Relationship Vocabulary List

I made a list of relationship-related vocabulary and definitions. I hope to provide you with terms to help navigate and express your understanding of various aspects of relationships, gender, and sexuality. This kind of vocabulary is essential for fostering inclusive and respectful conversations about these topics.

When you step outside of cishet-amatonormativity, or even just off the relationship escalator, you need more language than is typically used to express the variety of things that could be happening.

Language, as a result, becomes more functional when it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

When approaching the world through queer theory, identity is about resonance. Instead of having to validate an identity by adhering to the definition of it, it becomes important to recognize that we are all people and that we all exhibit varied behaviors.

There is no need to prove you are straight or gay. And no one really has the ability to deny you your internal reality, regardless of what your external dynamics look like. What you are interested in isn’t always fully encapsulated by who people link you to. And who you want to be, understand yourself to be, and discover yourself to be are living conversations between your internal and external realities.

In a cisheteronormative paradigm, traditionally one AFAB person and one AMAB person pair up (or are paired up) and find themselves traveling up what we, thanks to Amy Gahran, now refer to as the relationship escalator.

There were phases and milestones that they were expected to reach together.

Some of the milestones were considered to be sacred, such as marriage, which besides being an entity-defining contract recognized by the government, was also a sacrament and a rite of passage. Various rules and agreements were made or expected to be made leading up to and after each milestone. Without a relationship escalator and a model for what is healthy and correct, it becomes each individual’s responsibility to learn and decide for themselves what is right for them and their relationship and when. It is important to decide for yourself what things to pursue and what boundaries and agreements need to be made and maintained to be the signposts for healthiness in ourselves, in any given dynamic, and in the community.

Terms Describing Internal Experiences of Others, Dynamic, and Self:

Emotional Attraction: The capacity that evokes the desire to engage in emotionally intimate behaviors such as sharing, confiding, and trusting. To experience life emotionally alongside them.

Emotional Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the emotional world of an individual, whether directly or indirectly. (Note: a child who grows up with emotionally available parents typically inherits a healthy relationship with the emotions their parents have, accepting and healthy relationships with. And potentially, a relatively positive experience of their own emotional world and attachments).

Emotional Availability: The capacity of an individual to emotionally connect with another. In a relationship, the ability of two people to share a healthy emotional connection. Informs the emotional and unified qualities of a relationship.

Emotional Unavailability: The patterns of difficulty one experiences getting close to others, practicing emotional vulnerability, committing, and connecting on a deeper, more intimate level. Engenders feelings of emotional distance, disconnection, loneliness/isolation related to the experience of the unavailable party.

Emotional Intelligence(EI): The ability to manage and understand both your own emotions and the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Physical Attraction: the personal experience that evokes the desire to engage sensually with another person. A desire to experience touch, hugs, kisses, cuddling, roughhousing, play-fighting, nibbles, cute aggression, etc. To smell, touch, taste, hear, or see them. It could involve sexual arousal, but it might not at all.

Physical Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the physical experience of an individual, whether directly or indirectly. It can include sexual curiosities.

Physical Availability: The capacity of an individual to connect physically with others. This is determined by many factors, such as their interest in touch, their experience of trauma and pleasure (physical or emotional), their energy levels, distance, knowledge and skills (e.g., someone doesn’t know how to hold a baby), social norms, and commitments (both sexual and nonsexual).

Romantic Attraction: an experience that evokes the desire to engage in romantically intimate behaviors such as courtship, emotional bonding, intimate companionship, romantic relationships, and marriage.

Romantic Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the romantic capacities, qualities, interests, and history of an individual, whether directly or indirectly.

Romantic Availability: The capacity of an individual to romantically connect with another. The ability of two or more people to share a satisfying romantic connection.

Romantic Unavailability: A pattern of difficulty practicing vulnerability, establishing commitment, and connecting on a deeper, more intimate level in a romantic context. This could also be an inability to do those things or an aversion to them. A person who is polysaturated may be emotionally available as a friend but not as a romantic partner, for example.

Sexual Attraction: the personal experience that evokes the desire to engage in sexually intimate behaviors. A desire to experience others erotically and to pleasure or be pleasured by them in sexually intimate ways. Sexual arousal might increase with the intensity of the attraction.

Sexual Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the sexual capacities, interests, and history of an individual, whether directly or indirectly.

Sexual Availability: The capacity of an individual to connect sexually with others. This is determined by many factors, such as their interest in sex or a given individual, their energy levels, and commitments (both sexual and nonsexual). When people are “fuck-zoned,” they are talking about a relationship having its potential for sexual availability as the priority or one of the highest priorities.

Sexual Unavailability: The circumstances that create difficulty or prevent sexuality from being possible, attractive, pleasurable, or healthy in a dynamic. If you have not received consent, or consent has been rescinded, someone should be treated as sexually unavailable unless consent is willingly and enthusiastically offered. Sexual unavailability can be tied to emotions, commitments, beliefs/values/ideology, social consequences, health, or numerous other reasons. When people refer to being friend-zoned, they are talking about the determination of sexual unavailability as the general rule of a given dynamic. For yours and others’ well-being, it is generally safer not to sexually engage with those who are conflicted about their sexual availability.

Sexual Awareness: Personal sexual experience. This includes personal understandings of our own erotic energies. Our sexual self-awareness includes an understanding of our pleasure and preferences, attractions and aversions, and as a result, our boundaries, as well as which agreements we need for healthy experiences. Sexual awareness and emotional intelligence inform our capacity to communicate our sexual awareness to others.

Theory of Love: Referencing any number of theories that help us understand how we engage with love in our relationships. Attachment theory and the Triangular Theory of Love are two such examples. Languages can create cultural experiences of love and intimacy as well, i.e., Greek describes love with multiple words: Storge, Agape, Eros, Pragma, Philia, Ludus, Philautia.

NRE: New Relationship Energy describes the emotional experience of the neurochemical cocktail we associate with feelings of passion and falling in love.

Agape: Greek. Originally, agape referred to familial or spousal affection without a romantic or sexual connotation. Christianity uses it to refer to God’s perfect love. A love that will be given whether or not it is returned. A love that is not egoic in its locus. Buddhism might use this term to describe foundational loving kindness for all beings. If one were to look at all of reality as divine, as pantheistic monism might suggest, then agape would be the love of reality itself (from reality and towards reality), and acting on it would be in turn a meditation on our oneness. This love does not require familiarity.

