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King Sized Psychology

Notes on growth.

By CTBPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 11 min read
Top Story - July 2022
22

I’ve always felt most comfortable in a king sized bed. At 6’2”, it’s the perfect size for me to fully starfish myself. I spent quite a bit of time with my grandparents growing up and they had a king in their guest bedroom, so I can accurately tell you what it’s like to physically grow into a king sized bed. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize the emotionality of physical items. Having such a big bed makes a shift in you, whether you’re sleeping in it alone or with others. Ultimately your choice of bed size depends on how you choose to perceive that space and if you’re going to assign it meaning, whether it’s just space or something more. In the pursuit of wanting to purchase my own king sized bed as an adult, particularly in romantic relationships, that perception of space has left me questioning: Am I growing up or are we growing apart?

Those moments of perception shape everything and, in a nutshell, are not dissimilar to the functionings of a romantic relationship. Our moods, our actions, our devotions are often completely structured by this act of perception, and in particular, the perception of the partner(s) we choose to spend our time with. There is an incredible amount of nuance inside any kind of interpersonal relationship, but in my experience, the one that can go awry the quickest is typically one of a romantic nature. To name some foundational qualities of a romantic relationship would look like trust, honesty, dedication to communication, intimacy (either physical or emotional or both,) and loyalty. It takes a huge amount of energy to sustain romance, especially romance that turns into partnership. Let’s face it. At our core, we are animals. We seek safety. And we also live in a society that generally discourages self-sustaining walks of life. If you zoom in, I think it would be easy to see that virtually everything in nature relies on one another in some form or fashion, for both safety and survival. But I think the delicate side road humanity has decided to drive down is that we’ve departed from the main road of reliance when it’s truly needed on a biological level, and have journeyed through a new threshold of reliance in areas we don’t actually need to rely, but choose to because we want to and simply because we can.

I’ve had two major loves in my life. One I’ve since departed and detached from and one that I'm currently flourishing inside of. It took many, many years to learn the art of finding insight inside of deep seated grief and betrayal, and my first major long term relationship was that life changing teacher. In both relationships, I had decided to take the next step and move in together within the first year of the relationship, which I think to many would seem fast, but when you know you know. And in the first instance, when you have to know, you know. Each relationship began with a queen sized bed, a standard size for 2 people to share comfortably. Both partners, like myself, were over six feet tall, so inevitably if there were any lateral shifting in the queen sized plane, we would touch. There’s an innocence in that touch at first. It’s a welcomed accident that causes a momentary disturbance, disguised behind an unconscious movement of the sleeping body. If you placed a camera on the ceiling and analyzed the way a couple sleeps in bed together, you would see everything you needed to know about the relationship. How much space one person takes up vs. the other. Which way one person is turned and how the other person faces in energetic response to that. I tried so many times to have an out of body experience and be that camera on the ceiling in that first relationship, not fully realizing that my desire to dissociate out of my body was rooted in something deeper than just wanting to disguise myself as a camera on the ceiling. There were countless open wounds between myself and my first partner. I admit that many of those wounds were catalysts for fights and disconnections along the way, and simultaneously those fights and disconnections taught me how to heal myself inside an even greater picture. For some time, I wasn’t aware a greater picture even existed. I thought what I had found was the sum of the treasure the universe thought I deserved. I don’t think I quite knew yet that it was me who decided what I deserved. I left myself open to be guided by the flow of it all and I ultimately did not realize that what I perceived as the flow of it all was actually just the ego of a partner that had never been told no. It brought me to a place where I did not feel capable of self-sustaining and I think I would ultimately call that unwanted co-dependency. I was living inside of someone else’s world where they were the Sun and I was an Earth getting way too close to becoming Venus and burning up in the Sun’s blaze. All I had was the space I could claim in our queen sized bed. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to soothe my deeply frustrated spirit every night. That first relationship was a swirling cyclone of betrayal. There was so much cheating, so many lies, so many pleas of wanting to be seen, to be accepted, to no longer be a “roommate” to his friends and family who knew directly that we had been in a romantic relationship for nearly 4 years. And inevitably I was becoming this satellite floating through space that was rapidly gaining mass by carrying the emotional weight of a relationship that seemed more like a mad dash for a tax write off than love. The more mass I accumulated, the more space I needed. But what do you do when you need space but you’ve never learned how to ask for space? You upgrade to a king sized bed. It was the only way I could think of on how to free myself without actually freeing myself.

