"I would like some grounded perspective covering love, lust, commitment, loyalty, trust, sexual compatibility, fantasy, friendship, all of this crashing about in one and all of us, and what the heck it all means.
Perhaps a bit of wisdom, is what I am asking for," the comment rested in the middle of a blog about relationship topics.
I wondered if I had the wisdom.
I'm not sure experience counts, or that my experience has even been good enough to use.
But I can't resist a challenge.
Among the stirrings of life, all these emotions and experiences exist, particularly if you're two minutes past puberty, but what do you do with them? Is the fact that they stir you, motivate you, and send you hunting a corner to hide in at least once a day good enough reason to put them out there and risk being shot down by someone who also experiences them? Life, the eternal question, does love exist? What the heck is it? Here's my take: Love - the meeting of two hearts on a plane where connection and reverberation of conflict can reside together with the power of forever staring them in the face, and manage, oh so tenderly to find solace.
If love is strong enough, and enough other options exist for the two hearts involved to keep love moving in the same direction, it remains.
Otherwise, it falls off the plane and two hearts are broken and torn to shreds.
Lust - the meeting of physical beings on a plane separate from love, in which love may be involved or it may not.
Love may have little to do with lust, and lust rarely is the result of love.
Love may however, include lust, if the two hearts are so inclined as to be physically attracted.
Commitment - In an ideal world, first comes love, then commitment, then lust, however...
we don't live in an ideal world.
Our world is full of fraud and misnomers, so commitment often doesn't show up on the same planes as lust or love, and may never show up in a life at all.
Commitment is a dedicated decision to make something happen, regardless of other events, actions, or causes, and rarely evolves from those who are weak of spirit or character.
Loyalty - the tryst of all things good and true, a loyal friend will never leave you.
One loyal friend will be with you through all of life, or not.
Loyalty is also a decision.
It's a bonding that combines two lives, keeps them ever true and connected, dedicated to serving, and full of love and commitment to be all they can be to each other.
The skeptical are seldom loyal, and a loyal friend is seldom skeptical.
Trust - the ability to know a person, all the way to the bone, and love them anyway.
Or more effectively, the ability to know that whatever you tell a person won't matter, they will love you even when they know the worst thing about you.
I recently heard a friend say about her husband, "He knows the worst things about me, and he loves me anyway.
That's more than love, that's trust!" I agree.
Sexual Compatibility - Sexual Compatibility happens when two people are more interested in pleasing each other than they are in pleasing themselves sexually.
It's such a total and complete miracle when it happens; the earth stands still, meteors light up the sky, and all the angels sing in chorus of the glorious event that would cause an individual to put another person's satisfaction above his or her own.
Fantasy - The beating of a different drum? I'm not exactly sure why Fantasy is included in this list, I suppose I never felt fantasy belonged in the same realm as love.
Friendship - Friendship is the uniting of two spirits on any mutual plane, it may or may not include more than one of the above categories, although it probably includes Trust and Mutual Respect in order to be called Friendship.
While my lover is probably my friend, my friends are definitely not all lovers.
Friendship, in this case may be the rectangle in the square hole - it doesn't necessarily include all of the ingredients necessary to fill the whole.
The Secret of the matter is that all the rest is square, and may indeed fit into friendship, but friendship doesn't necessarily include all the rest, and probably doesn't fit inside the square hole.
When life crashes in on us, all these things get jumbled up and come at us at one time, confusion reigns.
Life becomes rattled and defragmented, our hearts may be jumping into a relationship while our heads are telling us to run for the hills, escape while we can.
The pearl of wisdom in all of this is that we don't have to jump for any of these drums, we can sit back and watch them beat all day, until they give us the tune we want to dance to, and then we dance.
I wonder how often we've danced to the wrong tune thinking we must dance, because it's playing, then realized, it wasn't playing for us? Ironically, we forget that we control our feet.
Is this your dance?