#lessonsfromlove

I don’t know what you are going through. I don’t need to. After enough life experiences, I know that it can usually be put into some bucket. Physical, emotional, professional, financial, legal, fatal or something else. Whichever bucket it is, if we don’t die, we live to tell that story. It becomes a memory, which gets told over and over. Till one day, we have healed from it and it becomes an emotionless narrative.

I have gone through many such experiences alone for long now. I always came out of the experience and healed. But looking back, I know it would have been a different if I had someone to share it with. I don't mean share the details, but just have someone to hold me when I was broken, confused, angry. Someone who wouldn't judge, ask, berate, advise. Someone who could just be there. I want to be that person for you.

I do not come to you right now to fulfill my longing. There is another time for that. I come today, to be with you. I don’t need you to fix us or give us attention. Us is doing fine. I am very certain of how I feel about you. I don’t need that validated. Even if you walk away today, never speak to me again and find me years later, my heart will still hold that love for you, intact.

I understand that perhaps you have not seen a love like mine before. My love is unconditional. I give. I have great force and energy within me and it is very powerful. You may find all of this disturbing, probably even distracting right now. But I need you to trust me. I need you to know I come to offer peace, calm and strength. I don't come for us, I come for you.

You are strong and independent. You don't need any help. But I am not coming to help. I am just coming to let you know that you aren't alone. I know you have not done this before. Neither have I. But I know it will be better together. I won’t talk, I won’t ask, I won’t touch. I understand space. I have dogs. I know I can hold, but not hug, go close, but not breathe over. They have bitten me, walked away, growled. I don’t want you to either walk away or bite me.

All I am asking you to do is to trust me. I am not pushing for time or attention. I am only pushing for you to open that door and let me in. Let me come and sit next to you, just be there. Do nothing. Talk nothing. I need you to open up to loving of another kind.

I remember while in LSR, when I was just 18, I would have a lot of difficulty asking a friend to go to Amar Colony with me. That was just the local market. I was a Patna born girl in a Delhi hostel with a friend circle comprising of girls from Doon, Mayo, Loretto, etc. I am not sure if I had an insecurity about that then. Maybe I did. Maybe that’s what set in a fear of rejection in me. What if I wasn’t cool enough to hang out with. I didn’t know their music, their food, their culture. But I adapted real quick. I know that insecurity died a fast death. But that fear of rejection has stayed with me till date.

Professionally, I can handle rejection very well because I know how to disassociate my skills from me sense of being. But personally, this fear of rejection has probably hindered any real close bonds in my life. I can give without asking, without making anyone feel obliged or indebted. But I do not know how to ask. 

I get cold feet every time I travel. Because I will have to ask someone to pet sit. So I travel only when it is unavoidable. I feel hopelessly helpless when I fall sick. Because God forbid I have to ask someone to do things for me. So I have strengthened my immunity such that I don’t fall sick. When I had an appendix surgery, I was so alone that I got out of the hospital after 2 nights. Because I couldn’t ask anyone to stay with my dogs. I couldn’t bend over for a few weeks after that, to feed them. I figured how to slowly slide down the wall.

More recently, when I had another ankle injury, I couldn’t ask anyone to take me to the doctor. I got myself an auto, got a cast set, came back and then cried. A few years back, I had a numbing nerve pain on my right side. My hands were literally numb. But I couldn’t ask anyone to take me to the hospital. I drove myself. I must have cried inside the MRI machine. It’s a scary place anyway. I was just hoping throughout the drive that I don’t lose complete motor controls since that would be dangerous and irresponsible.

I don’t ask because the very few times I have asked, I have been met with rejections. The same cast time, I asked my shared pet parent friend to give all the dogs a shower. He said something so stupid, that I thought he could have just said a respectable no. I have shifted houses alone. I have gone for Christmas lunch alone. I have watched movies alone. I have gone through a divorce alone. I realise all of it wasn’t macho or the independent woman vibe. I needed help. But I was too scared to ask. And I am just trying to understand why.

The biggest one of these hesitations is to ask someone to hangout with me if I want company. I do not. Not even my girl friends. I wait for people to ask me. So whenever someone does, I am almost always free!

For a good part of my recent love life, if I can call it that, I was reduced to a place where I would ask. So many times. And was met with rejection every time. My self esteem had dropped to such a low that I had no shame in literally begging this man to spend time with me. Most often, that begging didn’t end too well for me in ways more than just the rejection.

That has now scarred me so deeply that every time I ask another man to hang out and he says no, I get triggered. I feel my self esteem get crushed, when it need not. It was probably just a harmless ‘let’s hangout another time’. But I cannot handle that. I don’t know how to.

I have arrived at this chicken and egg situation where I do not know whether I do not have any close relationships because I maintain this distance or it’s because I don’t have close relationships, I have become this distant. Maybe I never give a chance to anyone to get close because I never open up or get that comfortable with them to feel that we can take liberties of any sort. Or perhaps because of no close relationships, I don’t know that being a little comfortable and pushy with people is acceptable if you love each other. So I stay at an arm’s length.