Eros: Greek. Sexual, erotic, and/or passionate love. In contrast to Agape’s paradoxical selflessness and oneness, eros is primarily egoic in its locus and is focused on attachment to the potential for pleasure and excitement to be found in sexual/romantic/erotic attractions.

Philia: Greek. Brotherly love. The love one might feel for friends and family. The profound sense of goodwill one has towards those they care for. The focus is not the pleasure to be extracted but the goodwill to be shared.

Pragma: Greek. Love with an emphasis on the characteristics of companionship, commitment, and endurance. A love with shared hopes, values, and goals.

Storge: Greek. The love of family. As with parent to child or between siblings. Carries the qualities of caretaking, selflessness, provision, and protection. Sacrifice and acceptance. The love that provides a “safe haven.” Dependent on familiarity.

Ludus: Greek. Playful love. Associated with feelings of levity and excitement. Liable to dissipate in the face of difficulty or complication. Can persist with intentional cultivation by both parties.

Philautia: Greek. Self-love. Greeks deemed this a prerequisite for coherently loving others. The healthy, necessary experience of love of one’s self that makes it possible to give and receive love from other people without self-deception or hypocrisy. [The self-worth, confidence, and self-esteem that are necessary for self-actualization and the cognitive empathy to understand boundaries and agreements as positives. The integrity to facilitate honest interactions with the self so as not to feel entitled to manipulating others with deceptions we ourselves would not appreciate. A sense of one’s purpose, a personal capacity for fulfillment and meaning. Self-compassion. Allows for solitude to be positive and therefore time apart and space to be positive as well. The capacity to cultivate the accountability, safety, resilience, healing, and growth that allow us to contribute positively in community without the need to oppress, abuse, or dominate others to have our needs met. The self-trust that affords the ability to trust others.]

Terms Describing Sexual & Romantic Norms within Social Constructs:

Allonormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that all human beings are sexual.

Amatonormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that all human beings seek romantic connection/partnership.

Heteronormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that everyone is straight, in a straight relationship, or wants to be straight. [The rejection of gay marriage by straight people]

Cishet-amatonormativity: The presumption that cisgendered, heterosexual, amatonormative, allosexuality is the moral, correct, and most desirable way of being. It is effectively a sex and gender umbrella from which the conservative and traditional social scripts are derived. It represses authentic experiences, moralizes sexuality, and oppresses those who deviate from what are projected to be the human biological imperatives of sex and gender. [In queer communities, we can see the effects when relationships among queer people are held to normative standards. Monosexual individuals might experience anxiety, frustration, and invalidation on account of a partner’s capacity to find multiple genders attractive.]

Relationship Escalator: Defined by Amy Gahran as the collection of expected behaviors and choices that must be followed in order for a relationship to be seen as legitimate. [These expectations change and shift as norms do. What is acceptable in one community may be forbidden in another.]

Terms Describing Sexual and Romantic Orientations and Experiences:

Allosexual: desiring to have sex with other people.

Alloromantic: desiring romantic connections with other people.

Asexual: no sexual attraction or sexual desire for other people. They may experience romantic interest and desire. Or sexual desire without attraction or sexual attraction without desire. They may experience other forms of attraction.

Androgyny: the quality or state of being neither specifically feminine nor masculine: the combination of feminine and masculine characteristics: the quality or state of being androgynous.

Bisexual: describes an experience of being sexually attracted to both people of the same gender and people from other genders.

Ceterosexual: describes a person whose gender is nonbinary and who is sexually attracted to nonbinary people. Some ceterosexual people describe themselves as “diamoric.”

Ceteroromantic: also sometimes referred to as skolioromantic, is a romantic orientation where a person is romantically attracted to non-binary genders.

Greysexual: also referred to as “grey-asexual,” this refers to a person who feels sexual attraction very infrequently.

Gray-romantic: individuals who do not often experience romantic attraction.

Heterosexual: Within the concept of the gender binary, experiences attraction to individuals of the opposite sex. This term, originated in the 1800s, as a description of someone who had an obsession with the opposite sex to the degree that it was almost a form of deviance. It was coined by Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869. People historically were not considered straight or gay; rather, they mostly engaged in acceptable or unacceptable sexual behaviors. Sexologists at the end of the 1800s started using the term. In 1923, it was defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” By 1934, the definition shifted and encompassed “normal“ non-queer sexuality. The term “heterosexuality” did not become mainstream until the 1960s. The term straight itself seemingly arises out of queer culture, as a reference to “being on the straight and narrow” after ceasing queer behavior.

Homosexual: Experiences attraction to individuals of the same sex. This term originated in the 1800s as a description of someone who had a preference for sexual encounters with individuals of the same sex. It too has a loaded history but is generally avoided now, as it is associated with being “clinical, distancing, and archaic.” It may also not accurately represent the orientation of the individuals described. It may have originated in Germany in 1868 or with Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869.

Aromantic: no romantic attraction or romantic desire for other people. They may experience sexual interest and desire. Or romantic desires without romantic attraction or romantic attraction without romantic desires. They may experience other forms of attraction.

Cupioromantic: A person who desires a romantic relationship but does not feel romantic attraction.

Cupiosexual: A person who desires a sexual relationship but does not feel sexual attraction.

Demisexual: feeling sexual attraction only after an emotional bond. They may experience romantic interest and desire but lack sexual interest absent bonding.

Demiromantic: feeling romantic attraction only after an emotional bond. They may experience sexual interest and desire but lack romantic interest absent bonding.

Lithrosexual: Experiences sexual attraction but does not desire those feelings to be reciprocated or pursued. May still experience romantic attraction.

Lithromantic: Experiences romantic attraction but does not desire those feelings to be reciprocated or pursued. May still experience sexual attraction.

Pansexual/Omnisexual: sexually attracted to many or all genders. May not experience romantic attraction.

Panromantic: romantically attracted to many or all genders. May not experience sexual attraction.

Questioning: describes a person who is unsure about or exploring their sexuality and/or gender.

Gynosexual/Gynesexual: sexually attracted to femininity. 

Gynoromantic/gyneromantic: romantically attracted to femininity. Some describe themselves as “sapphic.”

Gynephilia: romantic and/or sexual attraction to femininity. Also sometimes used by TERF and TERF-adjacent people to describe being attracted only to people with a vulva.

Androsexual: sexually attracted to masculinity.

Androromantic: romantically attracted to masculinity. Some describe themselves as “achillean.”

Androphilia: romantic and/or sexual attraction to masculinity. 

Monosexual: attracted to one gender. I use this to refer to people who prefer sexually exclusive relationships. In the 19th century, it also referred to someone who masturbates. Coined by Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny

Polyamorous: having or having the capacity for multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships concurrently.

