Now, a brief side bar before I continue, The Winner is under the delusional notion that we are in an exclusive relationship. I have told her we aren't, I have reminded her as best as I can we aren't, but she persists nonetheless. Also, how does it make sense that people think it's ok for their partner to do sexual things with someone of the same sex? If a girl kisses a girl, despite what songs say to the opposite, most men I know wouldn't care, they might applaud it. And this girl just said she would also applaud it to watch me do something sexual with a member of my gender. How does the sexual orientation of the act make it not only forgivable, but celebrated? Logically, getting head from a man is the same as getting it from a woman. If someone can offer a sound argument for why this is ok, I would appreciate it.
Back to the story. I told her that I think it would be sexy to watch her with another guy. She immediately freaked and a conversation ensued about how I didn't care about her, because no one who cared about someone else could watch something like that. I brought up the admission she had made 30 seconds prior regarding watching me with someone else, and she said it wasn't the same. The conversation was carried on for hours. A friend of mine and fellow blogger ran into some jealous-ish issues lately, and I got inspired to write my thesis.
When I dated my ex, at the wise age of 17, I was a jealous boyfriend. I did not tell her so, I did not let her know that I cared about where she went or who she might talk to. I kept it all inside. My mother had convinced me that infidelity was the reason for my parents' divorce when I was 6. This isn't the truth, but I feared that my relationship could be dissolved by the same thing. Additionally, my gf had actually cheated on a bf of hers with me as the other guy, so I knew she was capable.
For months I lived in fear: Fear that she would find someone who would be better sexually than me. I am an incredible catch for any woman, but I doubted myself sexually. I was inexperienced, especially compared to her, and worried about it. I gave into the fears that she was dating down, that I wasn't as pretty as her. I was worried often.
Eventually, she cheated. I knew what was going on while it was going on, and when she admitted it to me the next day, I wasn't surprised. We eventually broke up, and I was alone while she was with the cheatee (sic?). In the four months between the split and her coming back crying to take her back, I learned a lot, maybe one of the greatest growth periods of my life. I thought, "All I did for her, all I was, none of it mattered, she still cheated." I suppose many people feel like this, some people are right to think they were incredible, some aren't, but I was right (she told me so later).
That thought is the crux of jealousy, of cheating, of all of it. You can see cheating as your fault, ie "I wasn't good enough, that's why she cheated. I will never measure up well enough," or you can see "No matter what I did, she cheated, therefore, she is the failure." Those are the facts of cheating, of exclusive boundaries. People cheat. I spent 22 months with a girl who I gave to boundlessly. She cheated. She was the lonely one, she was the broken one, she was the scared one, and I was just the sucker that made her go longer than anyone else without doing it.
Relationships are voluntary activities. If you don't want to be with me, then I hope you will be a strong enough person to live your life. Exclusive relationship boundaries are superfluous and unnecessary in a relationship between two honest and courageous people. Think about the first month or two of any great relationship: the swooping heart, the endless idiotic smiling, the junior high conversations of who should go to sleep first. No exclusivity is declared because none is needed! You couldn't imagine wanting anyone else except that man in front of you, end of story, leave it at that.
But the romance fades, the discovery and growth that existed at the beginning fizzles, and now you are left with this person...
"We are exclusive. You only kiss and sex (insert particular rules here) with me, and I only whatever with you." Another sidebar on this thought- Where does emotional infidelity fall? I have connected far more deeply with people I have never touched than with some people I had sex with, and isn't that the betrayal of cheating, connection? The idea that you might connect with someone better than with your significant other, physically? And if sex is an expression of emotional intimacy, as it is supposed to be, and that sex can be had as a mindless superficial experience not involving any closeness, then wouldn't it seem that emotional intimacy, which cannot be faked or done mindlessly, is the greater betrayal, the truer hurt and infidelity? Yet people do not consider it cheating when a woman has a great deep talk with her friend (be it man, woman, or gay).
Back to the point, the locks are on, the path is fenced in, no longer is it a relationship of choice, but a relationship of obligation. You go to the party for her little sister because you have to. You go to see him at his house because you're his girlfriend, despite your desire to go out to the bars with your friends. You go on dates because you think they want to, and they are thinking the same thing you are: "I wish I was at home watching a movie with my friends right now instead of here talking past someone I'm really sick of right now." Your life has become not yours, but someone else's. You resent the relationship, which leads to resentment of your partner, the manifest of that hindrance of your life. Instead of hating yourself for giving up who you are to be who you think they want, you hate them and say they are making you do it. You cheat, you break up, whatever. The very arrangement that you put in place to protect your love destroyed it.
Let's play with some hypotheticals here. If a person were rated on a datability scale from 1-10, with 10 being the best, think what you have to have in order to leave your partner for them. We will refer to this number as the F. This is more than just what it would take to have sex with them, it's more general than that, but you can apply that too. If I am dating Jenna exclusively, and Tammy, who is a 7 comes into my life, I am not allowed to date her. The fact that I can't date her ups her rank to about an 7.5 (some people will see more of an increase due to the forbidden fruit thing). Let's assume I think girls need an F of 8. Jenna is an 8, at least, but doesn't want me to go spend time with Tammy because we are exclusive.
