Hurts so good: the chemistry conundrum

Editor’s note:If you have a question you would like answered and explored in this forum, please email Jan at Drjanseward [at] gmail.com. Please note, depending on volume of emails, not all letters may be featured. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. We’re enjoying what our readers come up with! — amanda

Dear Jan:

I recently ended a three year relationship, it was always a mess emotionally, but we had the biggest intellectual and sexual connection ever. It’s such a relief having the drama gone, and I’m finding intellectual connection elsewhere… but my emotions now revolve around the sexual void I’m left with. Or rather, my subconscious is.

I have very vivid dreams and wake up incredibly aroused and involved with him, it’s the most intense dreaming I’ve ever had. Such subconscious activity is bringing a lot of the emotions back, pulling me into a cesspool rather than moving away and forward, toward new opportunities and interests.

When I’m awake I’ve been successful keeping my mind quiet, and consciously not thinking about him, or us, or anything that keeps me stuck in the past… but my dreams bring me right back, and I’m waking up many mornings with him fresh on my mind and still tantalizing my body. How do I move forward when my body is still stuck?

I’d prefer to remain anonymous…

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks for your courageous letter about a struggle so many of us can relate to: how to move forward in spite of our attractions, obsessions and addictions. First, I want to support and applaud you for moving away from someone who wasn’t constructive for you emotionally, despite your intense sexual and intellectual chemistry. This is never easy to do! We can all relate to the state of relationship that ‘hurts so good’, and it’s always easier to stay with the status quo — especially when the sex is good (or fantastic).

But we can also look deeper, at what sexual chemistry is about, and what this sexual relationship might have been about for you. At the very heart of it, sex is about connection, and the chemistry of it is very literally about connection. When we connect with someone sexually we release hormones that make us want to keep connecting, to attach, so that we keep our species going. When someone ‘gets under our skin’, we’re literally saying that they’ve gotten into our chemistry, making us want them more.

When I read between the lines of your letter, I would guess that your sexual chemistry was intense, and also a very important way to connect in the face of challenging or destructive emotions. What can happen when the sex is great but the emotions are bad is that the sexual contact increasingly becomes like a habit or an addiction, taking the place of more mature connection and helping us to avoid or cover over painful feelings and thoughts. It also sounds like there were parts of yourselves that you weren’t able to express in any other way than sexual, making that connection more meaningful and even harder to suppress.

The trouble with chemistry is that, even when we are ‘consciously’ ready to move on, our chemistry might not be. When we’re awake, we have much more conscious control over our thoughts and actions, and we can do plenty of things to distract. Asleep, our biology takes over and we often encounter in our dreams what we are denying ourselves in our daily lives. (In fact, I can always tell when my patients are working really hard on changing their behaviors because the less they ‘act out’ every day, the more the things they are trying to change show up in their dreams. Another reason why I salute you — your dreams show that you are really ‘walking the walk’ of moving on!) And because your body doesn’t know the difference between a dream and being awake, when you re-encounter your lover in your dreams, you wake up addicted to him all over again, a cycle that’s so, so hard to break!

So, how do you move forward when your body is still stuck? Time holds the key. Every day that passes that you don’t connect in reality is one more opportunity for that intense chemistry to lessen, leaving you less vulnerable even when you’re asleep. Time is also the opportunity to heal from the damaging effects of the relationship, and to understand why this connection wasn’t meant to be. I would also encourage you to look very honestly at what this relationship represented for you sexually. What needs — constructive and destructive — were being worked out or played out between you that you had never been able to express before? Your experience of being tantalized and even haunted by your lost sexual connection might speak to unmet or unrealized needs that can only be satisfied by increased self-awareness and deepening self-love.

Anonymous, you have my utmost support and encouragement as you continue your commitment to growth and evolution. As you continue on your path, I assure you you will ultimately find a partner with whom you can fully express yourself on every level: emotional, intellectual and sexual. Then you will truly have the love connection!

Good luck and many blessings,
— Jan Seward

40 thoughts on “Hurts so good: the chemistry conundrum”

  1. Yes I don’t express myself well at all!

    I too was ‘horrified’ (not quite the right word; but almost) that Eric should think of adding marriage to his list out of flexibility and kindness to the views of others, (unless he wanted to). Or because I shot my mouth off – pisces snake, taurus dragon rising.

    The love at first sight thing is also badly put – perhaps better to put it the other way (except it is none of my business – I thought that too yesterday that this is a poly site, I could respect that). Anyway another way (please read this in a way that is not divisive, I’m not good with words) is to enquire how deep a connection is there with poly relationships, how does it work with several people – are you open all the time to all of them on all levels or is it more segmented. I guess my assumption was more segmented hence the love at first sight thing which is a whole illumination and more of oneself in relation to another (at least how I experienced it). I wasn’t wishing it on Eric, just that that would be a way that an unpoly person like me felt more validated. That was the thread of thought. And I did say I didnt come to this current relationship like that tho over time I’ve come to love him as completely.

    Apologies where necessary… (all round? hopeful smile)

    yuk!

    xxxp

  2. “I am fairly certain that I will eventually get married, and that it will be a great marriage — with some interesting properties. If we are monogamous, it will simply be because we feel like it.

    :::whispering conspiratorially:::: Considering coming to the Dark Side with us Marrieds are you? ::::maniacal laughter::::

    Seriously, why would you consider marriage? I mean other than the tax bennies, what would it accomplish really? I know why Dave and I did it, we have strong Capricorn in our charts (it is his rising sign and my moon’s sign) which makes us both like and enjoy the institution of marriage. We both like the old fashioned feel of it, the structure and old familial ties it engenders. He and I are hopelessly old fashioned about it (I said we could just live together, me being a Pisces, but he would have none of that).