I have also observed that this behaviour is most exaggerated for me in the case of men I might want to be romantically inclined towards, followed by female friends followed by male friends. I am the most comfortable blurring politeness boundaries with my male friends. Funny thing - I have mostly had male friends. So is it because they made it easy, or I had more of them and so I got used to it? But with men I might be interested in, it goes back to a dark place of self doubt. I have never asked my family for help either. They have almost never seen me need anything, or be weak in anyway in the 18 years I have lived away. Not because I haven’t been so, but because I have hidden it from them.

I don’t know how to fix it. All I do is try. I give people the benefit of doubt by hoping they do not reject. Slowly, I take a step forward. But once again, I get rejected and then I just get pushed 3 steps behind. It takes me that much longer to ask the next person or next time.

Since I started dating last year, I have observed a pattern in my behaviour. I get really excited about some people. I have great conversations and interactions. And then, I start hyperventilating when the interactions cross a certain time or intimacy threshold.

I have literally spent most of my time in the major adult life of mine with male friends. I am too used to them feeding me with irrational female behaviour. As a friend, I usually listen, understand, reason. Honestly, I do find some of the behaviour irrational many a times. But it is all at the distance of being a third party observer.

Somewhere, I think that amount of information has made me extremely sensitive to what would qualify as that kind of behaviour. I suddenly become very conscious of how much I am pushing someone. I start weighing what I say and how I say it so I am not one of those people who usually make me cringe.

I am also quite sensitive to people. Hence, I know when they are not really in the mood for a particular conversation. However, due to lack of intimacy for the longest time, I am also not very confident about what could be a good conversation to have to even distract or make the person feel better.

Forget intimacy, due to lack of too many sustained people interactions outside of work, I have broadly lost touch with human emotions. I go under the metaphysical cover to deal with mine - changing perspectives about how there are bigger things to cry over or this is going to pass. I do feel - but I don’t usually share the feeling.

And then, there is that one final thing of being labelled all sorts of names in the last known closest human relationship I had. I am so scared of becoming that person again that I am wondering if I am any person at all right now. I am this automatic work machine who knows really well how to solve problems and perhaps save the world, but doubt if she knows how to save her own self.

I can be a great friend, a great person to hang out with occasionally. I am probably not the person people come crying to, because I don’t know what to do. I fear I have been rendered useless at any real human relationship. I might be a great, kind, sensitive person, but perhaps you can’t really expect too much from me.

Since I got over my 7-year love hangover last year, I have been trying to actively understand the concept of polyamoury. Here is where I am on this research today.

When I moved to Bangalore in 2010, I started hanging out with the then Bangalore LGBT gang. In 2011, is the first time I heard the term polyamoury. I took it out to be the freedom for the entire friend circle to be with each other, when they chose to be and no one really got upset or overly emotional. That’s ofcourse, my take away.

Since then, that concept came disturbingly close when Magic Man proposed being in a ‘menage-a-trois’ (a word I recently learnt from CB). I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Last year, when I got on to the dating scene, I was still my old one-man forever version of me. So I was looking for ‘the one’. The minute I started talking to someone, I would uninstall the app, focus all my attention to that person. Let that last for 2-3 months and then start over. This year, 2020, I broke out of that.

The reason that I did, was that I had learnt a lot in the last one year. It hit me that we were all in polyamorous relationships all the time. If I just deconstructed the word, it simply meant to be in love with more than one person at a time. Be honest, most of us have been there. No, we are not in relationships with multiple people perhaps. But we are definitely in love. Starting with our family, friends, ex lovers, colleagues. So much love.

But when it comes to a romantic relationship, most often, we choose to be with one person. I used to be that. I just didn’t understand how multiple partners can work. So I asked the people who were openly professing polyamoury to me of how it works. Would there be designated days? What happened if someone was feeling like shit but it was not their designated day, would they be allowed to call me? Would I leave the designated person on that day and go be with someone who really needed me. Would my designated person of the day understand that? There weren’t any clear answers. For the most part, it seemed people were just talking about polygamy and calling it polyamoury - basically have sex with multiple partners but be emotionally invested in one. I never understood that because for me, love & sex come in a package deal.

But I realised in my life in the last one year, that I really could love more than one person, with the same intensity. It truly didn’t matter to me how that love manifested. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t be with them all the time. It didn’t change the way I felt about them. Somewhere, I probably don’t want to be with all of them all the time. I have become very guarded of my space and maybe I want to be with me all the time. But I do want to share. With whomever it feels like, when it does. No, they are not at my mercy. They are beautiful individual beings of their own, not waiting for my love. But when we do exchange, we exchange all of it. There’s no holding back.

Is it possible? Is it ok? Can I deeply, truly, be emotionally and spiritually connected with so many people? Can I share or exchange everything I have with each of them? Will they get miffed if I don’t share something with one? Does it require a really deep understanding of love? Does it need for us to stop being insecure? Does it mean, each of us needs to be happy but want to love as much they could? Is it too hippy?