Polyromantic: romantically attracted to many genders, but not necessarily sexually attracted to them.

Polysexual: attracted to many genders. I also use this to refer to people who prefer sexually non-exclusive dynamics.

Relationship Anarchy: An approach to relationships that attempts to dismantle the relationship hierarchy of cishet-amatonormativity. It is aimed at giving individuals the freedom to love who they wish, in ways that suit them. [Can be attractive to individuals who love freedom as well as individuals who resist accountability.]

Hierarchy: a structure, system, or organization in which people or groups are ranked or ordered according to status or authority. [Not inherently problematic, unless we impose hierarchy in oppressive and abusive ways.]

Relationship Hierarchy: an organization of relationships as ranked by their importance, status, or authority within a structure, system, or organization. (ie family ties are more important than friendship) (ie My partner can dictate certain elements of my life) [Not inherently problematic, unless we impose hierarchy in oppressive and abusive ways.]

Non-Hierarchical Relationships: an organization of relationships such that they have no ranking or no fixed rankings. [Frequently this refers to a rejection of social pressures to rank relationships in specific ways. (ie a romantic partner is not more important than a friend) Since humans are naturally biased, “non-hierarchical relationships” have a tendency to expose us to our values and weaknesses. (ie I say that the length of a relationship does not matter, but I’ve noticed NRE causes me to be more spontaneous with the focus of that experience and less responsible about standing commitments)]

Terms that Describe Sex:

Sex: refers to the designations of reproductive counterparts in species that reproduce via meiosis. Sex determines which kind of gametes a creature contributes to reproduction should it be fertile, as well as which changes occur at maturation when a creature reaches sexual maturity. There are many ways to designate sex. In humans, female corresponds to an XX chromosome pairing with males having XY pairings. This is not ubiquitous in nature.

AFAB: assigned female at birth; refers to a person who is biologically female. Describing someone as biologically female is different from describing someone as biologically a woman.

AMAB: assigned male at birth; refers to a person who is biologically male. Describing someone as biologically male is different from describing someone as biologically a man.

SAAB: a designation assigned at birth based on visible genitals; can be male (AMAB), female (AFAB), or intersex. SAAB is preferred over the term “biological sex” when the latter is used harmfully towards transgender people.

Intersex: is a general term used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the boxes of “female” or “male.” Sometimes doctors do surgeries on intersex babies and children to make their bodies fit binary ideas of “male” or “female.”

Terms that Describe Gender:

Gender: A construct that provides social scripts for interaction with other members of society, typically associated with social and cultural interpretations of the roles of femininity and masculinity as expressed in or imposed on the participants. Gendered roles in society change from culture to culture and vary in their levels of equity and acceptance. While gender can provide a sense of security about who one is, it can also create distress about who one cannot or must not be, as well as create artificial conflicts when hierarchy is imposed or bigotry internalized.

Agender: describes a person who does not identify with any gender.

Bigender: describes a person who identifies as two or more genders.

Cisgender: describes a person whose gender is the same as their SAAB.

Nonbinary: describes a person who identifies with experiences of gender beyond the gender binary.

Gender Binary: The presumption that gender is not a construct but a biological fact, with only two genders which must be determined by sex.

Gender Expression: how other people interpret a person’s gender based on physical appearance, mannerisms, etc..

Gender Identity: how a person interprets their own gender based on their emotions, personal experiences, etc..

Genderfluid: a gender identity that is fluid between/among more than one gender.

Genderqueer: a gender identity that lies outside of male or female, sometimes without more definition.

Transgender: describes a person who identifies with an experience of gender that is different from their SAAB. It is an umbrella term that people may or may not identify with. Nonbinary people, trans men, trans women, two-spirit people, and other experiences may identify as transgender or trans.

Transsexual: describes a person who transitions sexually from their SAAB. Has some loaded and potentially negative connotations dating back to the 1920s when it was associated with mental illness.

Ally: a person who actively works to end intolerance, educate others, and support social equity for a marginalized group.

I hope this list serves you well. I may post another version of this on my site directly. I plan to follow this up with a list of terms related perhaps to polyamory and kink as well as various worksheets to help people navigate their experiences.

We Are Not The Same.

But we are.

Each of us has similarities and differences to the people we engage with.

Duh.

And we want to have the right kinds of similarities and the right kinds of differences.

Duh again.

But how did you figure out what the *right* similarities and differences were?

I want you to think about what importance you place on your similarities and differences when selecting anyone for anything.

Any relationship you can think of.

If you’re adept at selection, it’s not just about similarities and differences. It’s about the functionality of those similarities and differences.

Each observable thing in the universe has traits. And those traits are somewhat dependent on an observer’s capacity to engage with them or not.

Is this trait positive, neutral, negative? Is it supplementary, complementary? Compatible, incompatible? Collaborative, competitive?

When you think about two people and someone says, “opposites attract” what is actually in opposition? We are not magnets. Is one strategic while the other shoots from the hip? Is one aggressive while the other is passive? Is one honest and the other a liar?

These things aren’t really absolutes. In different contexts and environments, someone’s extreme is some society’s norm. Maybe there’s no word for a thing that you do in your language, and five to describe it in another one. There may be a feeling you have that does not translate.

So let’s give it context:

If someone is talkative, they may do well with someone else who likes to listen. Different.

But they also may get bored if they feel that person seems to have nothing to say, and find themself in search of a repeated meeting of the minds. Same.

Which is better?

If someone is goal oriented, they may need someone around who challenges them and keeps them sharp. Same, competitive. But they may do just as well if not better with someone who is extremely supportive of their goals, but doesn’t directly participate in their projects. Different, supplementary + compatible. Maybe they need an assistant or mentor whose direct engagement adds dynamism to the process that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Same, complementary + collaborative. Even still they may find that they truly need people who are disinterested in what they do. From this they draw fresh perspectives and get time away from their consuming interests. They have someone who makes them excited to step away and find balance. Different, complementary. The answer to which is better is found in the fulfillment of the engaged individuals and the consequences of the connection.

Sometimes we have negative compatibility. Like people who enable our self-destructive tendencies. If someone has an addictive personality and a drug dealer bestie, there might be consequences. If someone has low emotional intelligence but finds people who compensate for the damage they do with their lack of self awareness, when those people aren’t around to clean up for them, there will probably be consequences. In these ways, people are dissimilar, yet they function in ways that supplement or complement some aspect of the other’s existence. Negative compatibilities are some of the ways we get stuck in phases where we ought to be growing. How we lose our potential for actualization to entitlements. Entitlements breed ingratitude. Anger, resentment, disappointments. When we look back, and we have had time to heal, our gratitude is typically focused on the fact that it’s over, and the fact that we learned our lesson. Well, hopefully.