    Seriously, why would anyone (other than people like me) want to marry if you are that open about poly living and if you are not into having kids? Just asking everyone here….

  3. I can’t really add to your very adult and rational approaches…it Simply isn’t Me!

    Sex and sexual chemistry for me DO involve enchanted forests, elemental forces, Nature spirits, saffron fairies & magical chipmunk sprites! talking trees, a community of bees, flowers blooming wildly, snapping turtles sitting idly. on ancient logs in a pond. a fern frond.
    I Believe.

    heads will roll, as I like to say
    with a twinkle in my eye in the sky.
    (no not a glint!)

    iron crystal core, taproots galore, this Energy lighting up the Body destination Heaven.
    on Earth.
    secret potions, mystical notions,
    I am Communicating.

    simply Divine.

    with much Love,
    Pollyanna v.8.0

  4. “We are monogamous by choice because either of us has the desire to add more relationships to what we have”

    That should be “neither of us…” Damn edit button is still missing.

  5. “Sex and sexual chemistry are another story, and I would be very happy to see the discussion open up to what is this thing, how do we experience it, what does it do to us, and what ways can we direct or explore the energy?”

    To me, sexual chemistry is a lot about pheromones. Yet there must be more than that to it, otherwise why would I have felt a sexual connection with someone I have never met in real life (much less smelled their pheromones)? In that instance, it was about the connection I thought I had; an emotional, deep, intimate connection which lowered my sexual boundaries to the point that I began feeling sexual things when I least wanted to.

    All of it originated in myself; the other person really had not done anything to trigger any of it. Talk about right and left brain. My left brain didn’t want to have the feelings but my right brain had them, much to my consternation. It was especially disturbing because 1. I had told the other person NOT to get sexual with me and 2. I had not intended to feel sexual with them and 3. they never expressed any sexual feelings (or even emotional connection feelings) to me.

    So I had to ask myself; why did I feel an emotional connection; why did I want that connection, why did it feel sexual after a time, and what does all that say about how I feel about myself? What is the lesson I am supposed to learn? Those questions led me to some very amazing insights about myself which have been valuable. Despite the discomfort of the whole thing; it was a valuable learning time for me.

    I think some of what we think of as sexual chemistry is from a sense of neediness in some of us; need for validation as a person, validation as a sexual being, validation as desirable. After all, if someone reciprocates that sexual chemistry, what a sense of desirability that creates in us.

    These things should come from within but some of us have been damaged to the point where we feel these things only come from another. That’s where the Cult of The One comes from. If only we could fine The One to love us, complete us, validate us, we could erase all the lack of love we had growing up, all the abuse, the sense of being somehow now worthy or not being good enough. Problem is, no one person can ever do that (or even several persons) because that has to come from within.

    That’s not to say all sexual chemistry comes from dysfunction; of course it doesn’t.

    What I do what to know is this: why is it automatically assumed (by some) that if there is sexual chemistry; we have to “do something” about it? Is it pathologizing things if we don’t act on it? The message I hear so much these days is reminiscent of that old 60’s adage “if it feels good, DO it.” We don’t live in those times anymore; there is AIDS now and many other considerations (such as: we now know that some kids are NOT as resilient as was at first thought and who knows if our kids are the resilient ones or not). Besides, the whole ideology of fulfilling our every desire is also outdated; isn’t part of being an adult the ability to delay or even put off completely gratification if it is something that may not be good for us or may cause harm in others? I am all for self-awareness and self actualization but with some limits because as the Hopi say “balance in life” and written on the Oracle of Delphi temple, “nothing in excess.”

    Sexual chemistry feels jittery, fluttery, exciting, and anticipatory but it is (for me) often a fleeting thing and at times an unwelcome thing (if it gets in the way of what to me is a deep friendship).

    ::::ramble off:::: Ok I have rambled enough for this day.

  6. “I’m wishing Eric a love at first sight pivotal moment, an experience that will at least allow weight to those of us who love our mates, are glad of the good times and speak frankly in the bad, through the bad, out of the bad times (any time).”

    Not to be sounding offensive but I have had the “love at first sight” and love after friendship and the latter is far better (in my experience, yours may vary).

    I am monogamous by choice with my husband; we will celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary this Tuesday. When we met, it was not love at first sight though he was attracted to me at first but I wasn’t attracted to him. Both of us had decided (before we met one another) that finding “the one’ was a foolish quest and we were willing to live alone before accepting that notion to the point that we keep choosing second best just to feel like we “have someone.” Both of us had tried that paradigm (having the one) and both had been burned badly in the processes. So we approached each other cautiously; I was thinking “friendship” though he was thinking “sex” and “friendship.” It wasn’t until after we had spent a lot of time talking, talking, talking and going places together that he fell in love with me and then I fell in love with him (he didn’t exert any pressure on me to love him; I didn’t know he loved me until after I realized I loved him). Neither of us were expecting that; we had chosen single life willingly and were not really wanting to embrace having a relationship. In fact, both of us were enjoying the single life (me for the first time ever living ON MY OWN without family or lover) so it was really a surprise to both of us the depth of feelings we had for one another.

    When we took it to the sexual level, it was an exploration of discovery for both of us. He had trouble “letting go” and I had body image issues so we worked on both together. We have changed through the years but each change is met with understanding and encouragement on both sides. I am so lucky and blessed to have this man in my life and he says the same to me about me in his life.

    We are monogamous by choice because either of us has the desire to add more relationships to what we have; that doesn’t mean we have no sexual desire for others…we do. We just choose not to act on them because neither of us really wants the complications of another relationship and we don’t have a lot of time to spare while raising four kids.

