The Cello Keeps on Singing

So What Was the Ending?

In the real story, the one I read, the lover was ill and she killed herself as she had always planned to do so. The married couple continued to live together with the memory of their lover forever remembered through their thoughts and the artist that had painted the two women – a masterpiece.

Here we have various scenarios of how things develop and no real decisions having taken place.

Do we need decisions? Do we need to talk things through all the time?

In an ideal world, we would just live with the moment and see what develops but this story, as with real life scenarios are not that simple.

Literature tells a story, and in this case, it concludes as simply as it started – in the convention of monogamy, all perfect and understandable, easy for people to grasp, endlessly portraying this as the moral way, the right way, the way that we have all been conditioned to believe as the only way.

In real life, as in this story, there needed to be dialogue, there needed to be honesty, there needed to be trust and there needed to be compassion, patience, consideration and intelligence. I don’t think any one of us is so saintly that we can pat ourselves on the back and say we managed it well. I don’t think any of us are so evil as to have deliberately acted in a way to damage others. What happened happened, just as it does in real life, just as it did in this story.

But how could we teach and how can we learn from other conclusions to this story. Perhaps there is no conclusion. Perhaps the author chose his mode of completion because there never is a way out. Yes, they could have all gone their separate ways. Yes, they could all have lived together in this ménage a trios with all the shadows and rays that such an existence could give. Yes, they could have changed their feelings for one another, leaving one of them bereft at the other two deciding that they could not live in the situation and they wanted a form of monogamy. Yes, they could have done so many different things.

Whatever the ending, each of the people involved would have had to face up to their dark side as well as their light. They would have had to do some clear thinking, and they would have had to consider the feelings and the thoughts of the people involved.

But most of all, they would have had to be honest with themselves and to themselves.

Greg was frightened. He was frightened of losing the most important person in his world and what was worse, he knew that much of this potential outcome was due to his own actions. If he was totally honest with himself, he’d fucked up.

Eleanor was elated. She, out of all of them, had moved on in terms of her own life, her own sexuality, her own being, and she could not return to being the dutiful wife without this freshness in her life. She was a new woman; a born again with all the overt and sometimes irrational dependency on this new way of being. Evangelists, irrespective of whether they are driven by a love for God or a love for life, are flawed by their exuberance.

Sophia, dear Sophia knew herself more than the others. She was a polyamorous woman and she was resolute in that, and yet, despite herself, she wanted one person only. Yes, she was happy and delighted to have sex and even relationships with others, for that is who she was, but there was this special person, and she resented the feelings that she had for this person. It was so out of character and she could not cope with just how much she wanted Greg, even though everything about her was telling her that this was not the way she lived life.

“So what now?” asked Eleanor much later.

“I don’t know” said Greg. “I really don’t know”.

And he really did not know. He knew he loved his wife. He knew that he got excitement from this other woman in his life but she could never ever give him the things that he wanted. If he had to make a choice, if he really had to make that choice, however difficult, he would choose Eleanor. His life would have such a hole in it if she was no longer there for him and with him, and he really couldn’t contemplate such an existence. But he also knew that he had to make some compromises if he was going to be able to live as he wished.

And Eleanor didn’t know either. She loved a woman. She couldn’t even comprehend how this had happened. She loved another person when all her life had been channelled into thinking that one man, one marriage, one person was all she would ever need.
And in many ways she was right, for her. One person was all she did need, only she hadn’t quite accounted for the fact that it could be another woman. And yet, as she looked at Greg she knew that he too was such an important part of her that she couldn’t turn away.

And guess what, Sophia didn’t know either.

Of course, all of the characters were flawed in their thinking but they all thought they were right. Thankfully, all of them accepted that monogamy was not for them so that was a real bonus in how they progressed. However, they all had a different belief in what polyamory was for them.

