Relationshifts

If my life currently was a Berenstain Bear book, the title would be "The Trouble with Twosomes" and the moral foreshadowing poem at the beginning would read:

One has a vulva, the other a penis
Men are from Mars, Women from Venus.
At times they love, at times they fight,
But it's time to move on, if there's more dark than light.

It begins all bright, sparkly attraction, trumpets of giddiness and butterflies of rampant hormones. It's gazing longingly at what you fantasize to be yours for hours, getting lost in the hope and beauty of it all. Feeling blissfully content with this new friend, this budding union.Then they actually DO become yours, and it starts mutating. Gray areas creep out of nowhere, ones that shade your daily life for good or bad. Even the most secure, independent woman becomes a bitchy cliche, going on about what isn't instead of relishing what is, over-sharing to friends and/or their mom. Usually both. Even the most emotionally evolved men, with sensitivity and intelligence in stock, turns sloppy and self-serving and crude and won't tell you what they're feeling.

An emotional precipice juts forth in every relationship, that divides or unites a couple. Either it breaks or makes the relational bond, helps you solidify the good, or exacerbates the bad. It happens right around the time the couple gets "serious", when there's discussion of a mutual future that both agree upon. This murky, all consuming gap grows deeper and wider with every passing disappointment, every truth not uttered. I speak in hetero terms personally, but I know the gay community has their version of masculine/feminine relationship battling to contend with. Person vs. Person in real terms. No one is safe.

What the hell is that, and how do we evolve past it?

Men head in linear motion towards a goal, whether it's the ol' mattress mambo or a wedding ring, they have an agenda that most won't tell you flat out, for fear of rejection. Most will give away clues as they go (usually post-coital or in hopes to get post-coital) as to what they're sticking around for. If men move closer in deed or promise, then it's a victory and there's no reason to question anything else. If it ain't broke, don't pretend to want to fix it.

Us ladies, on the other hand, meander a spastic serpentine that our emotions dictate on any given issue we come by. We let the little things slide, but there's a phantom tally in our hearts, that is often overlooked, but never forgotten for future reference. We test out if this suitor has the specifics we need to fulfill our own linear equations, even as we've already intuited the answers. Still, we need proof. We won't show our cards either, but we drop important clues (usually amidst a casual un-related conversation or as a disclaimer to eminent verbal smack down) to get the Intel that will support our ongoing research. As long as our alarm isn't tripped permanently or irrevocably, it's game on, no gaps. Until we know what we're working towards, we have fun and enjoy having a playmate. As soon as it's a potential family/forever/long term thing, the great divide begins. Fellas don't even know the damn fracture is there half the time, yet always manage to widen it by lack of regard for it. It's a big, messy-ass mess to choke a donkey, I tell you.

Until this present relationship, the longest gig as girlfriend (more accurately "that one chick I'm shagging and feigning interest in, fortnightly") was a consecutive couple of weeks spread out over a few months, all to heart bruising results. No live-in torrid romances, no frivolous shacking-up, just dodging thereof. I know myself better for it, but am now at a disadvantage with another. I'm in a relationship that's completely committed and full-time, and I have no template of coupledom to draw from at times like these. The customary I-do-it-this-way strategy is in constant readjustment, so I'm all pensive question marks more often than before it seems. The solitary nights of wonder are no more, yet the space to figure it out in my way, is less and less. How stinging that can be, especially when there's a kid involved, with all their built in emotional drainage, and pressuring need for sound structure. All of us are used to being the authority, and then we realize we never were.

In learning how to be the upgraded version of yourself under your loved ones scrutiny, and to have them be instantly affected by it, is what really causes those gnarly cracks. Doubt that we can redesign for the better, fear that we will lose ourselves and we wonder if the other is worth it. We fuss and fumble over distracting details, but when courage lacks, less valiant traits emerge. We'd been doing just fine without this other being to bounce off of. We hold each other ransom for it, the small insignificants turning into reasons for distance, as we need the breathing room to understand what we're doing. It's hard to keep track of what is truly important when you've never been in that moment before, with that person. Yes, men need to start the foreplay long before the bedroom, by doing housework and being counselor. Yes, women need to let go of their insecurities and stop comparing everything to something else in lieu of tactful honesty. There will always be those things, unless you decide not to try it out at all. I've earned my single badges, and I have something that gave me pause about being single.

If you wake up next to a man/woman that helps you be the best possible version of yourself, even as you define that version together anew each day, then it's worth it. Communicate to that degree, forgive with that at heart. Trust in all the pluses that brought you together, and remember that you're friends, among other more stressful headings. Talk to your friend and relay the message. If you can't do that, then call it good, but never malign the journey. It makes way for the next.

I don't know where my chasm will end up...either with a bridge built lovingly over it, or with me at the bottom, clawing my way to the sunlight, but that's where the shared experience differs from a singular one, this I have learned at least. I now have someone to throw me a rope if I need it, and we navigate the edges together. That's a good thing, no matter what shape it takes along the way.