    I grew up looking for “the one” but through experience found that such a search is pointless; either you are whole in yourself or you are not. This doesn’t mean I haven’t had to struggle with insecurities; I have huge abandonment issues and lately I have found a name for what I grew up under so I at least know why I feel so unworthy at times. Yet knowing this doesn’t mean remaining the victim; caught up in pain and fear. It means knowing and then moving to a better place which I have been working on for many years.

    Having said all this (and digressing while saying it), I want to say that I don’t wish “love at first sight” on anyone because those (in my experience) don’t last. They are fun for the rush they provide but it can be too easy to get caught in the trap of desiring that rush and when it fades, jumping ship to find another rush. That kind of life is counterproductive to developing a sense of self awareness.

    And whether or not someone “gets married someday” or “falls in love” or not is a moot point; what is important is the journey of self discovery like the one several people here have said they are traveling. How we live, not whether we pair up in conventional ways, seems to be the important thing despite what society pressures us to do. Just as not everyone is meant to be a brain surgeon, not everyone is meant to pair up; either in conventional ways or even at all.

  7. “Sweet moon language”; ah that we would speak in that beautiful tongue darkmary.
    ((Thank you)) — and keep the poetry coming. I lurve!

    Now I’m up dancing with tears in my moonbeam eyes, susyc! Nice one.
    It’s been going around in my head as well. Oh yeah. The 60’s are in their second wave but now we’re so much more aware and pragmatic; right? We are, aren’t we?

    Mars in Cancer has to change his tune once and for all. Howsabout starting a war on POVERTY, ole chap? Eris and her pals insist on it. Drop the endless, greedy manufacturing of munitions and testing them out in futile wars and instead put some food into the empty tummies of all the starving people on this planet. Quoting Arthur Miller here, they are All Our Sons.

    Labour Day W/E is here and we know we’ve all got a lot of work to do, right? Roll up your sleeves and get into the show, and don’t be waiting for anyone else to start ‘cos YOU can begin where you are, right this very moment.

  8. Mary Jane and Sarah Taylor, (and Shebear)

    Your posts brought me to tears, so much so that I had to hold them inside of me for a while until I could respond. And now, Shebear, I am crying again, for your joy, for your sex, for your world pulsing. (I return to “Song of Myself” again and again.)

    So much of the world is crumbling around us, the pious and self-righteous make their desperate grab for power like the dying gasping for air, and in Somalia they are carrying their dead babies, tiny sacks of bones. All of this and so much more we hold inside of us each day and still the world is pulsing.

    How can we not be split open? Thank you, all, for your sanity and love.

    Forgive the poetry festival if it isn’t your thing. It seems to be the only way I know how to communicate these days.

    ——-

    Try to praise the mutilated world.
    Remember June’s long days,
    and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
    The nettles that methodically overgrow
    the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
    You must praise the mutilated world.
    You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
    one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
    while salty oblivion awaited others.
    You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
    you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
    You should praise the mutilated world.
    Remember the moments when we were together
    in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
    Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
    You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
    and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
    Praise the mutilated world
    and the grey feather a thrush lost,
    and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
    and returns.

    ~Adam Zagajewski

    ————-

    Admit something:

    Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

    Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
    someone would call the cops.

    Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

    Why not become the one who lives with a
    full moon in each eye that is
    always saying,

    With that sweet moon language,
    what every other eye in
    this world is
    dying to
    hear?

    ~ Hafiz

  9. Wowee, reading this thread is getting me hot…… and makes for a great way to start the day, eh?! DarkMary, like MaryJane wrote after your first *awesome* post, I too feel as if my life is paralleling yours. We have so much in common. You’re natal Virgo like me, raised Catholic like me, *love* Mary Magdalen like me, and and and your love of poetry and throwing it out here verse after verse of great writing, made me go in search of something to add to this thread…….plus I too am opening to a wider deeper sexual expression of late — more on that later 😉

    I feel you were channeling your love of self much like Walt Whitman did in his poem “Song of Myself”, who in turn was channeling *love* itself, right? Here’s part of what jumped out at me from the poem when I read it just now:

    “To be in any form, what is that?
    (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
    If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.

    Mine is no callous shell,
    I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
    They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

    I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
    To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.”

    and this:

    “Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
    increase, always sex,
    Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
    To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

    Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
    entretied, braced in the beams,
    Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
    I and this mystery here we stand.

    Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

    Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
    Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

    Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
    Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
    discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

    Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
    Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
    less familiar than the rest.”

    …………………………………………………………………………………

    Surely now many, many, many of us are going through the process of liberating ourselves from societal shackles, eager to live freely and to consciously satisfy all of our appetites in as healthy a manner as we see fit. All who congregate here at PW do so because we are going through the same process and we recognize each other because we mirror each other.

    We are raising our own vibration of self to a level of infinitesimal love and how we operate from that place, well we are just beginning to find out 😉 Yes we search and label and box the process because our conditionings are writ deep but hey we’re developing a knowing about ourselves and each other, we’re connecting in here and out there and so much of it feels to me to be telepathic. I sense a plugging into a “knowing” that is the surrender to love and to a healthy expression of it every which way.

    All summer long, under the magic of our three eclipses, I have been dropping my fears and going with the flow of life in every regard. I had a same sex encounter with a delicious woman for the first time in my life, an encounter that in one fell swoop broke open the chains that bound me once and for all, and now there’s no stopping me! I see sex all round me in everyone I meet, everywhere I look, everything I do. I feel like Walt Whitman did when he wrote this brilliant poem 😉

    I went out to a queer dance last w/e and I soaked it up big time. The hot young people of all races, sexes, ages, hungry for a vibe, dancing to freedom. I found it thrilling. I didn’t hook up with anyone because I need my chemistry to kick in like SiS was saying. I’ve always been a picky lover (!) but now feel less so, for I see that I was simply moving in the wrong circles!

