I’ve been in sexual relationships for over twenty years as well as having made a study of them in the last seven. The more I study, the more I see that many problems in relationships seem to be problems of dependence and commodifying a partner.
Dependence comes in many forms — emotional, physical, financial. If you are in any way of the mindset, “I’m screwed if I must live without my Dear Love,” you’re no longer in a relationship involving equals and choice. You are not with that person solely because you choose to be with that person. At least part of the relationship is tainted by a commodity that your Dear Love supplies.
This commodity could be myriad in nature. If you’re monogamous (or exclusive in any way), it could be something as simple as sex. If you’re a housewife without the emotional understanding that you do have marketable skills, you depend on your SO for food and shelter, for God’s sake — your actual physical survival. That’s heavy stuff. You’ve very much removed an equals mindset. (Remember, I was a housewife for over 11 years, so this is not a high horse, but a deeply considered opinion backed up by painful experience). The commodity could be emotional in nature. I can recall an SO being my basic emotional reason for staying alive. That’s a nowhere place for anyone on either side of that prickly fence. The true relationship of equals can only happen when you say, “Yes, I love you and want to be with you, but if something happens where I am not longer with you, no matter how much it will suck and how painful it will be, I am fully confident that I will have a rich and fulfilling life.”
I’m not saying that it’s desirable to be cavalier about your love. If you lose a loved one, it hurts. There’s just a difference between “hurts” and an idea that your life is somehow not going to be any good any more if you don’t have that partner. It’s important to realize that your quality of life is in your own hands even if things go south between you and your partner.
To have a full relationship between equals, there must be no dependence. You really cannot need 1 your partner, but must be with said partner because it is a free choice made from a position of strength and independence. No, this does not make for a tepid relationship. No, it won’t have the bright crayon strokes of drama. Instead, the pleasures will be subtler and more natural. Bright and beautiful? Sure, but the brightness will be the restrained choice and beauty of a Maxfield Parrish painting. Instead of the scotch bonnet spiciness of mono-faceted flavor, it will have the blended richness and satisfaction of a good curry while still retaining a fair amount of that wonderful spice.
1Just because I know I’m gonna get this as a reply from someone please allow me to point out that if you have physical issues your partner is helping you with, your need is for help, not the specific individual.
I agree with this completely. I have done the relationship where the other person could not possibly survive without me, and I absolutely do NOT want to go back there ever again. I do not ever want a relationship where the other person sees me as their world, their sun, sky, moon, their everything. I want the other person to be involved with me and stay with me out of love and a desire to be with me, not because they think they can’t live without me.
I liked everything except the curry analogy 😛
Can my relationships be a hearty stew ?
Another good one.
And – yes, a housewife CAN live without her spouse- , yes, even if they have kids !
Brilliant. *smiles*My husband and I have slgergtud with this issue, though I was never able to discribe my internal issues with nearly the clarity your letter writter has. Your advice seems spot on.We’ve found a bit of relief in setting aside at least two days a week for my husband and I to simply hang out together no family business that can be put off for another night, no ticking off of schedules and making of lists just enjoying one another’s company. Not only does this allow time for us to reconnect as a couple, it prevents us from becoming entirely absorbed in other relationships and keeps me from feeling like an anchor rather than a lover.The stress level has certainly decreased, but more importantly, I haven’t noticed those resentments building up in the back of my mind like they had been.Again, excellent advice and good luck to the letter writer.
While I was monogamous, I was a Romantic to the point of nausea, and looking back I see that it ruined a lot of relationships because it meant that I was relying on my girlfriend to provide for me what I couldn’t do for myself. When those relationships ended, I never wanted to date again – or even try – and now I look back and think of how silly that was.
Being realistic about a relationship – i.e., thinking about it in such terms as to step outside of it and be able to say “I love this person, but I could live without them if they were gone” – is a tough thing to do. You always want to think that you will love your SO forever, and that you’ll be with them, but the harsh reality is that things change – people change – and sometimes a part of your life comes to a close, and you have to move on with your pain and continue living your life.
Thanks for the good advice.
Killian
I’m really glad I found your site. So much more suroppt out there than I thought.My little tribe has a site I’ve included up top.Thank you for your work 🙂
It gets frustrating to hear the concerns of a stay at home housewife and mother dismissed so easily.
Yes, I could move on without my spouse. I don’t want to, but I could, and my life would not be over.
However – our children ARE dependent on their father – on all of their parents – emotionally, physically, and in his case, financially.
Yes, I have marketable skills. Not as financially rewardable as his – and after 5 years home with the kids, not enough that I could support the children in comfort. They would be denied their father’s time, denied having a mother at home, and living in poverty.