Sometimes we have negative similarities. We butt heads because we’re both aggressive. We let things fester because we are both passive. Frequently, we’re naturally repelled by these people until we mature. Some of us have to revisit this space when we see our flaws in our children. We don’t have as big of a problem with seeing negative similarities if we make peace with our own flaws. When we take the time to grow, we trust others to grow. If we don’t grow, we might feel punished when we see others succeeding, especially via means we see or have seen ourselves being punished for. We might fear that they’ll have to learn the same lessons we did, or feel vindicated when they do. We might suffer when we see them thriving via means that others have used to wound us, and that we have promised we would never embody. Judging and rejecting a part of ourselves because we project the pain that we suffered onto others that might witness us engaged in these behaviors or thought patterns. Or we shame ourselves for the pain we did and do cause in these ways. And we justify not forgiving them by not forgiving ourselves either. Or with hypocrisy.

On the other hand, when we witness negative differences, the ones that we don’t like, and that don’t help us, I’ve found one of the deepest signs of maturity is a capacity to extend ourselves compassionately for the possibility of another person’s growth. Not because we’re anyone’s savior and we’re attached to the idea of fixing or saving someone. But because within ourselves we have found the freedom to act against our own individual interest because it is possible for fulfillment to come in service of the collective. Sure, there are some of us who feel we genuinely want to be good people and end up hurting ourselves and others in the pursuit of nobility and martyrdom. But truly finding the capacity for care, altruism, and love primarily because you want to take that kind of action is beautiful. And doing it because you want those values to be expressed as its own reward, rather than for a reward, is to reflect the capacity to transcend mere survival. To thrive and to be a thing of awe that defies the expectations of those whose focus is self-centered because that’s the truth of the phase that they are in.

And only through accepting each other as we are and embracing each other’s truth can we embrace our own. It takes trusting your own truth to be able to trust another’s, and to truly be touched by it. And even as stark a contrast as altruistic hope and faithless desolation are, sometimes, those opposites are exactly what the other needs.

From some perspectives, our differences aren’t nearly as numerous as our similarities. And for some, certain differences or similarities are all that matter. But realistically, similarities and differences are so relative that they don’t matter nearly as much as the fulfillment an experience brings. And again, core to that is gratitude.

You must be able to trust your own perceptions, awareness, and intuition to be able to operate in this world confidently. Even if you are wrong. Because you also have to trust and develop your ability to learn and grow in relationship to your mistakes. You must be able to learn that what is a mistake in one context may not be a mistake in another. And what works perfectly in one aspect of life may not have a useful place in another, except perhaps to teach you about the errors of your choice of application.

There's an experience of process and an experience of outcome. What matters is that you can find people to engage with where you have a positive experience of process and a positive experience of outcome. In some cases, regardless of the realities of processes and outcomes.

We are not the same. But we are.

We just have to figure out how and when that matters.

This one I would like to dedicate to Mikey and Nella. Nella because she asks wonderful questions and in doing so, demonstrates a genuine desire to love others in a profound way that gives me hope. Mikey, because in some ways he is competence incarnate, and one of my oldest friends. And if it were not for him, there are certain things I would never bother to express, or really honor the value of.

Love Fantasy

Forgive me. This one is MUCH longer than usual. The last post I wrote was dedicated to Sydney. I like this practice. This one is dedicated to Nella, because without her I probably wouldn’t have felt so compelled to finish and publish. I’d also like to thank Tiffany and Farnaz, for listening to the first few drafts of this.

I’d like to introduce you to a concept I call the "Love Fantasy."

What is a love fantasy?

A love fantasy is an experience of love that we would enjoy but that is not happening in this current moment. Anything that is not present to the senses lives in our imagination. What is imagined is a fantasy. What is remembered is a fantasy. This is because it is an abstraction of the phenomenon as it occurred into human perception, which is then experienced as a recollection. Even discussing our interpretations of the present moment lives as an abstraction of that moment into speech.

According to our most modern understandings, time itself, and therefore the "present moment," are illusions.

Even as we comment on them, they are already slipping away or exist not as realities but predictions that may or may not come to fruition, no matter how seemingly inevitable.

We can only truly hold space for what is happening and what can happen when we detach from needing external realities to fit our personal perceptions. We can only get to know someone when we don’t project onto them. We can only discover how much healing and care someone is capable of bringing when we are not ruled by the fear of the pain our vulnerability might lead to.

And this openness is one of the greatest gifts we can give to others: true intimacy. To let them discover the beauty of honest connection with us. Of knowing us. But in other ways as well. To hear them not just as we experience them but as they would like to be experienced or need to be experienced. To hear not simply, “I want you to do what I want” when a lover makes a request of us, but to recognize that "you’re the person I want to share this with" is a message they may be failing to properly convey.

"I feel safe to share this part of me with you."

"I revel in our connection."

Sometimes they simply do not have the language, but the meaning could come alive in the actions they communicate to you with, when you learn the language they are speaking.

In mature relationships, it is not simply about getting what one wants but finding successful ways of communicating the beauty of what happens inside of ourselves when we witness the other.

Lovers hopefully create space for each other’s love fantasies to become rich lived experiences and a cultivation of mutual joy. Ideally, some might even have the ability to mutually create love fantasies together that blossom because of the connection they have with each other. Manifesting love fantasies that exist BECAUSE they choose to show up together, not just for the other.

How compatible our personal fantasies are with the reality of the other is important.

It determines the level of intention that must go into actualizing a fantasy. Whether that’s a massage after dinner while watching a film, time in the garden where one tends to flowers as the other paints, or an illicit, all-night, poolside lovemaking session staring at moonlight breaking on the surface of the water in Mykonos. The abilities and limitations of each individual and the environment determine what can and does happen when attempts to make the fantasies realities occur. Do I have working hands and a movie to watch after dinner? Do we have a garden to engage our hobbies in and the materials and time to do this together? Can I plot the course of the moon such that on vacation in Greece there is a sneaky spot to have sex while the moon is correctly positioned over water during the night?

—

"If they wanted to, they would."

I love this saying–... because it’s hilariously reductive. When you want to, do you? Do you wear your heart on your sleeve, or do you hide it in a box? Have you been conditioned to take appropriate actions at appropriate times? And what’s appropriate when you’re not sure what the rules are?