    Thank you dear friends for creating and sharing and loving here. Special thanks to Anon with the terrific question and to Jan for her excellent reply. Have yourselves a day suffuse with the energy of loving in *everything* you say and do and be.
    Heart out!

  10. Lots of interesting thoughts.

    I guess I don’t express myself well. I just think sometimes there are defining moments, there don’t have to be, but sometimes there are, and sometimes they come through relationships too. Not to be discounted. I guess. Illumination perhaps more telling than lightning – and the sun is lovely. Best of all.

    Shining on everything/one I guess.

    I nearly put another ps (but hesitated) that I felt I should ‘come out’ as someone who entered this last relationship from (what I had learned of myself -) a list of all the things I needed and being open to whom the universe sent to me since I didn’t seem to be understanding something, that I felt a need to be conscious and not just so happy that I wasn’t aware of others/the world, to find something that worked somehow, that could change with time etc etc. And there I was open just to try. To say yes.

    I guess there is the day to day feeling in any relationship, complicated enough to live one lucidly. (For me). Help! How would it be possible to juggle several. Does it matter that I have other relationships (not sexual) that take up my time and effort, and work and time alone. It is also a question of wiring I think – my down time is down – sleeping, musing, drifting, rereading (perhaps planing?), rarely with others. i know other create in their ‘downtime’.

    I think the arguments for one work for the other – pressure for the one, pressure to be poly.

    Toxic love. I don’t know – she stepped out of the relationship. Dreams could be echoes? Grieving, filing, anything. Could also be echoes of the future. I’ve had horrific dreams sometimes that seemed to be ‘balancing’ up the good that had come about without any ‘side’.

    The other day with Eric and Kat and Soulport et al it wasn’t being ‘right’ that was important but the putting in, and how that moved, given that everyone put in truly.

    Thank you for catching my ball…

    xxxp

  11. “From a very dark space of encountering myself has come more love than I thought imaginable. It is not even mine; it is just gushing through me and it is limitless. I am awash in it, for myself, for you, all of you.”

    darkmary – I am so, so glad that you were courageous enough to submit your comment! What you write speaks to me so profoundly. I, too, in my own way, understand exactly what you mean. I am love. That is simply what I am. And I love everyone. And the love isn’t needy or grabbing or attached to condition; it simply is. This, of course, sits side-by-side with other forms of “love” – which A Course In Miracles refers to as “special love” – and, conversely, “special hate”. I have those too, yes, but I also have love, unbounded and unfettered (thanks for that word, Half!).

    Thank you to everyone who has contributed here. This conversation is a gift. Planet Waves is a gift. I cannot think of another site that I have visited that both offers and encourages this.

  12. Thanks for the kd Lang darkmary! Didn’t know this version – it gave me goose pimples. Continuing this fascinating conversation – was reflecting on the fact that babies and little children are extremely sexual\sensual – this of course changes in nature once we hit adolescence. But I remember being hopelessly infuatuated with a 12 year old boy, and a glamorous friend of my fathers when I was only 5 years old. And talking to other women, this seems to be the age when ‘women’ start falling hopelessly in love! Think this natural sensuality in kids is what can be so misleading for adults, who often misinterpret it. But makes me think how sexuality is such a natural part of the life force – it’s what makes the bees buzz and the flowers bloom. And our unhappy minds play havoc with it.

  13. beautiful song. beautifully sung song.

    sex is Loving Myself.
    sexual chemistry cannot be put into words, but I don’t have sex without it.

    peace.

  14. Hey Len,

    I completely agree. And so, too, women need to take responsibility for owning our sexual desire and becoming aware of the fantasies we project onto the other. But, in my humble opinion, it would be impossible and fruitless to have a discussion about sex and sexual chemistry without beginning to make explicit some of the cultural overlay. I thought these six lines were a good start. In addition to cultural overlay, there are the things that individuals eroticize. The root of what is erotic individually might have manifested from ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ emotional patterns. For instance, this Catholic girl eroticized some components of the religious at some point. Is that right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy? I’d argue none or the above. It is simply a matter of being aware of how I relate to it and bring it into sex.

    And perhaps what is eroticized is also tied to inexplicable personal preference. Do you like strawberry or chocolate? (Is that biologically determined or not?) Either way, mind is such a powerful component of sex and sexual chemistry. And then there is the biological or chemical component of sex and sexual chemistry. I haven’t read the book that Eric referred to earlier, but it makes me wonder if our entire neurological system is shaped by childhood experience, then why not our sexual desire, too?

    In my experience, once some of these factors come into one’s field of awareness, there is a lot of room for playing with a wide display of sexual energy.

    I’d also argue that a common fantasy for women is to be taken or raped. I wonder if that is not a fantasy for some men, too. I deliberately chose those lines because they introduce the issue of power, submission, and domination in sex. I believe that issues of power almost always get played out in sex. I don’t mean that there isn’t love or mutual respect in the exchange, too, but to deny that power is a potent subtext is to be naive, I think.

    Anyway, some initial thoughts on a complex and juicy subject. That, and k.d. lang is so damn hot performing that song 😉

  15. darkmary:
    Great song. Great artists. But as regards to the lyrics you cite, “she” didn’t “do” any such thing. Whether shepherd or king, a man as to take responsibility for his own dag-nabbed obsessions and power trips and cease blaming the object of infatuation.

