Why an honest relationship is the best thing for you.

I'll never forget the moment I told my ex, "I'll never be your boyfriend". Forgetting my issue with the semantics, it is what I said. We'd met overseas a few months before, we were both working in the same area and we got close. Then we succumbed to lust, neglected the consequences, living in the moment.

My statement - frank, brutish, pre-emptive, selfish maybe - came from the honesty in knowing what I wanted and what I was capable of and to set an expectation about who I would be to her and for her. I knew what the word meant to her and wanted to make it clear who I would be.

I'd done a long term relationship that finished with me realising I couldn't change what I wanted or who I want to be to fit someone else's ideal. Where I'd lied to myself until the other person felt lied to.

Honesty is an important virtue in a relationship with someone but it's the most important one in the relationship with yourself. 

If you're not honest with yourself about what you want and who you want to be then you're not going to be honest with another person. You'd think it's a simple philosophy right? Don't know what that is or who it is yet? No problem but be honest about it. And be honest with yourself about where that could lead.

If you're going to tell me you're happy and you agree and want to be a part of a life together then I'm going to take your word for it. If you're honest answer is you're working out what you want and who you want to be then I'm going to support you. But you have to own it either way.

Now it's important to keep in mind that being honest doesn't mean being immovable on everything. But it does mean being convicted, rather than convinced. What you want and who you will be can change but don't lie to yourself while you wait or hope for it to happen.

Whether or not I was her 'boyfriend' we were together. Time passed overseas and towards the end of it she questioned giving it a chance back home. We're from different cities and there was a mountain of impracticality which I believed at the start wouldn't let it work out. 

What I wanted didn't change the moment she suggested it. I wasn't convinced but I gave it a lot of thought and realised I was open to seeing if we could make something work. I decided the regret I could have would be never knowing if we could be something outside the context. That was worth more than protecting the beautiful moment.

So we did it. We made an honest life together. We fell in love with possibility.

I was honest from the beginning and told her how and why I don't ever want to have children and that's something I'd never give her. She was curious but understood me. She wasn't sure herself whether she did or not.

I was honest and told her I don't want to get married. She didn't expressly say she didn't want to either but she saw my points and believed it wasn't important. She supported me in it never being part of our plans together.

I was honest about where I wanted to travel. So we travelled separately on plenty of occasions and found places we both had reasons to go once in a while.

I was honest about how I express myself with how I look, how I live, what I'm into, with my values and she understood the importance of identity and familiarity. We found a way to appreciate each other and feel ourselves.

I was honest and believed we needed our own lives and friends as well as a place where they met. Whether through me or separately she always forged her own unique and quite separate friendships that she was proud of.

Over more than 5 years I never stopped challenging my own honesty. She never stopped challenging me either, and wondering whether my dispositions were changing or had changed. They didn't though, and while I grew in my thoroughness with all of them I didn't really change in them.

The time we were together was the most amazing and truthful relationship I believed I could have - that we could have. Throughout it we gave each other the opportunity to be whoever we wanted in life and it solidified my conviction that I want to be with someone who not only wants me for who I am but for whoever I want to be or can be as long as possible.

The thing is that the two don't always run parallel. Sometimes you have to stop wanting someone in order for them to be who they want to be. You have to be honest and if who you are has changed or is changing or you know it is for them then you let them go. You give them the possibility.

When we ended our relationship we'd both realised that what whilst we wanted each other, we wanted each other to be exactly who we are more. That staying together would only mean one or both of us would not be able to be honest with themselves.

Sometimes I wonder whether you can be too honest with someone, whether I'm too honest? I always realise though, that it'll never cost me the relationship with myself. And that's the most important one.

So, are you being honest with yourself? Your relationship is counting on it.

Furious with insecurity

All my insecurities burn in fury within your silence

I held you on a pedestal, I knelt before your highness

Now all I think about is you with me but I'm not there

In my place a silhouette of all I'll never be does dare

In my mind's eye there never was another to surpass

I couldn't see, didn't want to perhaps, my view a half full glass

But you've seen it to be half empty and filled it to the brim

Now you drink it down as I drown both consumed by him

Were Gonna Hold On

you were gonna hold on
and I thought I were too
I underestimated me
and you underestimated you

I never meant to steal
and you never meant to rob
with our hearts a stolen loot
were left only to sob

now we're gonna hold on
it's what we agreed eventually
to what we didn't think we could
but are tryin' to make of you and me

it's funny now looking back
in the moment what did I covet
and oh so much has passed
wonder if again I would've done it

you were gonna hold on
and I thought I were too
we underestimated this
but this is what we're gonna do

The Mistake Of Making It Belief

dear Monique, bold was my conviction of a love that I just knew
and I did in that time and place but it disappears as the truth
when you stop letting love be a feeling and make it a belief
when you think that it's a strive and forget that time's a thief

now I know it must fall to pieces, not us let to take it apart
we have to lose some of it, we can't keep it complete from the start
we could've kept it as we felt it but we've changed what it meant
and we'll say that we knew it but know it different than it went

it was grand to know it to end and wonder where it could go
but now we've taken it with us, if it exists we cannot know
did we plow a field already grown or sow a new season's seed?
have we now clipped and caged love's wings that we discovered freed?

