For the past year and a half, I've been toying around with the idea of polyamory: the idea that no singular person can satisfy all aspects of who you are; it literally takes a village. I found my stability and safety in Billy, but I had to look elsewhere for animal magnetism and desire. All this time, I've believed that you kept people around you to satisfy certain aspects of yourself: Aaron for spirituality, Alana for spontaneity, Brett for rivalry, Alex for boyishness, and together they would create the village that would help support and complete Quyen. But what if I had it wrong the whole time?
Over the past four months, I've re-learned how to care and provide for myself. If I needed spirituality, I meditated. If I needed to express myself, I blogged. If Heiros Gamos translates to "sacred marriage" or the marriage to oneself, then I was learning how to be my own partner, my own primary. Previously, I had been wanting Billy or Dani or whomever to be my primary, and then to make up for their shortcomings with others.
What I realize now is that I am my own primary. I know best how to love and care for myself and to give myself the things that I want and need. Nobody else could possibly come close to caring for me the way that I want to be cared for. The other people in my life serve as my poly family, helping to fill in gaps for that which I cannot provide for myself: intimacy, laughter, perspective, mentoring & menteeing. It is not my primary partner's responsibility to cover 75% of my needs, just the other 25% which I cannot handle on my own. And the perfect match would be someone who is like minded and doesn't need me to be their 75% either.
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