As an adult, the most mature answer is probably "discuss our boundaries and establish some agreements, making sure we have space to adapt as life changes." But based on the grievances of so many, this isn’t the case for them.

Not when it matters.

And certainly not frequently enough to make this a waste of time to write.

Beyond that, social media and pop culture tend to err on the side of avoiding vulnerability and "simping." But if you take the risk, vulnerability shows you what this person does when you give them an opportunity for intimacy. If you have the maturity to move as gradually as allows you confidence in your assessments, even if it doesn’t work out, you have so much more capacity for clarity.

And speaking of clarity:

It seems to be part of the current zeitgeist, but we’re starting to recognize and discuss how people often don’t mean the same thing when they use the word “love.”

Some people are saying, "I would do anything for you," and of course, they mean "within reason." Others are literally expressing that they might commit murder or plead guilty to protect you if you were the one to do it. They would literally do anything for you, regardless of the ethics. Perhaps misguided sometimes, but powerful in its own way. Some mean that they will do whatever they believe is right for you. Some of them mean that they couldn’t imagine what is right for you is not right for them. Perhaps codependently. Perhaps because they have faith that the only way to love you is to absolutely accept you as you are, even if that means letting you go.

Forget not meaning the same thing for a moment and consider: Some may not even really understand what they’re saying when they suggest that they love someone.

Do they love how that person makes them feel?

Do they find some heretofore unfelt peace that they did not know they could feel before they met the focus of their affections?

Or maybe it’s excitement and passion they haven’t felt in years or have never felt before?

Perhaps it’s something that can’t even be articulated.

Maybe for  now obvious reasons, I like to suggest that before people run around looking for others to fulfill our need and desire for love, it’s important to be open to realizing we don’t and maybe cannot know everything we need to know about love. And maybe that infinite potential for discovery of ourselves, our lovers, and our relationships as they grow and change is beautiful. That maybe this problem of not having or getting what we want is not a punishment for some failing… but an invitation to a new kind of greatness only courageously loving ourselves and others can bring.

I’m blessed to be at a point in my life where more often than not, I do not feel bereft of love or connection. I’m at a point where I truly know I have beautiful love in my life, for myself and from others, even if on rare occasions I do not feel it. When I have found myself feeling disconnected from that, I ask myself questions. I want to offer them to you if there’s even a remote chance that you experience deeper or more fulfilling love for even just their consideration:

What am I actually looking for, and can I confidently articulate it for another or recognize it in them? Do my actions contribute to preserving the relationships my needs are met in, or are my habits and actions self-destructive?

Am I looking to give love, or am I looking to receive love? Am I comfortable with the realities that come with actually getting what I think I want?

Do I know how to experience love in solitude or with distance? Am I at risk of acting/operating from a place of desperation?

Do I know what I want for myself (is it even a question of love)? Will I take steps to experience it, or am I resigned to helplessness?

Considering the love landscape of my life, am I ok with my realities and my limitations?

Do I trust and understand how my partner (if I have one) perceives themselves through these same questions?

Of course, one doesn’t need to have answers to any of those questions.

Life doesn’t force us to be considerate of ourselves or others. And some people will be rewarded or punished for that on communal or cosmic levels, and we have to be ok with that for them, or torment ourselves over the concept of fairness–... which is a topic for another time…

But what are we committing to, or asking others to commit to, if we don’t have the capacity to communicate clearly with the people we are intimate with, whether it’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually? Whether this is a friend, lover, or relative? Trying to get a father to be the dad one needed and not simply the provider they were obligated to be(some failing this as well) has led to many broken hearts.

It’s helpful to stop and evaluate the relationships we have and the way we are going about making sure that we are capable of experiencing mutual fulfillment, that we are engaging with affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and compassion. Do we understand our own internal experiences? Do we have unresolved trauma? Do we have mental or emotional conditions that cause us not to act in our own best interest? Are we reaping the fruits of spiritual or therapeutic practices and unsure how to embrace that change? Are we trying to protect our inner peace from others or to force them to have that experience? Are we willing to wait for the ones who share our values, or are we engaging in snobbery because we’re “better” than those people?

I know I ask a lot of questions. And I’m not sorry about it. The deep motivation of my inner child is curiosity. I refuse to disconnect from that, and it serves me well. I do it for every child whose parents, school, or community is in the process of dissuading them from cultivating it. We don’t have an obligation to “know” who we are. In many ways, we can’t. But it’s a beautiful gift to discover who we might be. And if you take time to sit with your own questions, you’ll probably live a life full of serendipitous discoveries. So if you’re out of practice, I offer you mine.

Some of mine are clearly not for you, but for some of them, I can’t help but believe life put me through something just so you might have the chance to see it or share it with the person who needs it.

So, quite unapologetically, here are still more questions.

This next set of questions helps me personally when I am trying to figure out if I’m loving "unconditionally," by which I mean I feel entitled to figure out what a loving action honestly looks like from my perspective, but I’m not unduly attached to the outcome. I am entitled to my actions, but not their fruits. I remind myself of this whenever I slip into being tempted to allow myself attachment to outcomes that might rob me of joy or peace if things don’t go how I’d hope:

Am I looking to give love, or to receive it?

Am I looking to give AS they wish to receive? Do I expect gratitude and why? Were their wishes/preferences/needs considered?

Am I looking to receive their truth? Is their truth capable of being received as a kind of gift (from them or life), or do I expect/demand deceptions that fulfill my desires/needs without respect to their own other’s truths or reality?

This is about to get a little woo... but bear with me.

Some of us think our love language is words of affirmation, but actually, it’s quality time with conversation. In a relationship fraught with struggles, we sometimes discover that honest communication becomes difficult... And then even the idea of trying to communicate becomes exhausting.

Communicating costs energy. Deception costs even more. And maintaining deceptions creates perpetual stress. It activates the sympathetic nervous system and causes us to produce more cortisol. We do not owe anyone communication, truthful or deceptive. We really don’t owe anyone anything. Not truly. But if we want to have healthful experiences of ourselves and others, we must choose truthfulness. People naturally do what makes sense to them, and lying and deception are what make sense when it’s believed the value of the lie is worth the cost and the risk. When we delude ourselves and buy into falsities, we don’t just erode our integrity, but our quality of life. And to make it less taxing, we likely subconsciously prime ourselves to create and maintain connections that contribute to making that easier.