Greg wanted a polyamorous life but he wanted a special relationship to take precedence over all others. To some extent Eleanor wanted that too. As for Sophia, she had the intelligence to realise that she could live equally, however the reality was that she actually wanted Greg more than she wanted Eleanor.

Monogamy is complicated because of its impossibility but so is polyamory if it is not discussed and it just happens, running its course without really thinking of all the consequences of change.

The decision?

Greg was the first to speak. And they both agreed with him. Sophia and Eleanor’s affair was now open and known to all. They would all try to live together in harmony, not literally as far as housing arrangements and they would just see what happened.

When one of them got envious of the other two, they told one another immediately. They managed the situation in a somewhat contrived way, giving everyone equal space and being totally honest about how they were feeling and what they were thinking.

In time, the feelings changed. Sophia fell out of love with Greg but never stopped loving him. Eleanor realised that her love for Sophia was as much a love for her own sexuality than the person who had revitalised her but she never stopped wanting this woman or the exceptional love that she gave her, only Greg, she realised had more in common with her way of being. Greg still loved both women. Yes, his love for Eleanor was supposedly more significant but he had something with Sophia that Eleanor could never give him.

And so they lived, happily ever after, in abject misery with the darkness that overwhelmed them and in utter radiance when everything was just right.

But what really happened, because ultimately the darkness was going to overpower them because nobody can live within themselves? Somebody would get hurt eventually.

Solutions.

Greg and Eleanor were soul-mates. They had ignored the depths of their feelings and in some way had used this woman to release the energies and suppressed desires that they could not do with one another. There is always a greener side and they both chose to find an alternative with this woman but ultimately in the long run, they knew that their relationship was unbreakable. Sophia remained in their lives for many years, but eventually this free spirit would not be harnessed and she gradually moved away from them; no heartache, no tears, no scenes of torture or great demonstrations of angst. It just happened, naturally as all things should, leaving Greg and Eleanor alone, together to explore other forms of polyamory, and other relationships, which they both had.

All sounds pretty perfect.

Greg and Sophia could not deny that the initial sexual attraction that had brought them together was more solid than anything else. Yes, they had enduring love for Eleanor but it wasn’t enough. By this time, she had decided that she did actually want to spend the rest of her life with her husband but by then, the intimacy which had developed between Greg and Sophia was too intense. Eleanor, caught in her own infatuation with Sophia, had fucked up. And now she was lost for she lost them both in one another.

Greg and Sophia did not ever remain monogamous to one another. And they lived contentedly. In peace with their sexuality.

Sophia and Eleanor decided that lesbianism was far more exciting than a protruding cock and they turned their back on Greg and indeed all men. They joined the mass of women in Paris at the time and glorified in the extent of juicy cunts that they liked to dive into at regular intervals throughout their relationship. And they lived contentedly too. Greg meanwhile suffered and never overcame his distress at losing the two people who he had loved more than anything.

Sophia and Eleanor and Greg lived happily ever after.

It is strange. I cannot come up with a decent ending that does not include destructive emotions and a breaking of the spirit of one of the characters, except for the notion of them living in the moment and not having great angsts about the future. But ultimately, I feel that I am so conditioned that each ending ultimately comes up with the need for one significant relationship above all others, such is my own notion of polyamory, such is my own desire, I suppose. However, even in this, there is always another person, there is always the need for others in the lives of these characters and maybe we should take some refuge in this as a fact. We all need others, be it for sex, for entertainment, for just being with another person to ensure that we do not slip into dependency for one.

...............................................

I don’t know how it ends. I don’t even know how I would want the story to end, though I do know that I don’t want one of the main characters to cop out by jumping off a cliff, however much the dark waters beneath sometimes feel tempting.

We cannot cop out, none of us, even those readers who are in a monogamous relationship and intent on being so for the rest of their lives.

Relationships are complicated and to dismiss their intricacies, their emotions, their feelings as just mere life is not quite right.

Back to Zen and mindfulness and loving kindness; compassion and wisdom and oneness.

Without these elements, there is nothing.