Being realistic is a good goal. But often in poly circles I see an attitude of “all relationships are, and should be, disposable”. This does not take into consideration that the two people in any given relationship are not the only ones affected by it.
Laura, I said I’d been a stay at home housewife for 11 years. I’m also a mother.
I do understand, and considerably more clearly than you may think, exactly the difficulties one faces when dealing with financial dependence.
I used to live in a quad, you know, and we have kids. All the parents still chip in financially and emotionally with the kids even though the quad broke up. I have some little experience in this…
This post reminds me a lot of an article a friend of mine wrote years ago that resonated a lot.
*rummages about for URL*
here ya go:
http://ucsub.colorado.edu/~rcrane/sweet.htm
I’ve been learning these painful lessons recently, and am so much better off for knowing them.
As my mother always said (but rarely ever listened to) – You should want your partner more than you need them. Though she utterly failed in this area, I’ve managed to pull it off, despite a seemingly “co-dependant” status as a housewife.
I’m not a non-partner non-equal because, unlike the women you describe, I do know that I have marketable skills. I chose this path on my own and my partner supported my decision. I could choose otherwise any day I like and he’d be equally supportive. That’s what really makes it work – listening to each others dreams and desires and supporting the process it takes to achieve them.
Should my husband die tomorrow, or we get a divorce today, I know where to go to get any help I’d need, and I know that I could get a normal 9-5 with very little effort. I think that everyone should know what to do in such an instance, just like knowing where the escape routes in your house are if there is ever a fire. You don’t wish for the worst, but you certainly plan for how you will cope with it. Anyone NOT doing that in their relationship is taking for granted the permanency of their relationship and their partners mortality, and setting themselves up for one hard life lesson.
There are needs, and there are needs: Abraham Maslow, for one noteworthy example, put the need for love/belonging smack in the middle of his Heirarchy of Needs essential to the psychological development of human beings, and in my experience, he got a lot of that right.
But it’s not necessary to get one’s needs for love, sex and a sense of belonging from one individual – nor, I think, is it wise. Certainly, the more I’ve learned to reach out beyond partnered relationships for some of my psycho-emotional needs, the better those partnerships have become, because they are willing partnerships among equals. Nobody likes being held hostage to another’s needs.
I can’t help but agree with what you are saying. It would terrify me to lose someone beyond how I already feel (my already heightened fear of loss) if I truly thought life would never become fulfilling again after I lost them. However, what about knowing that you would never have that particular flavor of experience and dynamic without that particular person and fearing or grieving THAT loss? I know that every relationship is its own. unique, irreplaceable, wonderful self.
I must concur with you in general. “Needing”someone because your life is better with him/her/them, because they are a great support system, etc., is perfectly healthy, if it’s reciprocal. But “needing” someone in that sense does not mean that if you lose him/her/them you will die. Like you said, it will hurt and be hard to deal with. But it won’t be the end of the world.
If you “need someone” because you can’t get laid otherwise, you got a lot more problems than can be dealt with in one half-hour session.
Thank you for posting this. It’s articulated something I’ve been feeling in my current relationship for a while, but can’t get my partner to comprehend.
I agree with this. In fact, not needing someone that you are intimate with truly frees you up to be yourself in the relationship. It deepens the sense of connection between the individuals involved.
Financial needs are but one thing. Emotional needs are far more disabling in a relationship. I have found that in relationships I am the only one responsible for filling my emotional needs. Not burdening others with that frees them as well as me.
Ivonne
But it’s not necessary to get one’s needs for love, sex and a sense of belonging from one individual – nor, I think, is it wise. Certainly, the more I’ve learned to reach out beyond partnered relationships for some of my psycho-emotional needs, the better those partnerships have become, because they are willing partnerships among equals. Nobody likes being held hostage to another’s needs.
Coming at this from the perspective of someone who did polyamory for a while and gave it up: It’s interesting that the above sentiment is so often upheld as a reason for being polyamorous. Whatever reason an individual person has for being poly within an emotionally healthy context, with consenting adult partners, etc., is OK, but can I just say that you don’t HAVE to be poly to accomplish being your own person? It is possible to have some of your psycho-emotional needs met by your partner and/or other people, while NOT making relationship/romantic partners out of those other people, and STILL be your own person.
I am not trying to convert anyone here, but it seems like people trap themselves in all manner of mental boxes and think they “have” to be one way or another. Then, five years down the road they figure out they were approaching everything all wrong from the word “go” and wound up making the wrong choice for themselves. It’s kinda sad.
My parents were poly. And good at it. Consequently, I’m good at it. I’ve exeeirencpd various relationship problems in the last 15 years, but none of them were about or because of poly itself.Being open about their poly relationships is one of the best things my parents did for me.
A friend of mine once put it very beautifully, when she and her husband married.
“I *could* like without you. I’d just really rather not.”