Love isn’t always safe

It’s so reassuring to say “forever” and “no matter what” and “the Gods want this” / “it’s our destiny”.

What safety! To have the presence of someone be assured, often in name of a spiritual truth or of a will so powerful that’s guaranteed to overcome any obstacles.

And we see posts and videos of couples who call each other Soulmates and only show one bit of the story, the more “presentable” one, and we forget that it’s not the whole truth.

Where’s the catch?

That with this mindset we never have to think about who we are without the other person. We never have to think about who we’d be if they died, if the gods had played tricks (and they often do), or if they weren’t willing to uphold their side of the contract anymore.

We forget that Love is an ever present energy, but the feeling of love isn’t there constantly, just like other feelings aren’t. Sometimes we feel upset, annoyed, or even just neutral towards the other person and that doesn’t mean much. We forget, and some of us never knew and had to discover through painful trial and error, that a relationship is built on the willingness to be honest, to open up as much of our heart as we can (and sometimes it’s just a little at a time), and to show each other our entire range of talents, flaws and emotions.

And so we created structures that are rarely sincere (although they can be) to make sure we lock their presence in without having to go through all the feelings and difficult conversations.

Contracts (including marriage), honourifics (like Best Friend) or implications that have slowly became signposts of romance while being low-key blackmail (A classic - “I can’t live without you”).

And we squirm to make the other person feel irreplaceable, because we’d be destroyed to be replaced in their lives.

I’ve been observing myself playing into this paradigm recently and, as I became more aware, rebelling to it.

I am now affirming to myself that love is in the moment, and it’s build upon choices made in freedom and honesty with self.

The other person almost has nothing to do with it, they’re only required to be themselves as much as it’s available to them, and if something is -indeed - destiny…nothing will be able to stop that wave. So we might as well be ourselves as much as we possibly can.

I might be extra sensitive to this because I grew up knowing that the amount of safety I received was directly connected to how agreeable I could be.

And in the pendulum swing I feel myself testing the limits of things sometimes, which is not necessarily what I want to continue doing. Seeing how much of myself and someone else I can take, pushing honesty to high levels (my autistic self does rejoice in the absence of masks, I have to say, but then again bluntness isn’t always kind).

What tells me that I am keeping a good back che then?

The goal is trust.

The goal is peace.

The goal is Love in its all encompassing form, which are sometimes uncomfortable.*

And for the sake of the nervous system, which thrives on this, the goal is also Pleasure.

* After all, how do you know if someone will welcome the worse of you? You show it to them, and see what they do. We humans have very few ways of filtering our social interactions while most of us are crammed in cities, shops, apartment buildings…being as transparent as we can is a good one.

If you enjoy my writing, come find me on The Lighthouse & the Bridge blog ❤️

Thank you!

Giulia