its bed, cut, hollowed out, and pierced with holes (wounded) before it can channel the breath of the musician into music.ā)
From Bee, I learned what it means for me to be really in love. I learned the kind of woman I actually want: deeply spiritual, sensitive, creative, unique, somebody who inspires me and makes me question everything.
Key repeated a lot of that, which is why I fell in love with her. I learned some of the same harsh lessons from both of them: donāt take openness and curiosity to be fully good. They can also indicate that someone hasnāt developed their own sense of self or opinions, or enough inner adult.
From H., I learned that I can be extremely close to someone and feel completely understood and supported without actually falling in love. I still treasure the support we gave/give each other.
Too many people judge a relationship only by the result, so start measuring what you actually learned from it instead. Relationships are a process of growth in many dimensions. The result is not only whether you stayed together.
Tough Love
Romantic love is not easy, and the things that actually make it work are not very marketable. I canāt sell you the fix with one click or one monthly subscription to my love class. (Just kidding, click here!)
A relationship like this is rare, and thatās probably why romantic love has been seen with suspicion as a destabilizing force throughout history. One of the best books that makes that point today might be the one I was reading with Key: The Spirit of Intimacy, by Sobonfu SomĆ©. SomĆ© came from the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso. To her people, marriage is an arranged, ritualized spiritual and communal responsibility. Theyāre suspicious of romance. But one of her ideas fits what Iām trying to say: the relationship is bigger and more important than the egos in it. She calls it the spirit of the relationship.
That spirit is like the universe living its desire to know itself through us, which might be why we see ourselves in ways we canāt imagine prior. Nobody can command the spirit to remain. At our best, we serve it and listen for what Spirit wants to change. When we start thinking we own it or deserve it, that presumptuousness tends to push it away.
My parents agreed with SomĆ© that community matters and that we serve Spirit. They were also not romantic, though they were loving and poly. I actually wished they were in love with each other, I guess, although I couldnāt have articulated that since I didnāt even have that concept at the time. Also reminiscent of SomĆ©, they also wore rose-colored glasses and taught me that everybody was basically good. So I learned something about love and community, but not how hard romance is without a community around it, or how much damage basically good people can do when their fears, trauma, and undeveloped parts take over.
It took me many decades to figure out what probably everyone else already knows: real private pathology exists. But pathology festers when the environment is perfect for it. The dominant culture hermetically seals two people together and calls that a luxurious privacy. It tells them that sealed room should provide all the fresh air youād get from a lover, family, community, therapist, and so on. Then it treats the predictable failure as privately caused as well, like mold that grows out of nowhere.
The myths around romantic love become real because we co-create them. We act as though jealousy proves love, permanent feelings can be promised, conflict should stay hidden, and the relationship failed if it ended. Then we suffer inside ideas that were never natural laws, and we walk blindly into our first, second, third, fourth, and fifth marriages!
It might be that I wrote this whole article for my son, Bear, who sadly, I last saw when he was about five, right before he was supposed to get the Rosenblum sex talk.
Bear, sex can be what you do when youāre older and find a friend you love in a super special way that makes you want to raise children together. Donāt imagine you love each other just because you want each other. Donāt feel pressure to promise what your heart will feel. Let the love and bond it produces blossom honestly as your hearts sync. Learn about each other before getting too close, and make sure to keep friends and community around who know both of you.
I believe Rumi was right: A sacred relationship will open and purify your hearts regardless of whether it ends.
Btw, I'm not even close to date anyone, lol it's the second time I'm blocked after asking a contact. Why are they doing this, can't they say they are not interesed and that's it. Angry time today
sometimes it makes me nihilist to know that all these things about love are programmed for evolution species. I don't know why I have this feeling.