  16. Sex and sexual chemistry. What is it? What does it do to us?
    So personal, but a starting point:

    Your faith was strong but you needed proof
    You saw her bathing on the roof
    Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
    She tied you to a kitchen chair
    She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
    And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
    ~Leonard Cohen

    Too tired to dissect the above lyrics tonight, but I’d love to go further into conversation if anyone is game…

    And if you are willing to be completely laid bare, k.d. lang covering Cohen’s masterpiece, singing to him at his induction into the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYiMJ2bC65A

  17. whoa. what a conversation.

    “the one” i think is definitely violently thrust upon us. i agree. i am certain i laboured with that for the last 20-or-so years.

    i’ve discovered though… as time passed… that i have many “the ones.” people who tread on my path or i on their path.

    the romantic longing has certainly diminished. i was a literature junkie… there is no end to “the one” in the book stacks. and all water. i still idealize that notion in a secret little place. but having that notion somewhat desensitized makes sense, having been married twice. but somehow… it hasn’t stopped me from having an open heart. it might be shredded a bit around the edges. (ok. that’s an understatement.)

    as for sex and sexual chemistry… what to say. it just is. and it takes an open heart to be open to that, as well. the mind might get involved… but probably more in the sense of communicating. i don’t like my mind to halt me in the face of knowing someone sexually if that energy is present.

  18. Great conversation here,

    ‘“As you continue on your path, I assure you you will ultimately find a partner with whom you can fully express yourself on every level: emotional, intellectual and sexual. Then you will truly have the love connection!”

    “One thing I’ve noticed in my approximately 20 years of service as an astrologer is that some of the most conscious and evolved people are struggling the most in their relationships, or to find suitable partners.”

    “The need to find The One, that one perfect person for all purposes, is pushed on us in a violent way, and I think that we need to look at that.”

    Although I understand well where Eric is coming from, and agree we do need to look at it, I really wouldn’t want a partner I couldn’t express myself fully with on the three levels Jan was referring to.The difference is I don’t assume freedom of expression in these areas will necessarily bring about a relationship without struggles. In fact I think the more evolved a couple is the more the couple will experience struggle just by the fact that both or all (in the case of poly arrangements) are in a state of growth which would seem to me to change the dynamics of relationship constantly.I also see how some relationships just end. They seem to serve a purpose and come to a natural close and many times the struggle is a result of one or more of the people resisting that closure.

    I am not looking for “The One,that one perfect person for all purposes”, but an open and fluid place where evolution can continue to be nurtured. To me that is a real love connection. At this point I don’t even know what that would look like except that it is a relationship I now have with myself and feel ready to share with another.

    Thanks for making the space for these discussions. I learn so much.
    Caroline

  19. I am fairly certain that I will eventually get married, and that it will be a great marriage — with some interesting properties. If we are monogamous, it will simply be because we feel like it.

    I don’t doubt that true love exists; in fact I think it exists a lot more than we think, or are conditioned to think. But that is different than the Cult of Searching for The One. And even this cult can have some truly creative effects if one is able to become friends with some or many or all of those that were not The One. I have a whole collection of these people in my life, and some have become amazing friends and confidants as the years have unfolded.

    Sex and sexual chemistry are another story, and I would be very happy to see the discussion open up to what is this thing, how do we experience it, what does it do to us, and what ways can we direct or explore the energy?

  20. Dr. Seward,
    No need for you to apologize. Very much like the benificient wizard you are, you appeared at precisely the right moment. Thank you. Jupiter may be in retrograde but your magnanimity has not been diminished.

  21. Hello, all. Sorry to be so late in posting but wanted to give this the attention it deserves.
    Eric, thank you for bringing the conversation to life by pointing out my encouragement of the romantic fantasy (some would say fallacy) version of reality. I must say that it always helps to be reminded that we are prisoners of our own perceptions, which are shaped by the worlds of our childhood. Mine was very much the Disney model.
    That being said, I also want to acknowledge that we are all very vulnerable to believing in the possibility of finding that one, true love. You have all said it so eloquently today that I’m not going to repeat, but it is so that there are many reasons why we might still long for union with an other, and that that other may need to be a living, breathing human being.
    It is also absolutely so that our earliest blueprints for relationship come from our families, and that we are much less vulnerable to trying to complete ourselves with any kind of relationship — be it to another person, or a substance, or a behavior — if our families of origin were healthy. However, it is also true that people from the healthiest of families still can make less-than-constructive relationship choices, and can be ‘hurt’ by love.
    As the discussion on the blog attests, how we love, whom we love, and why, is very much still a mystery, no matter what we understand about hormones, biochemistry, families of origin, and our hard-wiring for unitive states; although we can’t simply ‘blame it on the moon’, the Universe has a hand in it as well…
    Thank you all for insisting that we keep defining the frontiers,

    Many blessings,

    Jan

  22. Let’s redeem, recycle and appreciate the maturation of an essential proto-experience that in its presence or absence formulates our ‘theories’ of ‘love’ – a HEALTHY family pattern…

    A distressed child being held and rocked by its mother, thus being reassured all is fine – a metaphor for the connection we all need to feel is available to us as adults… That is where our healing is… (you can be that ‘mother’ too)

    All our relationship questing will be driven or denied should this basic human criterion of visceral nurture be missing – producing a type of Freudian-type, sublimated, privation into ‘higher’ cultural or intellectual pursuits…

  23. hmmmm… not sure what love at first sight has to do with working through unhealthy sexual codependency.

    They are very very connected.

    The relationship is described in the book A General Theory of Love, which gives a neurological explanation for what we think of as karma. This does not rule out karma, of course — we got into our families somehow. They had an effect. We see the world, and the people, we either were taught to see, or later, opened our eyes to seeing.

    What we think of as love, who we love, why we love them, and how we feel in the process, has a lot to do with family patterns, until we figure out how to have it be otherwise.