But if I had gone on the date, I would have seen that Tammy is only a 7, and I wouldn't want to date her anyway. No harm done. However, let's say that Kelly is a 9. Kelly thinks I got mad funny jokes, and wants to hang out. Forbidden fruit factoring in, as well as me getting tired of Jenna nagging at me for flirting, and suddenly, I leave Jenna for Kelly. This is a little scientific for laughs, but you see that if it takes a certain quality person to leave your current partner, then your relationship is not going to protect you from that person leaving. Trust me, they will leave regardless.
What exclusive relationships do is handicap people. They limit their life. I may have become great friends with Tammy, made a good business contact, learned something really fascinating, but I did not have that chance. That breeds resentment. People have a right to do what they want, to explore life, to go Dead Poets Society on it. Any attempt to limit their natural rights to pursue their happiness will breed resentment. If Jenna and I were not exclusive, I could have spent time with any of the three woman, and made a decision, a decision to leave Jenna for Kelly or not to. Jenna would have the same opportunities, and the relationship, as well as the decisions about it regarding the people in it, would have been fair and would have been informed.
The greatest thing of a relationship is it allows us to share life with someone. We can tell them the crazy shit that happened to us that day, advise them not to let their landlord fuck them over like we were fucked over, to comfort them in their grief. So, why not tell someone to live their life in the way they want, and to agree to do the same, and then you can experience all the wonderful things they do when you sit down over dinner and relate the stories to each other? How you felt, what you thought, the laughter, the shock, the sadness, whatever!! Now you are experiencing the discovery all over again. The freshness, the newness, the virgin territory, the pure longing to be around one another because you cannot get something so great anywhere else. It's back, and you have created it by living honestly, you go to the wedding because you love watching her make fun of her brother-in-law, you skip girls night out because listening to him talk about that shed he built reminds you of the passion he has that made you love him from day one. Now you are with a person, not in a relationship. You are living naturally in the space of existing, and everything else is just bullshit. You get to make the first two weeks last as long as you want, and you get to learn more than you ever thought you could: about yourself, about the things you never saw, about things you saw but didn't realize. Grow exponentially, and face things you thought were impossible, all while doing it in the company of someone you care illogically about.
People don't do that. They are scared, scared of themselves. Scared that the inadequacies and worthlessness they hold will betray them. Scared that the person will get to know you and that weird clicking noise your jaw makes when you eat, and they will leave. They are scared that if they don't have a bf/gf, they will have to spend an evening alone with the person they hate the most: the one in the mirror. They want someone to hold, to relieve them of their loneliness, to fill the void in their heart. Exclusive relationships exist for security, for safety. Like tape, fencing, nets: they keep the relationship contained and together, but they also trap you. They make you take drastic measures to leave, they make you waste countless breaths in a place you are unhappy in. Exclusive relationships are the structures we build for ourselves; the result of walling out perceived unhappiness, walling in the person that you "cannot live without", and winding up alone in a dark cell with those walls keeping you company.
The fear is jealousy. Think about when an animal attacks another animal. Apart from food needs, the only reason this happens is for protection. Protecting your young, your food, your habitat, your claim to a potential mate, etc. Attacks and aggression are the actions taken to protect your species' survival, the very core of evolutionary behavior. Jealousy is no different. A person is scared, scared of all those things they think will happen if a person breaks up with them. Some people take it farther than others, and some people are left silently suffering every day with demons that torment them to tears. "I am not worth enough for this person to stay with me, and if they leave, I will be alone, and they will be happy with someone else. If they leave, that means I am the inadequate one. They mean more to me than I do to them, I have to make them stay with me. They cannot look at anyone else, they cannot talk to anyone else, I will aggressively move to protect my interests here."
Sounds pretty primitive and animalistic, because that's exactly what it is. Anyone who has experienced a jealous person has most likely tried repeatedly to reassure them of their value, that you don't want anyone else, that they know better. Nothing you can say will change their mind. Nothing. Their emptiness is a black hole for your affection, and the only person who can fix it is them. I am reminded of a song by a favorite artist of mine, I recommend you listen. Unfortunately, the more they admit their jealousy, the more you want to go have sex/pursue intimacy with someone else. You lose respect for them, the imagined power/attractiveness gradient they see becomes a reality, and you set out to find someone who you aren't with because you pity them. Again, the things they have put in place to make sure you stay with them are the things that drive you away, despite your best intentions to the contrary.
I have been that guy, the guy who said those things. I have been the one who had to realize that she cheated because she wanted to, not because I had failed. Now I have become the one to hear that I am too good for her, that she'll never find anyone like me. I have seen this from both angles. People's inadequacies motivate their self-doubt, which motivates their desire for company and surety, which motivates their need for exclusivity, which leads to resentment from partners, which leads to the end of relationships, which leads to further feelings of inadequacies. The cycle is self-reinforcing and perpetual, like an avalanche of fear and hopelessness. The only way to stop it is to break the chain, and they have to do this themselves: they cannot be saved from the poison they brew.
To be clear, I believe in marriage, exclusive marriage. I am talking about boyfriend girlfriend type relationships in the sense that most people think of. Discourse is always welcomed.
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