Unconditional Love Part One

A friend of mine and I were going to go on a road trip this week. Due to various circumstances, we were not able to do so but one of the reasons was that her partner of twelve years has just decided to leave her and she has little spare money at the moment to ‘squander’ on enjoying herself. Besides, she is pretty devastated. She said to me, “he just told me that he had fallen out of love with me. I knew things were a little shaky but I didn’t expect this”.

Another friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that she was now single. She had an engagement party about a year ago, and I decided that I could not go as I had another event to attend. I would have gone but if I am honest, I didn’t think that this friend would make it down the aisle. She has had no luck whatsoever with the men she has chosen to “fall in love” with. Her desperation for the Cinderella story is incredibly pathetic, if I am honest. This week she has split up with yet another potential mate; her third one in the year since her fiancé broke off their engagement. Here is a young woman who wants nothing more than coupledom and babies – and financial security so that she is not reliant on the pittance of pay that she gets in order to create a home of her own.

Another person that I know also changed her relationship status on Facebook. Earlier in the week, she happened to mention that she was single; another woman who probably had a fairy tale idea of what love and living with someone was all about. Naivety personified.

My lover then sent me a message to inform me that his son appears to have got himself into coupledom having had the same woman visiting with him on consecutive days. He assumed that a significant relationship might be developing and was worried that his son would “fall in love” and want to have babies with this woman, despite the fact that he hasn’t known her that long and there is no evidence of this happening.
He suggested to me that perhaps I ought to mentor him in some way to avoid the pitfalls of monogamy and embrace polyamory, as he was probably more likely to listen to this old girl rather than his old man.

Fucking labels: girlfriend, chick, partner, lover, mainstay, wife, fiancé, bit on the side, the other woman, the other man, couples. I’ve had it. I really have. And why do social engineering sites, whoops I mean social networking sites have such limited suggestions for your relationship status; married, single, in a relationship. They could have so many more; divorced, living with a partner, living apart from a partner but closer to my partner because of it, polygamist, polyamorist, bigamist, anti-coupledom despite being closer to a certain person than ever before in my life.......... and so it goes on. Is there any end to what we can call ourselves and our relationship?

Anyway, all of these relationship status changes made me wonder precisely the sort of advice that I could give to each of these people, should they request it. And this led me to wonder about what the hell were their expectations and how much we do expect from our relationships in spite of all the evidence around us that suggests we should never, ever expect this thing called “unconditional love”.

Before I continue, I am going to use the ‘L’ word in this writing in its crudest and most pathetic form, i.e. that one might say two people love one another when they have acknowledged to one another that they have a significant relationship. Let us just leave it at that.

So my friend who has just split up with the father of her eleven year old child? What would I say to her? Well to be honest, the first thing I wanted to say was “Congratulations”. The second thing was “you lucky bastard” and the third thing was “Welcome and embrace liberty”. In time, I will say all of the above to her but for now, she just needed my sympathy. I asked her if it really was finished and told her not to rush into any decisions about what she wanted to do, where she wanted to live etcetera until she was more stable and less likely to be emotionally irresponsible.

As for the friend who keeps losing men out of desperation, I just want to say to her, “Stop bloody looking for something that is never going to make you as contented as you think. You are your own person. You are a good looking woman with a healthy libido. Just bloody well enjoy yourself and stop aspiring to this fucking bollocks of lurve”.

Not feeling too empathetic at the moment, clearly.

To be fair to the third person mentioned, she hasn’t made a great deal out of being single, well not to me anyway. I will ask her former partner soon as to whether it was a mutual decision or not. We shall see.

And now for the advice that I have to offer my lover’s son. What can I say? At this point I don’t know whether this woman in his life is just a friend that he fucks or a girlfriend that he enjoys shared interests with or something that is more serious than that. I am slightly amused by his father’s automatic insistence that this is a new girlfriend. Perhaps his son might think the same when he turns up home with one of his women! Ho ho ho! (That really was meant to be funny, honestly).

The point is nobody should make assumptions about other peoples’ relationships, whoever they are and however they might be related to one of the people involved. Unless information is forthcoming from either one of these people, i.e. the son or the woman he is fucking, assumptions should not be made.

But what would I say to him if he asked me? I would just look at him and say “Enjoy yourself”. Simple as that. I would hope that he wouldn’t repeat some of the mistakes from his past. I would hope that he could actually look to his parents and see that both of them have contentedly lived the last couple of decades without a significant partner being a constant in their lives. I would hope that having experienced coupledom, he wouldn’t be too swift in embracing it once more. However, if that is what he wants, who am I to tell him how absurd it all is?

What else would I say to him? I would say to him that if he was as fortunate as myself in having the sort of intense intimacy with this woman as I do with his father, if he felt such a connection and such warmth of companionship then I would be abundantly happy for him. We are not a couple. I like to think that we transcend coupledom. I would like to think that we are closer and more honest with one another than the majority of couples. Yes, we have our particular issues at present but in the long term, there will be constancy. If his son could emulate that in a relationship with a woman, I would be delighted.