  24. Why should I seek?
    I am the same as he…
    his essence speaks through me.
    I have been searching for myself!

    –Rumi

    This is for DarkMary, who might be living a parallel life to mine this year. Thank you for sharing your story. My meditation over the summer has been thanks for “not needing to know”; for giving up that need has been a huge lesson in easing my own constant self-destructive thoughts, and taking responsibility for the harm i have caused, to myself and others. The very thought that I had a self to love seemed beyond the veil for me until this spring, when a mentor of mine helped me understand that love isn’t an action, but more an essence of what we all are. There is a lot of peace in that, and dealing with all of the mental patterns that arise now has an aim and isn’t so daunting. My mind can be such a child, and sometimes i catch that and smile at her, and she knows that i know, and smiles back.
    –j

  25. a coup de foudre — lightning bolt….

    funny, a young man i met recently mentioned that all of his relationships have been like lightning bolts — very exciting, but they never lasted. and he told me he realized it was because the image of relationships he had been holding was like a lightning strike, and if he wanted a different sort of relationship experience, he needed to change the image he was holding.

    i *love* lightning — it’s thrilling, magical, hot, energized… but it’s not the sun: it can’t make things grow by its own light…

  26. hmmmm… not sure what love at first sight has to do with working through unhealthy sexual codependency.

    and i think the times i’ve had a “love at first sight” experience, it has been less about any search on my part for a mystical “The One,” or blind desperation for that, than it *has* been about a beautiful, mutual soul-level appreciation — with acknowledgement of its limitations and lack of complexity, and gratitude for all of what it is & isn’t.

    kind of made me think of this excerpt from half’s comment:

    “But really, in our un-freedoms we deeply wish to cast off all stripes of managed reality (it is everywhere). The longing I initially spoke about drives people into that notion of simple, unitary deep connection because it seems to offer the freedom of ‘focused otherness’. You can swim in that single other with depth (if they’re deep enough!) but without too much complexity and distraction.

    “That ‘special someone’ is not therefore simply a vulgar insecurity that is in denial about death, desire and attachment – it is a reflection of the longing for freedom of self-definition, ‘safe’ loss of self, a dream about the best possibilities and ideals of being human through meaningful, authentic sharing, unfettered by the usual demands and constraints.”

    i’d say i’ve experienced that on a repeated occasion with someone; and we acknowledge the sharing, the swimming in each other that is like a loss of self or need to define self; this deliciousness of physical/sexual/emotional/intellectual connection and conversation. and then we release each other to the rest of our lives, knowing that we’re in different places in our lives — and that the clarity and mirror we offer each other is real.

    but it’s not a whole relationship, and we know it. the mission for me, i think — and the challenge — is to bring that feeling & its lessons into my other relationships, rather than to attach to myself to this one connection.

    but then, i guess that’s just me…

  27. Respecting any reply of Jan’s…

    (I never get why sex is so sexualised, I mean put into capitals rather than lived out, why not equally bypass the ‘one’ and ‘many’ and just live)

    Isn’t integration the important focal point rather than ‘the one’, or ‘poly’ etc. Integration might manifest as one to one? Or polyamory. Or lesbian or gay or any combination.

    Why limit poly to sex actually – why not just make/join a family, or a community, I assure you the more of you there are the more possibility there is for conflict, counter effects, work, daring to be honest, real, the effort to remain true etc etc, why focalise on sex which is quite precise already in itself : that is possible but not advisable/desirable, that is possible but not my shout, that is ‘mine’ but not: because of that that that, in fact n is my work.

    Perhaps you have more that you ’must’ do (‘must’ not as overwhelming feeling, need, choice etc, but yours to do)

    And. Never say never (about anyone or anything!)

    I’m wishing Eric a love at first sight pivotal moment, an experience that will at least allow weight to those of us who love our mates, are glad of the good times and speak frankly in the bad, through the bad, out of the bad times (any time). All the time actually and try to listen and hear. As we all do (I imagine). It is different that’s all. Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home. And if you go out for steak, why not have steak at home. How much is enough?

    I read recently that orgasm for women triggers (?) which is the hormone of trust, and for men more (maybe alot alot more) … which is just pleasure; is that the case. That then would also be something to factor in.

    So what has value.

    I guess it depends what you are looking for. It isn’t particularly useful to say that polyamory is a lack of commitment to meaning (butterfly from flower to flower, never going through to another level – maybe that’s you who takes it like that, and it isn’t necessarily true) or that monogamy is no good (a fantasy, a pressure – maybe that’s you who takes it like that, and it isn’t necessarily true).

    It’s like saying that marriage has no value because it is a legality. But matters of soul don’t recognise mere social ‘laws’ that come and go with time and different societies and manifest differently over time. Someone showed me very clearly this year that you can say well I’m going to divorce you because technically you have broken our marriage vows, but when you ask the question from another perspective rather than as a technicality you may find that you have just gained another skill or arrived at a breakthrough, or that it is part of the journey. And if you choose to stop it is your choice. It is your choice. What is your call. What do you get out of it. What has value (to you and others). What is necessary in a sound way. Even including what you outgrow(!) I guess, coming back full circle.

    The point is, not this or that, or not that. Can’t make a religion out of anything, just ask what is your engagement, motivation, what is the response now etc etc. And you know sometimes so clearly when you are still on the right track because mostly something comes up as a result of your action that benefits someone else.

