RELATIONSHIPS
When Your Girlfriend Falls In Love
Walking hand-in-hand with my love as she falls in love.
Since my divorce I have engaged in profound exploration of what it means to love and be loved. It started out as a bi-product of the deep dive I took into the patterns present in the failed relationships of my life (both platonic and romantic), especially the failure of my marriage. While there is certainly plenty of explanation to be found in my childhood, that terrain only took me so far. When I started getting really real, I had to confront the deep conditioning I had around what a relationship should be and how it should function. That is when I realized how deep the subroutine of constructed monogamy was in my understanding of love and how it was effecting this essential part of my life.
The journey led me to reading the stories of people who have actually lived and loved successfully beyond monogamy. Two of those beacons of light, Joe Duncan and Elle Beau ❇︎, opened me into new models of relationship construction, and as they did, a silent rage began to built up in me around the consequences of constructed monogamy’s lies. The lie that humans are naturally monogamous, and that humans have always lived in monogamous family structures. The lie that a woman’s nature favors monogamy (and of course a man’s doesn’t). The lie that one person can fulfill all of your needs, and the ultimate lie– authentic, sustainable and eternal love can only exist in a monogamous relationship. The only thing I knew to do with this rage was to write about it, actively work to love differently and build relationships in a much different way then I had before.
As I have traveled farther down this path, I’ve come to realize one inalienable truth; love is infinite and so is it’s expression. But it wasn’t until recently that I actually began to put that faith into practice.
“He’s got big nostrils, but in a hot way.”
I nearly spit out my tea when my girlfriend mentioned this about her new love. Her quirkiness is one of the things I love the most about her. Over the last few months she had been deepening a relationship with a man she’d been friends with for a couple of years. With her new adventure came a new adventure for me.
Since last spring, she and I have forged one of the strongest bonds I have ever experienced and that is saying a lot considering that I specialize in strong, intense bonding. Our relationship was initially born in the simultaneous implosion of ill-fated love affairs with the men in our lives at the time. We created a mutual survival society of sorts (and thus are forever grateful for those men being so fucked up). I had always felt an uncanny, deep connection to her through her writing; uncanny because the connection felt so strong considering I didn’t really know her. So when I felt called to reach out to her with some intense vulnerability, and she responded with equal vulnerability, the stage was set for something beautiful between us.
Over the months, we have built a relationship beyond that man-trauma and we’ve both acknowledged it feels romantic. I’ve often quipped to other friends that it feels like we are dating. I’ve tried to put it into a category, but gave up on that a long time ago, because I realized categories are for others, not me. I don’t need to put it into a box, and this my friends, is the first step in giving love back to the wild where it belongs.
We are in each other’s lives every day, usually multiple times a day. We are often the first or last person the other talks to. The level of intimacy feels special and unique, like no other person could create this particular relationship with me, and of course no one else could. This is the beauty of two human beings falling in love. It will never be just like this with anyone else, no matter how many people I have, or will, fall in love with. More than once we’ve both let our minds wonder into the territory of what it might be like to feel this love physically and sexually. Unfortunately we live quite a distance apart so fantasizing and contemplating are as far that has gone. But in other ways we have stepped into space that is beyond the typical boundaries of friendship, at least in my experience. Although I’m not a big fan of the “my person” concept, she often feels very my person.
While both of us were raised in the firm grip of patriarchal monogamy, our lives have opened up to multiple relationships that have challenged our ideas of the boundaries imposed on us. While neither of us have had a significant foray into polyamory, as defined by sex with multiple partners, we have expanded our emotional engagements with people in ways that may be deemed unacceptable by most of society. This has been intentional, and with it brought us the opportunity to keep expanding how we exist in all of our consequential relationships.
When her new relationship started to emerge. Our adventure pushed me into some typical and uncomfortable feelings. The main one being the fear of losing her. Most people call this jealousy, but upon deeper reflection I understood that I wasn’t jealous of what this man was getting from my girlfriend, I was scared I was going to lose what I was getting. There’s a difference. This fear is rooted in one of monogamy’s central beliefs; love is scarce. As such, it must be protected, hoarded, and contractualized through exclusive sex and emotional intimacy. In monogamy world, if you lose or walk away from a relationship, you risk never experiencing love again, you risk being alone (aka single) forever. Ergo you better fight for and/or stick with what you’ve got. This scarcity fear can be paralyzing in a multitude of ways; all extremely unhealthy. When I identified my fear and its roots properly, I was able to own what was mine (and not hers) to bring my fears to her in a way that wasn’t blaming, shaming or inauthentic.
Unfortunately I have some track record to base my initial reactions upon. Constructed monogamy, especially in the heterosexual context, demands that we put our relationships in a hierarchy. Once you are partnered (by having exclusive sex), that relationship takes precedents over all others with the exception of children (and sometimes they don’t even make the cut). I have often found people significantly de-prioritized fundamental connections with friends and family when they start having regular sex with someone that involves significant feelings. Their availability and intimacy changes toward others in their lives. They start routing everything that is important to them into this one person, because of course, you should in an monogamous relationship. Connections that were built when they were single, take on the role of place holder when they ‘fall in love.’
I believe this is a mandate of current monogamy culture and is why so many people (especially men if I’m being totally honest here) are scared as fuck to enter into any intimate relationship until they’re ‘ ready’ to give over their entire lives to someone else. It’s almost as if this shift away from others actually cements the new relationship. The new person ‘skips the line’ so to speak, and that validates their specialness. This is so hurtful and damaging to the relationships that have to bare the responsibility of monogamous validation by stepping aside, not to mention how the relationship to one’s self takes a severe hit in this model. Furthermore, it actually leaves the new relationship more vulnerable to the heavy weight of carrying and creating everything special in another’s life.
The good news for me is the conversation I had with my girlfriend about her burgeoning relationship brought us closer, and per her beautiful soul, she said she completely understood and had already addressed it with this man. She did so not because she wanted to reassure me (cause that’s not her job), but because she had no desire to change our relationship and wasn’t really interested in entering a new one that required her to give up her existing bonds. Luckily for both of us, this man wasn’t interested in that either. He saw the package deal he was getting (which also included other significant relationships in her life besides me) with joyous eyes and embraced the fullness of her life.
Once we walked through that little monogamy fire, I found myself shifting. I started finding deep joy in her happiness. It is true that when your fears are taken care of, the world can open up to you and mine was. I found for the first time in my life a sense of belonging within another relationship. I believe this is what happens when you are truly invested in another’s happiness. You don’t stand aside for it, you participate in it. They have also facilitated this sharing by creating a role of sorts for me in their evolving story. The tentacles of curiosity and caring are branching out across the three of us without compromising the sacred intimacy of my bond with her or her bond with him.
What is magically playing out on my end is a growing faith in the nature of love as infinite and abundant. I am stepping into a world where sacrifice isn’t required, love isn’t scarce, sex isn’t a safety net and fear isn’t my master. This is the world we all belong in; the world of wild, authentic love. There are models emerging in our culture that make room for love to exist like this. Don’t be afraid to explore them. It is your birthright.
©Kathryn A. Dickel 2021
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