The reason this is going to sound a little woo is that I don’t have irrefutable evidence for it. It’s intuitive. But in the way that I realized that if I want to be an honest person, I have to make sure I don’t deceive myself… I noticed that if I am honest with life, life is honest with me. When I tell myself that I want to be joyful, I become aware of the things in my life that don’t bring me joy... And then I have to take responsibility for dealing with them. And so when we are in relationships where we feel like we can’t tell the truth or are being deceived, not addressing it directly is corrosive to the foundation if that foundation has anything to do with trust.

If you have ever witnessed or been party to a codependent relationship, with a parent perhaps, you likely understand. Walking on eggshells can be exhausting because of how much extra processing one has to do. This can become incredibly toxic to our nervous system and bleed into other areas of life. The erosion of boundaries in one place can cause us subconsciously to prime ourselves to accept it in other places... or even to build elements of our existence around maintaining the connection at unreasonable costs... becoming what they want and need from you, to survive. We may, on a conscious level, not realize we’re doing this because fear is fear. And fear originated to keep living beings alive. It is primal and base. But it is necessary and beautiful. When shameful behavior could lead to exile, which could be a death sentence, it was of deathly importance to know the rules and be accepted. Now we might focus on acceptance at all costs as if our life depends on it, even when it most certainly doesn’t. This is the experience of having unconditional relationships with conditional love (where love might be care or provision). An example would be a thought like, “she’s always going to be my mother, so she has to be part of my life whether or not it’s healthy for either of us.”

But

Consider that love is unconditional.

That all “relationship” in and of itself is conditional. Even being strangers is a conditional relationship. Consider that if love could exist unconditionally for any one thing in your heart, then in order for that to be true, all things must be loved unconditionally.

If this isn’t immediately clear, or even something you can accept, that’s ok. It’s a thing that some people seem to have been born knowing, some believe after a visit to a shaman, and honestly– some find on drugs, which are sometimes bad, m’kay? Some find it between the sheets or in the eyes of a child. Some find it meditating or in a therapist’s chair.

And some never find it. And that’s ok. 

But it follows a logic that requires opting into certain beliefs about the nature of reality, namely those that support that all things are unified as part of a greater thing. As all-encompassing as you can fathom. And once you get there, you likely recognize, sometimes immediately, sometimes not... that if they are, all your hatred is on some level a form of self-rejection.

And this is why discernment is key:

Recognizing that sometimes love is closeness and intimacy... and sometimes love is space for the other to grow, make their own mistakes, and learn their own lessons...

Recognizing that sometimes love is even making peace with the need for violence. Embracing, appreciating, and honoring every single thing that dies so that you can persist. That suffered at your hands so that you could learn. And trying to do better on behalf of the sacrifices they may not have willingly made. To respect what you take by being generous to everything else. And perhaps in this way life has woven into us a need for humility and grace.

I know this started with the concept of the "love fantasy,"

But the gift I hope you’ve walked away with is a fuller connection to your capacity for love as a reality.

If this helped you at all, I’d be honored if you shared it. And if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. I hope the questions offered find you as a timeless gift. They have sweetened, deepened, and healed the love in my life, and I hope they will forever do that for you.

Beyond Objectification: Exploring the Complexity of Sex and Humanity

I met a circus performer who wanted to create a piece about what it is to be sexualized and it reminded me of something I wrote a couple years ago. I told myself I would go back to it, and never did. So, firstly I’d like to thank Sydney, because without her, you likely might not be seeing this:

I wanted to write about sexual objectification, but I feel like I can’t really do that without talking about what sex is.

What is sex? 

“Sex is where babies come from.” 

Birds do it, bees do it,

then the bees help the plants do it. 

Sex is the genesis of complex life. It turns a uterus into the portal through which new consciousness arises. It allows two cells, under the correct circumstances and consequence cascade, to become many millions of cells, unified into a series of singular experiences. 

Nurtured appropriately, they become many trillions of cells that will consume other life and generate new experiences that even more life may witness. And these trillions of cells with their specialized roles will form a body - a body working in unison to create an experience so complex that it is likely impossible to fully understand. And that body will reconstitute the matter of this earth into the forms and fuels that will allow an awareness to turn energies and frequencies into pleasure, pain, and concepts of beauty. These forms can turn light to art, chemicals to tastes and smells, and vibrations to heat, sound, and sensation. We may hear music, and maybe we will dance. It will turn our witnessing into fear, anger, and love. We will meet strangers one day, perhaps after thousands of days have passed, and we will decide we don’t want to face the days to come without them. Or perhaps we will be the reason that they do not see another.

Sex drives human existence. We persist because things procreate. Because they have fucked and they will continue to do so. And as time has passed, our awareness around sex has shifted. As our understanding of what it is to be human changes, so too do our attitudes towards sex.

If we believe that a god cares about marriage, we may feel extreme shame and guilt over acting on sexual desires... or even simply having them. Homosexuality occurs in nature but, because of religious law, is punishable by imprisonment or death in some places. Some might have social or political motivations for sexual activity. For one wave of feminism, promiscuity and sex positivity were a symbol of liberation and rebellion. For some, it’s an economic strategy to be selected, whether by one person or by many. Whether an unwed woman from certain societies or eras needs to make a good match or a sex worker needs clients. For some, it’s experienced as essential to bonding. For others, it’s seen as a necessary evil. Still, there are the abstinent and celibate who might find emotional desolation or spiritual connection without sex. There are nuances to the conscious and unconscious understandings of what sex is and can be, for at least as many people as there are to have them.

So where does objectification come in?

One version of objectification invokes how a person really understands anything.

Objectification used to mean concretizing the abstract. Now it also means degrading someone or something’s purpose to its utility. This is problematic in the sense that this word creates loaded language. Humans understand the world through constructs. Constructs are a form of objectification. We simplify things in order to know how to interact with them.

Human constructs are immensely complex as well as complicated. Complex in the sense that there are many interconnected parts. Complicated in the sense that how each part actually relates to the others requires not just information but intuition to grasp. The phenomena in question, the observers of it, their interpretations of it... arguments for or against its very existence and the consequences of interacting with the phenomenon all play a part. How valuable a construct is in helping us understand or engage with the actual reality we are witnessing usually determines its longevity.

(It’s one thing to recognize colors; it’s another to create art that speaks to others’ spirits like it’s your job. It’s one thing to love the art you make, and another entirely to have it critiqued by people whose opinions are respected that happen to hate your guts. It’s one thing to tell someone what a color is scientifically, it’s another to teach a course on how to use it to trick the eye into seeing wondrous things to people who did not think they could be artists.) Hopefully the metaphor is not too extended.

