Love & Friendship

Peace Family. This is another post I started about 6 months ago that I ghosted on for some reason. I added some thoughts to the end of it hoping to tie a bow on it but it went a different way. Still valuable, I think, This idea is a tough one to tackle but I dig challenges. Straight up, sometimes its just the exploration of the idea not so much a resolution thats important. If you find as you read that I'm rambling too much...consider this a forewarning. As with everything I put down I hope this uplifts and resonantes.

I vividly remember the women that I wanted to marry telling me that she did not want to be my friend...and I fell in love with her anyway.

In the moment that seemed quite insignificant. I took it like she was saying that what she wanted was more than friendship, I even thought it was kind of cute (I puffed my chest out a little bit. Like, yeah, she sprung). It was only until I got deep into the relationship and shit was no longer fluffly and new that I realized I needed a friend about as bad, if not more, than I needed a lover.

I, like most folks my age, have grown up in an era of relationships defined by terms like:

Friend Zone

Friends with Benefits

Friends First

Being in a relationship with your Best Friend.

I'm sure there are more, but these suffice.

I know for sure that many of us have no...fucking...idea of what love is and, honestly, the same can be said of friendship. At the very least they are these kind of warped, subjective buzz words that vary from person to person with the common thread being limited fulfillment.

Pulling from my experiences both are often defined by expectation, not reality.

Speaking of, let's get this immutable truth out in the open before I continue:

EXPECTATION KILLS RELATIONSHIPS!

It is the main ingredient in perpetual disappointment.

Expectation just compounds the dishonesty that leads us into certain types of relationships.

Usually ones that affirm our effort to avoid the Self.

What we need is intimate connection. I think the purest expressions of both love and friendship are born of that desire and both can exist in the same place at the same time. I also think thats what we aim for but miss terribly. We miss it because things like ego, fear of rejection, being in uncharted territory and general misunderstand work to unsteady the hand.

I also feel like the balance between giving and receiving get thrown off when we fall in love. Things tilt unhealthily toward receiving and no relationship can really survive that.

You know, this subject is interesting. I feel compelled to write something here that wraps up the idea in a nice, covenient way but that isn't possible...if we are being real. More times than not we will be left with more questions that answers when dealing with love and all manner of relationships. Thats ok and maybe our pursuit of an absolute and unchanging answer is part of the problem. I can say this though, openness is key for sure and a willingness to trudge through the muck that will inevitable be encountered.

So I'll just leave it here imperfect, with real raggedy loose ends and a bit of an emptiness.

Damn, don't that sound a lot like love lol.