my Monique, was our love made in uncertainty of what sought?
was it in then seeking we'll eventually see it picketed not wrought?
if love's beauty's in could well be otherwise but turns out is not
then love's disfigurement must be our making if only it were not

Past And Future Tense Faces

like dissolution of a relationship
it's just time that passes and places
and so ending a context leaves you sad
with two turned away faces
one's turned because it can no longer be
the other because it's unknown
and it's hard to tell if you approach either
if what you want they'll own
is it the past or the future calling
a friend said to me is nice
but the question can't be answered except
neither completely suffice
so you just sing and though the song ends
the melody with you stays
that's life you think just wondering
it could always be other ways

The Presents Of Possibilities

your presence has been only possibilities
now your absence slowly presents them too
but in a different way, perhaps more as change
of my world though, more than me will it ensue?

but what difference is between my world and me?
it seems who I want to be as will be perceived
and the thing is once the two were the same
but does a love make them inversely achieved?

I want to be the same for you as my friends
but everything tells me it's an impossible do
though I'm sure the strive will take me close
I'm foresighted with guilt my lies will be true

I want to tell my friends to love all of me
but who can when you can't love everyone?
I know friends aren't defined as being in love
but I'm planets, life's gravity and they're Sun

I don't fear change because I feel memory's
who I am and fuels me with reason to live
but I'm consumed with waiting and anticipation
not convicted what to take or how to give

and yes possibilities are what you can choose
but maintain control over you they still do
and because of the unknown; that which not chosen
you can't live to reap without sowing rue

Why Do You Love Me: An Essay

Why Do You Love Me?

To be asked, ‘why do you love me?’ is such an interesting happening. It must surely come up within almost every romantic relationship, where there is mention of the word love, or certainly after some period of time of maintenance of the relationship. It seems to me that it likely arises as a question verbalized from one of two, perhaps a combination of, thought processes. One of those could be a lack of or need for affirmation or seeking it, or perhaps in pseudo jest, for pampering of the ego. The other way could be out of a thought process of doubt, uncertainty, self-criticism or self-esteem issues.

I find myself gripped with positivity that I would never myself ask the question of an other because there is a danger in knowing the answer, depending on how it is delivered; and for the most part it is delivered as condition, despite the frequent denial of it so to the self and the other. That, for knowing, then makes one wonder whether it is productive or good or better or worse to feel the conditions of being loved, the certainty or doubt of them able extant aside.

For someone to lay out or try to explain why they love another is to ask themselves categorically the specific things, of which there are many that make up a person, that they identify as being characteristics greater in that person than in others. Knowing these things, whether they are true or false or allowed change or not or permanent or temporary inflicts the subject with a most likely back of the mind keeping that without them or for loss of them their being loved may be opposed, questioned or liable to dissolution. Furthermore, for the subject asking the question, if they are requesting so from a true uncertainty of themselves and what makes them attractive, desirable, great or anything they define as being loved for then it can possibly have the effect of growing their confidence or aiding their realisation of who they are, what they can be. Still, however, there is the danger of them fixing those things, those affirmations of why they’re loved, to why they’d be loved by anyone and the thereafter association of those things as forefront offerings to anybody whom they desire attention or affection from.

Personally, I do not believe I can justly answer the question, at least not at present and perhaps not ever because I am not convinced, nor convicted I know what love is. That the subject asking feels so, and must in order to ask the question, that they are loved is enough and should be so because that tells to me they are experiencing a feeling greater than they’ve known and can imagine knowing. Perhaps the question that is sought, veiled in the ‘why’ is actually the ‘how’. How do I make you feel? And that question is something for which there is only a very personal contention available. And so that does imply that love is not something able to be defined because it’s definition exists as different and fictitious in the way that we read fables or fortunes or poetry or song, the way that mirrors tell different truths to every eye and to every day.

I could come close to an answer, perhaps one to quell the need for hearing an acute response in, ‘I love you because you are exactly who you are and because of how you make me feel.’ To say other than this is to impose condition and it seems apparent that love should strive for the absence of conditions. But that answer also opens the doors for the wondering out loud of who am I to you and how do I make you feel. This brings me to the intellectual feeling that more than love, or perhaps what we truly define as love, is seeking and understanding who we are and how we can feel and what we do feel. Love is just what we call the mirrors that people are to us, reflecting the different, unseen, skewed, changing aspects, impressions and views of ourselves. And it seems the ones that reflect the most satisfyingly, profoundly, intensely are the ones we say we love, the ones we call love, because we are so overwhelmed by the visions and vastness and surprise and wonder if dream or not that we feel without vocabulary for expression.

In summation, though hardly truly conclusion for the endlessness of this issue and questions’ wonder, I love you because; you make me believe that love exists, draw me closer to the things that it might be and without you I would not feel the magnitude of myself that I cannot duly describe but wish to so fervently. Whether this is truth or not, whether you can understand its implication or not, is up to you but I would guarantee that you were unable or would be unable to, without pause, without momentary contemplation, without consideration to the extent of everything you know and can feel, respond seriously and with sincerity to the question yet remain without still feeling as though it was unanswered. If you’re the subject asking it, you would likely feel appreciation, gratitude and enough satisfaction in its response’s attempt. After all, maybe that’s the only reason it’s ever asked; to just hear a lover’s voice, wanting you, desiring to please you, drawing to be close to you. Listening to hear the sound of knowing who you both are, together.