It worked, the king sized bed, for a while. But slowly the king sized bed turned into us sleeping in it while I added a human sized body pillow between us because it was “good for my lower back.” Truly, I was grasping at anything I could that would create imperceivable space between myself and my partner. Things like this work until they don’t. It could’ve worked forever, but the pillow fort I was building between us was growing faster than I could come up with excuses and he caught on. It was when he said “It’s like you don’t even want to be near me,” when the space time fabric ripped open and all the mass I had accumulated plummeted into a supermassive black hole, sucking away every body pillow, every inch of the king sized bed, every protection I had delicately built in for myself, leaving me with one response; “I don’t.” And that was that. There was no recovery for us, at least not for me. The dam had been destroyed, everything I ever wanted to say was out of me, and asking for space wasn’t enough. I wanted true separation, and detachment and that is exactly what I got. It healed me and broke me and taught me everything I had been desperate to know, and truthfully, it prepared me for what was to come. An even greater love with even more nuance than the last.

From the beginning though, this second romance was already different. There was a dedication to self already established in both of us. There was a need for individuality and honesty because we had both admitted to each other that nothing is worse than honesty filled with lies. Of course there were fights and disagreements, but they, too, were different. They were disagreements with a clear desire to find resolution, rather than a disagreement rooted with an ulterior motive triggered by a childhood trauma response in hopes of hurting the other to protect the self. We both had learned that there is more power in a partnership that is individually generated and mutually sustained. Because we would give to ourselves when we needed to and gave to each other when we wanted to. There was no feeling that I had to give in order to make the relationship something more than it was. It was already enough from day one and that was such a major shift for my mentality around partnership. And look, I will be blatantly honest and say that I have manipulated many, many people in my life to get what I specifically wanted. Yes, that might have been in small, harmless ways, but it was an active choice I had become used to making because my brain had established that it wasn’t ok to simply ask for what I wanted. In the past, I had to fight and push and claw and demand an upgrade to a king sized bed, and if I did, violence or emotional withdraw would be the result. We comfortably slept in our queen sized bed, no issues other than the fact that he snores and I sleep light as a feather. But there was innate charm in that. We went on a vacation and our bedroom had a king sized bed and when we returned home, we both simultaneously expressed interest in upgrading to a king. I admit that for an absolute split microsecond, I was triggered. Woah, here we go again. This is how I used to ask for space and now he wants a king which means he’s asking for space. I spent the first week sleeping in it with him really thinking that this was the decline. That maybe this time he was the one accumulating too much mass and nearing the birth of a black hole. And so we talked about it. That’s the kind of relationship we had established. To simply try to communicate when things happen rather than wait and let unnecessary pressure build. I’m not always perfect at that, and neither is he, but the effort exists and that honestly matters most. I expressed my anxieties and my perceptions, and he expressed his, and what we found was something so pure and so beautiful. That we weren’t growing apart, we were just growing. We were two swirling twin planets orbiting each other while simultaneously orbiting an absolutely massive, glittering sun.

I realized that the psychology of a king sized bed was ultimately my own to choose and examine. The first time around, the king sized bed was, what I would call, a hail marry. It was my roundabout version of having a baby to save the relationship. We had outgrown each other and what we needed was not more space. What we needed were separate beds, different lives, ones in which we were no longer inside the same solar system in association with each other. And this time, the king sized bed was releasing a pressure valve of neutral pressure. It’s not bad pressure, but it does indicate that we are growing and expanding and perhaps when we sleep, our dreams are just so big that we need a little more room to dream them fully. And many nights, we find each other in the middle and I'm reminded of how much I've healed and how much of myself is still healing. To heal, you need to be in a space that promotes healing. And I think we often forget that to heal means to grow something new. You’re not replacing what was damaged, you’re allowing something fresh to take that place, something that matches up with the you that is now. And the me that is now is healthy, in a healthy relationship that is growing and evolving every second of every day. This time, I didn’t need a king sized bed. I wanted a king sized bed because I see a future so big with this person and we both see personal dreams so big for each other that this space is welcomed and cherished. It’s what makes the nectar of this relationship so sweet. And who knows, maybe one day we’ll need an emperor sized bed that takes up the entire bedroom and if that’s the case, I’ll know that we got there because we wanted to be there. Because we know that the space that is there is just more space to fill with love and trust and growth that brought us to the king sized bed in the first place.

Dating
22

About the Creator

CTB

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

All things philosophy, magic, humanity, and emotion.

-NYC-

Reader insights

Outstanding

Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!

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  1. Eye opening

    Niche topic & fresh perspectives

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Comments (4)

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  • Blake O'Connorabout a year ago

    Always splurge on the things that separate you from the ground. From one king to another 🤘

  • Amy Thomas2 years ago

    Wonderful, look forward to more

  • ecinmy2 years ago

    Well written.

  • Brin J.2 years ago

    It's like you wrote this for me to read... Your first relationship is how mine feels right now. We've been together for six years, and for this past year- this is how I've felt. When you brought up your wall of pillows, I looked next to me and found two between me and my fiance. It's really painful when your eyes open up like this, but if you found the courage to finally say something maybe I can as well.

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