It made me think, really, that perhaps there would be one condition in which I would remarry. I would marry my lover if we could show that the institution of marriage and of coupledom could indeed be a celebration of commitment but that commitment allowed us to see other people, to live separately, to live independently in mind as well as physical environment, to embrace freedom whilst simultaneously showing the people that we care about most understand the completeness of our companionship. Maybe more people ought to get married to show how a different form of “coupledom” or “love” could exist.

But what of this unconditional love? Can you honestly and truthfully really have such a thing in a sexual relationship? Shouldn’t unconditional love be the reserve of the parent/child relationship and have nothing to do with ‘partnership’ or anything else that you wish to call the union of two people, formally or liberally.

Here is a website where someone who seems pretty fucked up has asked a question about whether you can have unconditional love in a sexual relationship.

http://www.zen-moments.com/unconditional-love-versus-sexual-desire.html

My response to that would be that you are barking up the wrong tree mate. However, it did make me think, especially in response to the thoughts of what advice I would give to these people mentioned. Is there really a situation of either unconditional love OR sexual desire? Can you have unconditional love with sex or does the very issue of sex get in the way? Whilst most of the discussion on this link was pretty shallow, there were a couple of gems that I would like my friends to consider. However, before I go on, I am not sure that this notion of unconditional love in this context is correct. Perhaps they are actually talking about an intense love rather than unconditional. There is a huge difference.

So try these for size.

As a man though, your primal sexual nature just wants total immersion with the body and spirit of a woman; the merging of flesh on flesh, the indescribable fullness, and the climax–that infinite moment of white light and absolute dissolve.

Yes, that is what I want too. That is what I get, and yes, I am probably a little alarmed that anyone else could have this completeness with my lover, because rightly or wrongly I feel such a connection would actually take something away from ‘us’. But would I want that for others who I care about, then yes, of course, who wouldn’t? But having all of this does not require a ring around a finger or a mortgage or flat rental to share or boring coupledom. But it does require a closeness beyond the norm.

On the surface, your sexuality doesn’t care about your desire to be spiritual or unconditional. it craves only simple satisfaction, and it naturally wants to possess it.

In its rawest form, sex is sex. At its most instinctual it does not require the spiritual but when it is present it blows your mind. Do I want this for people that I care about? Too damned right I do. But if they just want a fuck, then fine.

Sex is a powerful and blinding drive, but it is not just a primitive drive to selfish and possessive satisfaction. Your sexual impulse can grow with you into a beautiful–and unconditional–physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual union. All of the differences, the power struggles, and the guilt, are dissolved.
True love? (remembering the coarseness of the use of such a word). Mmmm – unconditional? Actually I am somewhat scared by the word. But sexual desire can move from that selfish need to something far greater, and nowhere here is there any mention of being a couple. Perhaps I ought to point this out to my lover’s son.

Our sexual nature mirrors the union that is expressed in the higher spiritual aspects of life. It is our base experience of nirvana; the complete meltdown of boundaries and separations. And we can transform our sexual nature’s irresistible power into that higher expression, but we must begin by joyously accepting our basic drives.................................. On one end of the scale, sex is a physical and emotional union with your partner, and at the higher end it is creative union with your inner and outer universe.

Aspiration? Yes, but I don’t feel as though I need to aspire to this. I feel as though I have this, and I wish to goodness I could tell other people that I do. Yes there are obstacles to overcome but everybody should have a person at some point in their lives who ensures that one another feel this complete. My friend whose partner has just left her may not want to hear this right now but if she cannot recognise this description of a higher form of connection then I would reiterate to her that she must move on, must not go in search but realise that there is potential for all forms of love, including this brilliant form of connection.

Unconditional love is all about erasing the lines in the sand.

Which is probably why unconditional love should be left as a domain between parents and children. Can you really erase all the lines in the sand in a sexual and intimate relationship without feeling as though one or other of the people fell they are being buried by the moving sand?

And yet, sometimes, for me, I feel as though I almost am in an unconditional love. I have erased a hell of a lot of lines recently and more disappear on a daily basis.

Perhaps that is what I should tell my friends; that erasing lines is one thing but to embrace their departure is another. If this bizarre unconditional love really does exist then there has to be a total giving and receiving of one another without losing oneself in the process. How many people are capable of doing such a thing, and yet in some ways, isn’t this one of the messages of Zen; to simply be – alone or indeed in collaboration with others; neither reliant nor dependent but calmly embracing the joy of togetherness without any issues whatsoever?

Yes, I want this for my collection of friends and I do not think they are necessarily going to find it in a conventional mode of relationship. This is a much higher order that we are talking about and I am not convinced that there are masses of people who are capable of doing such a thing.

So what advice could I possibly give? To be honest there have been too many moments recently when I have fucked up to the extent that I am terrified this sort of togetherness (that is wrongly, in my opinion, called unconditional love in this piece,) is something that could have drifted away from me.

Am I going to feel that creative union with the inner and outer universe? Is Satori going to overwhelm my everything and his everything once more? It will. I know. But how can I advise others when I am fucking up the best relationship that I have ever had?

I’m not sure that I am in a position to advise anyone at present, other than the fact that I could advise them to have a read of the Zenpuss blog because this is something that I genuinely wish all people could embrace, including myself.