I am thankful for people who have written about relationship anarchy.
It is a concept I understand. It is a relationship without rules.
This confuses me because the relationship Steve and I tried to build was formed with rules.
They were not MY rules. They were his rules put into place due to conflicts we had together.
- We are allowed to grow.
- We are allowed to be honest with each other.
- We agree not to be judgmental assholes. He found that comical because one can't judge someone judgmental without violating the rule.
I do not understand how someone who does wants to build something based upon rules wants a relationship built on Anarchy. It would seem to be more of a Libertarian relationship. We have rules but have to agree to them.
Hmmmmm......
This puts me in mind of my Native American step-father. We met when I was five years old. Every time I fell down, got hurt, was in a car crash, fell off my bike, or got lost - this beautiful bald paramedic with blue eyes would find me and take me home.
After seven years of this, he married my mother.
I called him Bob. It was easy to say. My friends called him Bob-barian.
Whatever....dad seemed to like his nickname.
Since I was a little girl, he'd talk to me about the laws.
He'd say that we had too damn many of them.
If we couldn't grow tomatoes in our front yard to share with our hungry neighbors, we had too many laws.
He'd say not to trust the government.
If the government could give Native American babies blankets infected with smallpox, we shouldn't trust any so called gifts from the government.
He'd tell me the stories of his people and give me Apache Tears to remember them by. Apache Tears are little brown stones that become translucent when held up into the light. They are said to be made from the tears of mothers who carried their dying children when the government forced them to march away from their homelands and onto the reservations.
He would quiz me about the only law that mattered.
He called it the "law of love."
I remember being eight years old wondering if that was truly the only law we needed.
I'd ask, "Daddy, don't we need laws to stop people from murdering each other?"
"No" he'd say. "If everyone held love in their hearts no one would murder anyone."
If we loved each other, we'd never steal.
If we loved each other, we wouldn't trespass, make inconvenient, or harm another human being.
It didn't matter what law I brought up, dad could prove that love was the only law needed for the survival of society.
This went one step further.
We didn't need ten commandments.
The Great Spirit only gave us one;
love.
It went so far as to eradicate the need to pay taxes. As he put it, if people truly loved each other, they'd never let each other starve. We'd honor our elders. It could be paradise.
His ancestors lived simply. They were not without their conflicts. He'd talk of great wars and horrific acts of violence. They didn't have government. They worked together. When they loved neighboring tribes, it was peaceful. Sadly, not every tribe honored the law of love. Many of the conflicts he spoke of were brutal.
*****
I don't have the answers. I don't know if my love is enough for anyone. In fact, I'm not even sure if things I think are loving are seen as loving in other people's eyes.
I'm thinking that dad is the reason I am so damn independent. He'd talk about responsibility. If I loved my partner, I wouldn't make him responsible for my needs. I'd take care of myself and hope he would do the same. That is love. If we take care of ourselves, it leaves a lot more time for the fun stuff.
I don't know.....I am trying to think about how dad influenced my relationships. Someone claimed that I had daddy issues. Do I?
He killed my mother when I was fourteen. I was visiting them on Valentine's Day. A man had called me "beautiful" at a grocery store. My mother was jealous. When we went home, she beat me and bit my arm (still have the scar, too).
I didn't live with them because my mother was an alcoholic. They were both a bit tipsy that day. Things probably escalated more than they should have.
I remember he pulled her off of me and pushed her onto a burning gas stove. She died of her injuries two days later, on her 36th birthday. That was thirty years ago.
To this day, I cringe whenever someone calls me "beautiful."
I do feel guilty that my mother died because my dad was always trying to protect me. My sister has always blamed me for the death of our mother.
Dad couldn't deal the death of his wife. He shot himself on December 26, 1987. For Christmas that year he gave me a painting of his of an eagle passing through the realms. He asked me to celebrate his life and his passing to the next adventure, so I wore a silver party dress that he liked to his funeral.
It's what he wanted.
It's what I did.
I still visit his grave three times a year. He is buried with my mother at a National cemetery near the neighborhood I grew up in.
The biggest influence on my life is my grandfather. I was basically raised by my grandparents until my grandmother fell too ill to care for me in my late teens. They stole me from my mother when I was a baby because she was an alcoholic. I was lucky that they were the ones who raised me. We didn't have many of the creature comforts my friends had nor did we eat the same things. My grandparents were married during the great depression. This is how I learned to budget and save. I am one of the few people I know who can cook from scratch. I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.
My grandfather died when I was 27. I have been lost since that day.
He, too, was short, bald and had blue eyes.
It hurt me so much when my friend said he was unattractive. The most beautiful men in my life looked like him.
He doesn't understand. We can see the beauty of others in their eyes. We can hear it in their voices. We can feel it in their auras.
We are not these containers that we live in; our bodies are just vehicles to help us navigate the world.
I don't know what I am trying to say.
Maybe....love is the only law we need. Anarchy is probably a movement that can be distilled to that one word - love. This is probably what my dad was trying to tell me as a kid.
These relationship rules are dorky. Those rules were easily broken.
If I had to add one, it would be that we are each responsible for our own needs.
I am responsible for my own stuff. If I don't want babies, I am responsible for doing what it takes not to have to live in a shoe.
If I want to have fun sex, I'm going to stop eating sour gummy worms so I can drop that extra twenty pounds and be bounce happy again.
I have to be responsible for my bounciness: Other people should be responsible for their own stuff.
If I want a good relationship in the future, I am flippin' steering clear of Facebook.
And....if I want to make 100K, I've got to finish building my website.
So....I am gonna go website build and ponder this a little bit more and write again if I can find more insights).
There is a lesson I need to learn before I move on. I'm blogging in an effort to figure out what it is.
Love ya,
S.
Edit: I spent some time talking to friends of mine who practice Relationship Anarchy.
No rules. No masters. No control.
These are polyamorous relationships. I'll not share details because one of these people is a close friend. She has two husbands. All of them have multiple partners.
I can't do that.
That's not me at all.
My goal is to figure out how to make ONE guy moan and squirm. I'll know I've done my job when he gets a woody just seeing me.
That's my job.
My memory is super bad. I couldn't keep more than one guy straight. I'd forget that one guy likes a pinky up his rear while the other one likes me to teabag. I'd get mixed up and one guy would get a freaky surprise.
I fear creepy, crawly STDs, too. So...no. I want one dude. That's it.
If Relationship Anarchy is what turns you on, go for it!