    Small examples.
    xxxPam

  28. “There is the need that many people have to be a whole person, and relate to people from that perspective. This necessitates that we go through often wrenching changes in our individual psychic structure, then attempt to create relationships that are based on developing our sense of wholeness rather than accentuating the ways in which we feel incomplete.”
    ~Eric Francis

    “The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
    ~Jalal ad-Din Rumi

    Call me a romantic, but I never stopped looking for The One. And for as many tools of self-awareness I have employed over many years (therapy, meditation and a variety of spiritual practices, various consciousness-raising groups, etc.) I looked outside of myself for most of my life. I looked to lovers, spiritual teachers, and even the non-physical beings who I have always felt accompanying me throughout this life.

    And though all the sources of wisdom I encountered conspired to point me back to myself, I was not prepared for how shocked I was when I finally and deeply realized that The One is me. As Eric wrote, some of the process, particularly the changes to my psychic structure, have been wrenching. And since I am still undergoing those changes, some of my emotional life is still wrenching. Part of the wrenching-ness of it is resistance to the experience that I am so much more than I ever realized. (And at the same time experiencing the truth of no-I. Who is I? Where is I?) It is not just that I am experiencing an increasing masculine energy and an integration of the masculine and feminine, it is that I am experiencing ‘myself’ in trees, bread, cigarette butts, public transportation, water, fireworks, scar tissue, death, lightning. Wow, this is as weird as anything I have ever written on PW and may be way too esoteric for this thread. But I’m going hold my breath and hit the Submit Comment button in a minute.

    Why am I willing to make a fool of myself here? Well, in part because I am doing so fairly anonymously, but in part because I think I am not the only person for whom the search for The One, for True Love has been the journey towards discovering the vastness of our being. Sometimes our lovers mirror this back to us and then we are hooked on them as the source of that bliss. A series of events in the past year threw me back onto myself, as deep into myself as anything ever has. From a very dark space of encountering myself has come more love than I thought imaginable. It is not even mine; it is just gushing through me and it is limitless. I am awash in it, for myself, for you, all of you. I don’t mean to imply that there is anything special or extraordinary about me or what I am going through. Quite the opposite. And I still am working through a plethora of habitual patterns (originating from old pain) that are asking to be resolved.

    So, for me, I am at a threshold of not knowing what my relationships, sexual and otherwise, will be like. I know I want and need emotional and spiritual intimacy and am blessed with it in several relationships. I know I want and need community. I know I am a very sexual being, not particularly suited for casual sexual relationships. How all of this will continue to configure itself, I haven’t a clue. In a way, it feels like we are entering a really exciting time of experimentation when some of the illusions of The One True Love are shattering. And yet, love, in many ways love beyond our wildest dreams, remains. It neither wants to own nor grasp. I don’t mean to imply that, for some, a monogamous marriage is not exactly the most authentic reflection of their selves in relationship. For now, for me, I dwell in the not-knowing.

  29. Yes. V interesting stuff here. In fact I’ve been on my own since that last relationship ended, and very happily so, I might add. That’s because I haven’t met anyone who has really interested me (or me him!) in all these years, I may do, but it’s ok if I don’t. But the pressure from family, friends and society is always there, mostly unspoken – that I will one day find ‘the one’, or should at least on the look out for him. And what I’ve noticed is that many feel more comfortable if you’re in a relationship with someone. Because that’s the norm. It’s not the norm to be on you own – and it’s considered even stranger if you’re happy to be so.

  30. Some further thoughts: ‘The One’ is in many senses a parody – one only needs to think of “She’s the One” by Robbie Williams to note the popular cultural expressions that generate money by feeding neurosis. Still, the point is, this parody is a parody of SOMEthing – a doppelganger (silhouette?) of a substance potentially more adequate… ‘A One’ or maybe ‘The Ones’ or alternatively ‘A Three’.

    ‘The One’ is not false or artificial, rather it is a mutation.. and a dominant one at that. It is what it points to that is most instructive as well as the purpose/utility the construct serves for society.

    Longing… we can all relate to!

    There is no either/or except in our agonisings. Everything is a process en route to somewhere else. People seek simplicity in the face of the management pressures implicit within complexity as you intimate, Eric. But ‘everybody’ is doing this, thus reinforcing it in most places we look. Isn’t it refreshing that Planet Waves is an alternative space for reflection and possible exploration of ideas, followed maybe by realities trialed in our lives??

    A major problem we face with alternatives in practice is the perennial one of ghettoisation. But let us begin with dating sites. It is customary for many to disparage such sites (there are obvious problems that I won’t get into here). However, there are many advantages to profiling and matching – it approximates/parallels the pragmatic approaches suggested by Eric (in the sense that it mirrors an understanding born of an ethics of co-operation and harmony based upon common interests, goals and values) and coming from considered adult relating and different but functional choices.

    Now, what works is clearly highly important – but it isn’t necessarily very exciting… and people want excitment! (Nothing wrong with that).

    So moving from dating agencies/sites to ghettoised communities, where the shared values are not parsed by computer software but rather indwell the community; we see choices again around functionality but definitely also adding a flavour of shared sexual values – that makes connection ‘easier’ (again THAT word in our complex pressured lives).

    Still, in our quest for authenticity, it seems to feel likewise to many that whether a dating agency/site or a poly community of sexual libertarian values and a co-operative ethos, one is somehow simply slotting into a functional stratum of reality that pre-existed us; we just find our place and slot in – that place then defines us.

    But really, in our un-freedoms we deeply wish to cast off all stripes of managed reality (it is everywhere). The longing I initially spoke about drives people into that notion of simple, unitary deep connection because it seems to offer the freedom of ‘focused otherness’. You can swim in that single other with depth (if they’re deep enough!) but without too much complexity and distraction.

    That ‘special someone’ is not therefore simply a vulgar insecurity that is in denial about death, desire and attachment – it is a reflection of the longing for freedom of self-definition, ‘safe’ loss of self, a dream about the best possibilities and ideals of being human through meaningful, authentic sharing, unfettered by the usual demands and constraints.

