Last Thing

I love when you're dating someone and getting sorta hurt by something they do (or in some cases, something they DON'T do) and then getting the "Well, it's just the way I am, you should be more understanding of that and not take it so personally" runaround...and then watch as they go on not to have any problems doing for other people what they refused to do for you.

Bleh. I don't know why it's possible to be over someone and still be bothered by things like that. I guess in some ways it's because it ends up feeling like there was something wrong with me during the relationship, or something wrong with me in general. It's even worse when it's not even in the setting of a relationship, and you realize that in some ways as a girlfriend you weren't even as close, or thought of the same ways, as "actual" friends.

I've decided that I've pretty much had it with the whole typical relationship paradigm. In so many cases, it seems to be about person A who is very into person B pursuing person B. I stand by, more than ever now, my earlier statements about relationships as partnerships. Recently I've started to really dislike love songs that talk about people "belonging" to each other, because the idea just seems disgusting to me. Why should anyone want to let someone else own them? More importantly, how could you actually "own" someone you love? Doesn't that really imply losing a LOT of respect for them as a person?

I think it does. I think the biggest problem that I've run into within relationships is exactly that - not understanding that another person's desires and values, and opinions, are just as valid as one's own, and not being able to treat that person accordingly. I may even go so far as to argue that the best way of defining love is in the context of having the deepest respect for a person. In that way, a person becomes seen as a contributor to one's own life, not something that dominates or needs to be dominated.

This is kind of a tricky philosophy, because I've also been in situations where I've been expected to "respect" behaviors that made me deeply uncomfortable. I guess that's where I'd contend that actual respect - as opposed to respect used as an excuse or selfish or bullying mechanism- is able to reconcile itself with another person, and that it shouldn't ever, in any circumstance, even begin to resemble the zero-sum situation that it so often does. More than anything, respect can't be demanded.

I came to the startling realization last night that in the past 7 years I've dated 9 different guys (although in this sense I'm counting anyone I've been "together" with for as little as a week, and another person who never "officially" asked me out but was more or less my boyfriend for a little while...) and it made me realize how many actual dimensions there are to building respect and trust. There was one relationship that really stood out to me as having little mutual respect (mostly because it was built on the both of us trying to be people we genuinely weren't because we were trying so hard, for whatever reason, to please the other) and one that I wish I would have given the chance to work (was back in high school) but didn't.

Only two of them came out of a friendship that had existed for a significant time before the relationship, and unsurprisingly they're also two of the best friends I still have. All the others are somewhere in the middle.

So, this semester has been good because I haven't been in a relationship, or really pursuing one with anyone. I've been a lot more focused and productive, and actually a lot happier. I think I'm finally learning to have that patience that hopefully means that whatever relationship I end up sharing in the future will be something really spectacular, and not that strange power game.