Love

At what point can we ever learn if we are independently secure if we are always in a relationship? How can we know who we would be in a breakup if it has been a decade or more since we've had one? What is there to tell us we couldn't do better, and maybe much better, if all we've known for so long is what we have?

When I consider my parents, I see radically different people. In one, I see a person who is so bent on being right that fault is found in every possibility. This parent is, has been, and will likely always be without a partner. In the other, I see a willingness to give love a try, accept imperfection and even risk temporary satisfaction over permanent disatisfaction. This parent consistently has a partner.

And as I consider my own relationships, I realize I would much rather be like the latter, thankful nonetheless that the former had some helpful things to say.

I'm willing to risk. I'm willing to fail. I think love, and all the feelings wrapped up in that, are worth it.

Commitment

To commit is to say that you'll do something in the future. To commit to marriage, for example, you are promising to love another person for the rest of your life. That's a big commitment, and probably the most significant conscious commitment anyone in our society is ever asked to make.

There is a correlation between commitment and character, though I am not entirely clear on how I would chart that.

I recognize that to have committed, and then to find yourself later regretting the decision, or maybe later finding that keeping the commitment is getting in the way of pursuing your dreams, can put you in a pretty significant bind. You can keep the commitment initially made, and perhaps make the most of the situation, at the risk of never doing more than maintaining the status quo. Or, you can break the commitment in quest of whatever it is you are looking for that can't be achieved as committed, but thereby risk that the consequences of breaking it will cost you too much in the future. That's no easy choice.

In all honesty, it would have been a better thing to have never committed at all. Then, you could still be a man of your word. This situation wouldn't make a liar out of you. But, when you do get to this point of having to choose whether to keep your word or pursue your dreams, assuming they end up mutually exclusive, then I just hope you make a choice you don't end up regretting.

Objectification

Sitting across from my best friend today, I had just confessed that I had spent the early part of my relationship with him objectifying him.

Objectification is a term I had always associated with seeing and treating women as sex objects, but it had recently occurred to me that I was also a habitual objectifier of the men in my life. They had career achievements and various skills that I envied and coveted, and I found when reflecting upon past and present relationships with other men that I had objectified them and used them, leaching off of their professional and personal successes.

In response, my friend suggested my past relationships might have so frequently expired because I was using and objectifying instead of truly loving and intimately relating with others.

I initially thought I agreed with his conclusion.