    There is something good/exciting about ‘The One’ that is not invalid; just as there is a profoundly unhelpful and potentially delusional attachment to the notion that is childish and harmful.

    I do believe that karma isn’t simply about previous and future lives but also that energy we expend now in testing our interiorities rigorously. Such testing and perseverance can lay down a channel for ‘A One’ that really is in line with a cute vision about how simple life can be and how happiness CAN be found straightforwardly through a primary connection.

  31. “One of those needs is human connection, and that includes sexual connection when appropriate. But what form does that come in? I believe it’s more than the search for the Relationship Unicorn.”

    I am so glad you said that because I am so tired of everyone thinking that people MUST pair-bond in the traditional ways. There are so many more ways to live life than the pair-bond paradigm. We are in the midst of huge paradigm shifts of all sorts and this area is not immune to those. Instead of still thinking in that pair-bond limited term, people can broaden out and find so many ways to enrich themselves and BE themselves. Time to re-think that whole issue.

  32. Hi Jan,

    A few thoughts. You write,

    “As you continue on your path, I assure you you will ultimately find a partner with whom you can fully express yourself on every level: emotional, intellectual and sexual. Then you will truly have the love connection!”

    One thing I’ve noticed in my approximately 20 years of service as an astrologer is that some of the most conscious and evolved people are struggling the most in their relationships, or to find suitable partners.

    The need to find The One, that one perfect person for all purposes, is pushed on us in a violent way, and I think that we need to look at that.

    To handle the ‘love connection’ issue in an evolutionary way, we have to ask: what is different about now? There are several distinct differences between now and any other time that anyone alive today has lived through. One is the rate of change in society. Another is the fear level. Another is how ‘busy’ people are. I meet 20-year-olds who are are ‘busier’ than I am — and I’m a full time writer-editor-photographer. Another is the extent to which so many things alienate us from one another, and serve to make us afraid of one another.

    The 1960s were a time of equally rapid change — but there was an experimental vibe in the air, there was a lot less fear and people didn’t have to work three jobs to survive. The virtual world had not taken over consciousness, either. It was a lot easier to go out of your house and meet people, rather than have an endless Twitter exchange with somebody in San Diego who you might meet someday.

    Then there are deeper changes happening right now, including a reshuffling of gender and sex roles. There is the need that many people have to be a whole person, and relate to people from that perspective. This necessitates that we go through often wrenching changes in our individual psychic structure, then attempt to create relationships that are based on developing our sense of wholeness rather than accentuating the ways in which we feel incomplete.

    This can be extremely awkward, especially when all your friends are getting married (and that, I think, is a reactionary movement in the face of the chaos of our times).

    There are many people for whom this Big Love Connection is not happening, who could either cling to hope, or who could really take on board the situation that they’re in, in terms of restructuring the psyche, becoming self-sufficient in a healthy way, exploring gender role changes and so on. The whole theme of relationships relates to understanding family patterns, and changing our relationships means understanding those patterns and what they did to us.

    Part of what I’ve been putting down as a foundation of thought on Planet Waves is questioning why ‘romance’ is THE most important thing for so many people — rather than say creative partnership, friendly sexual relating, building community, or many other possibilities. There is so much cultural pressure to find The One, and many people know this is no longer the answer, or even an answer. Yet this points to many greater possibilities, and the ability to meet deeper evolutionary needs.

    One of those needs is human connection, and that includes sexual connection when appropriate. But what form does that come in? I believe it’s more than the search for the Relationship Unicorn.

    ef

  33. Yes. Len, as always, sums up exactly how I feel when i read these letters. And as always, dear Jan, your reply is outstanding. In fact ‘dear anonymous’ – it’s uncanny how similar your relationship was to one I had seven years ago. Mine too lasted three years, and I had an intense connection with this guy but it was an emotional mess (almost wondered for a moment whether it was the same guy!?). You at least, were able to end the relationship, while i didn’t have the strength to, and he left me. It turned out to be the best thing he could have done, but at the time I was absolutely devastated – and was cast into a kind of void. And i know all too well those agonizing feelings of loss and craving that come up. But what Jan told you is how I got through it in the end – in a messy, instinctive, unconscious, hit and miss way. I began to really look at myself and my lack of self-love, the patterns of my parents’ relationship and my relationship with them. It took me a while, but I probably grew and matured more that I ever have at an any other time. I took up buddhist meditation and retreats as a kind of therapy – to get to know my own mind and destructive emotional patterns. This doesn’t work for many, but everyone finds the therapy that’s best for them when they search for it. And I also learned how to masturbate, to help deal with the sexual longing! And this too was total sexual liberation from depending on men to give me pleasure. In fact, it was immensely empowering for me. So take heart, be patient, and buy yourself a good vibrator!
    Much love xxx

  34. Wow!
    Thanks for the question and the great answer. I am eighteen months out of an intense sexual chemistry relationship of thirteen years and that really helped me clarify some things.

    “As you continue on your path, I assure you you will ultimately find a partner with whom you can fully express yourself on every level: emotional, intellectual and sexual. Then you will truly have the love connection!”

    I’m taking that for part for myself. I would much rather be alone than in a crappy relationship but I got the house with the upside down mortgage and he got the people. I really miss people, but am holding out for quality, which is not easy.

    Thanks again anonymous and Dr. Seward

  35. Dr. Seward,

    Thank you. Every time i finish the reader’s question, i find myself in a moment of suspense and compassion, wondering how you will respond. Every time your answer is very thorough and educational, teaching me something new and useful in my own life. Every week finds me humbled, enlightened and in your debt.

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