The reason objectification is so fraught and perilous when it comes to social interactions is that we take it for granted. Someone is paid to wait on you at the restaurant. Someone is paid to do your nails at the salon. Their worth is treated as the quality of their service, but we hopefully recognize it’s so much more. Their character, care, integrity, and patience make it so that our experiences can leave us feeling like a business is our friend, or that we are nothing but a paycheck. The objectification goes both ways… and frequently if not always, it’s harmful. No matter what, something is lost.

When we lived in tribes and villages, every human wore multiple hats. We couldn’t see someone as just a shitty plumber or a rude waitress. They hunted with someone we knew. They helped tend the children. They built a barn or made the best elk jerky. The service industry was not an industry. We as communities served each other. And as the spirit of this dies, we wound our humanity.

To objectify a person is to degrade them, from a whole human at best, and from a spiritual being whom the divine witnesses you through at worst. Even if you’re not spiritual, it still sucks.

And if you don’t have to think about it frequently, you might be the one doing it. To engage with others as though the experience doesn’t matter. To treat them as replaceable, usable. To treat them as property. To act as though they are allowed to or deserve to be used, abused, or violated. In the western world, this is most intensely done to women and people of color, and media and socialization can prime children for it to happen before they’re even grown. Objectification happens when you feel like you are excused from respecting their humanity.

When we talk about sexual objectification, we’re talking about engaging in this way to make their existence, identity, and value equal to their capacity to be consumed for sexual gratification.

We’re talking about language: “she’s for the streets” “you can’t turn a hoe into a housewife.”

 We’re talking about culture. Virginity and innocence. Statistics of sex crimes. 

We’re talking about the male gaze and the corresponding female vigilance.

It’s not enough that women are portrayed as consumable; they also have to construct their path through life in relation to how they are perceived sexually. To have a powerful sense of sexuality too early can be dangerous when young women are seen as a status symbol and predatory masculinity is celebrated. To be too attractive in the workplace can hinder your successes, and to be a mother or to have the potential can limit your opportunities.

Sexuality is a dimension of existence. Before in vitro fertilization, each individual only came into existence if sex happened. Sex is potentially beautiful. The desire someone can feel for another person is powerful. It can upend one’s entire existence. The potential for love and attraction to create literal life is magnificent. When the consequences of intimacy with another person are that bits of what make them, them, and you, you, come together to find their own potential for life and love and suffering and joy, that’s its own kind of magic. You do not know what you will get. You do not know what they will do. And until you’ve met the product of that connection, you do not know how profoundly it will affect you, if you let it.

To sexualize someone is to recognize them as a sexual being. To acknowledge sex as one of their attributes or to make them “sexy.” I apparently get sexualized frequently. I don’t always know how or why, but people frequently read my existence as sexual. It might be how I dance or my devotion to my body. It might be the freedom with which I can talk about sex. It might honestly just be my skin color. Even when I was doing youth theater (I was 18+ at the time), directors would talk to me about my sex appeal, and I would not understand what they meant or what they wanted from me on stage. For me, in the earlier parts of my life, overt sexuality was a power women had. Men were just attractive or not based on the murky preferences of the female psyche or how well they fit male power fantasies, which afforded them the confidence to approach and be approached. Black people are objectified constantly, and since rumor has it we have big dicks, it only occurred to me recently that there are a number of people who probably had that specific sexual curiosity about me based on this stereotype alone. I knew from growing up around white men that it wasn’t uncommon or even taboo for them to sexualize black women when women couldn’t hear, or even to casually joke about my body or Asian men and women’s bodies.

As a person who, for a long time, identified as demisexual, I’ve personally had an experience of discovering what it is to sexualize someone only after getting to know them. To see them as beautiful in a variety of ways that simply doesn’t include sexual attractiveness. For the things they’ve chosen. The loves they’ve cultivated. For the passions of their life that have come and gone. For their unique experience of common things. For their uncommon experiences that they don’t realize are unique. For the way that they laugh or dance. For how open their hearts are or how they guard what is vulnerable or what they love. For me to discover them as a sexual being is a celebration of all of that and more. And it is also a celebration of the body they’ve brought all of this to me with. It can genuinely become a holy experience to see someone as sexual. To be invited to intimacy with them. And to offer it back. And how congruent or disjointed that experience of their pleasure can be is also delightful. People who are dominant in one place and not the other. Playful in the bedroom but not in life. Good kissers. Bad kissers. The cautious and the confident. People who have one way of being in the bedroom and people who wear a million faces. And to recognize that the experience they can have with me is only one of the many they could have. That I can’t know the full potential of our own connection. And that I could never truly know them as anyone else, no matter how much I would love to step outside myself and meet them as someone else and explore them in different ways. Sexually or not. I will never be their sister or the mother of their child. I cannot be their grandfather or their childhood friend who has never given up on them. I can only be so many people’s friend in a truly intimate way.

And honestly for me, sexuality is only one dimension of existence. And it’s one I’m perfectly happy never to explore with someone no matter how magnificent they are. Being given sexual access is a thing to honor. Because even if the participants don’t consciously experience it this way, scientists have discovered that when a lover connects with us sexually, it tells us that things are ok. That we are accepted as we are. And if we fail to communicate in so many ways over so many topics, touch can say for us what words cannot.

Of course, that power is misused... but that’s a topic for another day.

For me, finding the nonsexual connection that says, “I unconditionally accept you, as you appear in each moment,” is the most important part of constructing any intimate relationship. It may be because I was celibate for a time and instinctively felt I must find some other way of holding the space and intimacy of sex if I wasn’t going to have romantic love as a part of my life, but still felt a deep desire to connect with others.

We frequently destroy the beauty of sexuality with objectification. In a western world where capital is king and relationships themselves can be reduced to another set of transactions, sexualization is frequently objectification. In a world spun by money, anyone who exists is likely going to be reduced to their monetary worth.

And for a woman, in a world where across the board they earn less for the same work a man does, what are we telling them about their worth?

When the only arenas where women are expected to earn more than men are fashion modeling and sex work, what are we telling women about their worth?

And when the rules of society rob a woman of her value for how sexually promiscuous she is perceived to be, while a man’s promiscuity in similar ways could be socially rewarded, what are we telling our children about equity? About what it means to respect themselves and each other? About who they are allowed to be?

And when we defend the status quo of sexual objectification, what are we telling our daughters and our sons? It’s clearly not that they are perfectly worthy of love the way that they are. And not that they all deserve to be respected equally for how they embody their truths, make their own mistakes, and grow into who it lights up their soul to be.

We are trauma bonded with society if we allow it to erode our sense of self-worth as a function of the system. If we say that it is ok for society to treat any person as an object, we teach ourselves and our children to accept this treatment if those circumstances ever come about in their lives. (This is actually a question of justice, but that’ll be for a different time).

So even with all the social complexity layered into our experiences of sexuality, we are still animals. Conditioned and instinctual.

For animals and plants out in nature, there can be clear seasonal and environmental triggers that dictate when reproduction happens. It’s an automatic process. And to be sexually successful is to be successful. 

That is what success is.

To be healthy enough to do it and to be attractive or seductive enough to mate. To have enough resources for the offspring to mature.

That’s what success is.

For some, it’s so cut and dry, sex is a death sentence. The male antechinus, some octopuses, some spiders, and many praying mantises die shortly after mating. For at least female ferrets, a lack of sex is a death sentence. For male lions, if they cannot find a pride, they live alone or die fighting to get or keep one.

We may think of ourselves as more evolved. We think our behaviors are less “automatic.” But experiencing your own humanity and allowing yourself to be programmed and conditioned not to think, and not to imbue others with the fullness of their humanity at every chance you get is an argument against that. To degrade another human to protect, improve, or maintain your social status is an argument against that idea. To treat other beings as objects, outside of the context of mutually consensual play is an argument against that. I can’t think of another species on this planet that can be developmentally traumatized by seeing its own kind naked or mating because it’s been conditioned to be so unnatural that the most natural things are aberrant. We do not just pay with money, but with time and experiences. With our psyches. We make endless exchanges. We pay not to see trash. We pay to hide death. We’ve made objectification business as usual and intimacy transactional. And we pay the prices for all these purchases with the fullness of our humanity.

And if you are dissatisfied with the experience, what you’re getting probably isn’t worth the cost.

–

If this spoke to you, I’d love for you to leave a comment. If you think this would speak to someone else, share it. If this helps you say something you could not put words to, I am blessed to be of service.

–

And if you are Sydney Billings, thank you for reminding me to take the time to say all of this.

–

I wrote this for every woman I’ve ever known. For my sisters. For every daughter I haven’t had. For every woman whose hands have ever felt forced where love and sex is concerned. That sexism and objectification are the standards that they must accept. I’m sorry for all the men in your life that didn’t have the courage to stand up for you when you needed them. For the ones who simply don’t care. For the ones who believe this is the proper order of the world. The ones that the double standards are dogma for.

I am sorry for every time you have had to fear that what you are won’t matter in the face of your capacity to be objectified. For everyone who has ever been trafficked or abused. For everyone who lost their job or friends or family because of sex positivity or youthful exuberance a man would never be punished for.  I’m sorry that any of you have lived a life where the fullness of what each person is, ends up discarded for what can be used, or what is convenient. I am sorry that I can’t snap my fingers and fix the ills of society. You deserve to be seen not just as whole but divine. And I think the greatest sin I will ever commit is failing to honor that.

Love As a Fire

Loving people correctly is like tending a tiny fire in their heart. We all have these little fires to tend. However, if we tend them incorrectly, they can be smothered by too much fuel or put out by too much wind. Neglected, they can be choked by their own ashes or burn through all their fuel.

We can share our fires with others. By learning to tend our own fire, we can teach others how to tend it, too.

We can even help them with their own. For those of us who have had to restart the fire when it has been put out, we have the ability to share the methods of how we did that with those who are experiencing it for the first time. For those who have lived life primarily without this fire, even if we have as well, we can love them from the place of having that fire built. It may be tempting to put ours out to feel accepted or to dim its light to belong, but that temptation is worth resisting.

Then there are those who want to love us and tend to our fires. If someone wants to tend your fire, there is a risk that they will do it wrong. In order not to hurt their feelings, you might put in extra work to pretend that's not the case. However, each mistake is a potential teaching moment. Few people enjoy being shamed for doing something incorrectly or ineffectively, but many people love to learn to do something properly and even excel at it. Hiding the truth denies them the opportunity to grow as someone who loves you, and it denies you the opportunity to grow in the strength of vulnerability. Hiding the truth robs both parties of opportunities to witness each other's character.

Telling someone you love them in a love language they understand and accept tends the fire. Telling someone you love them in a way that truly resonates fuels that fire. Loving them through your actions, without feeling entitled to the fruits of those actions, allows love to become a prayer. Loving without entitlement to outcomes is a practice of unconditional love. If you can do this, the love you give becomes miraculous. It lives beyond transactional ways of meeting your needs through energy exchanges and exists as an expression of your own divinity. It is a sacred trust in being something and someone that life is happening for, not to. It is the capacity to take action because it feels right to you, not because you are compelling reality to produce a certain result for you.

It's not to say that any one way of loving is better than another or that one is right and the other is wrong. For those who cannot consciously feel safe with intimacy, love is anxiety-inducing and dangerous. It does not feel rewarding to share your light or your fire. And if you do not have the means to easily reignite it, or to tend to it when it is weak, or someone to turn to—people to safely and happily turn to—when you do not know what it needs, then why should you ever leave it in the care of someone who you cannot verify will care for it well? It is selfish of others to demand you do as they do when they have never experienced a similar precariousness.

To those who have lived a life where risks were worth taking because the community was full of people to tend their fire, and resources for feeding and starting it were plentiful—those who could even be a little careless with the fires of others because everyone would clearly be okay unless something catastrophic happened—how could they not be careless? Their privilege was to make mistakes repeatedly, without even having to learn from them. From their perspective, those mistakes are their birthright and not even mistakes at all, perhaps. If anyone has ever told you to “trust the process” you know that means that it’s ok to fail, and to make mistakes. To learn experientially.

When all of these different experiences meet, it is easy to reject that which is not like us due to the difficulty, discomfort, or pain proximity causes. Things that may seem like care to one could be an act of aggression or betrayal to another. Some incessantly tease out of love where others decidedly only have the ability to mock. And how we interpret or misinterpret intentions makes all the difference.

Let’s start with love as seeing the worthiness of a thing to experience beneficence, like a parent to a child. This, consciously or not, is the first love one is capable of succeeding or failing to experience personally. And whether it is experienced or not deeply affects one's capacity to develop healthy, life-affirming relationships with aspects of oneself, community, and environment. It becomes easier to see why one projects the worthiness of beneficence onto that which is like them if they have learned to believe they are worthy of love. It is also easier to see how many things can go awry when that belief in one's own foundational experience of worthiness of beneficence and grace is missing or conditional.