Here are the things I have observed from my love timeline:

1. The times that I have been really excited about a relationship were the times when I was besotted with someone.

2. Every time I was besotted, the love story did not go anywhere. It ended with rejection, separation and a broken heart. The younger heart healed faster. As I moved from Man 1 to Man 2, healing was very fast, from Man 2 to Man 3 - it took atleast 4-5 years to get over the pangs, and Man 4 took me 7 years to get over.

3. I never really dated. I just went in. Every single time. I was not trying to find out anything. I was already in love with whatever they were going to offer. And atleast for the men I was besotted with, it holds true even today. I still love them - some with an equal intensity, but a different expression.

4. I was mostly always in really weird situations with all of these people. I was never really having a normal relationship anywhere except with my husband.

5. Somewhere, I know I found the relationship with my husband very safe, stable, comfortable - but more friendly than lover-ly. I seeked thrill in a relationship - which I have now started calling as magic. There is something that’s there between two people. I can’t create it. It needs to exist by itself. Without that, I would just be settling.

6. I know I do not want to settle for anything any more. Once I have experienced that magic, two times over, I do not wish to be with anyone where it doesn’t already exist.

7. I still have the fear of saying no to someone. I still fear the concept of breaking up. I realised it is not so much for my sake, it has been for the sake of the other person - of how they will feel. I have always known good men, and breaking their heart hurts me. But I have grown to realise that if I can’t give that person an honest me, it is worse than breaking their hearts.

8. I have learnt about the idea of dating only now. I have learnt that it is ok to meet people - and not want to meet them again. I had that guilt also piling up with me for the longest time.

9. Even now, I see a pattern. I go all in. I get to know the soul of the person. And they feel intensely close to me because of that. I bare my soul only to very few. But somehow, a lot of them get to know me. My connections with people are still not the frivolous kind.

10. I have not had the luck of knowing anyone so far who will share enough time and space with me for me to understand how that will work. I do not know how I will be in a relationship today. I have not yet found out.

11. The opportunities being sent my way currently are like baby steps towards sharing time and space - it’s mostly digital time and mental space. I guess slowly I might people otherwise.

12. I give. I do not know how to hold back. I do not know how to ask back. I take whatever is given to me. Truly, I think I have gotten used to crumbs. I can live off that. I do not know how to demand. I always wonder if it is my place to.

13. I open up my mind and heart to their propositions. I have done polyamorous relationships. I am currently the affair in many such equations. I seem to be ok with it. I do not know if it is because I don’t have anything better. Have I made my peace with the fact that this is the best I will get and hence, have adjusted my mind to it or if I truly want to live like this. I truly understand such equations and relationships, I just don’t know yet if I would want to be in one of them in an objective scenario.

14. I don’t know if I have made my work my life’s mission so hard that I do not prioritise this aspect of my life. Or is it only because there isn’t anything here, so I keep myself busy.

15. For the last 7 years, I have been in love with a version of someone who was something to me. I kept wanting to be with him through out. Honestly, I thought we would end up together. I didn’t there would be another possibility after all that it went through. But that didn’t happen. Surprisingly, when the end happened, I was much better prepared to handle it than I thought I would.

16. I feel like Devdas suddenly stopped drinking one day and now doesn’t know what to do. I have not found any one person to be with ever since. I have found a bunch of nice people who I have befriended. I do not know if I want a person today or not. Somehow I feel I do. Then I feel I get cold feet. This is the little bipolar me about relationships.

17. I am continuously met with rejection. I want to consistently dive in and see where it goes and if it doesn’t, it is ok. It happened with the last one where the other person did the same thing. Honestly, I was happy that happened. Even though I did grow the courage enough to call it off. But in all other cases, I seem to be over enthu and eager. I do not like hiding it, because if I like you, I do. However, if it is not reciprocated with the same enthusiasm, then clearly there’s no magic there right?

18. I have truly forgotten what it was like to share physical space with another human. I do not know when I will be able to do it again. Currently, the short bursts of it that I have by spending a night, or 2 days together, seems surreal. It always becomes just a haze of talking and discovering. It is nothing normal and mundane. I don’t know how that will be again. I want to know. But somewhere, I think I have gotten convinced that it might not actually happen ever again.

I have not really thought about my love life enough ever to really come to terms with the person I had become because of it. I am not sure how it has happened, but in the last few months, I have gotten to know a little more of myself in this regard. So I decided to consolidate my thoughts thus far.

My love life started out early - in school. It came to me. I joined in. Now my memory is a bit faint, but I don’t think I am completely sure if that relationship was a real one or just one to take advantage of a school girl sexually. I don’t know if he loved me. Now, I don’t know if I loved him. I don’t know if I understood love then at all.

My next relationship was with a woman. An experiment as some may call it, but life changing. I became open to liking and loving women ever since. I don’t think I am a lesbian or want to be in an all female relationship today. I like the physical anatomy of a man - much as I appreciate the beauty of the female form. But to love physically, I desire the hardness of a man. Emotionally, I want to be a woman more than I allow myself to be today. I fear that with a woman, I would need to end up dealing with more of the emotional stuff, which will make me even more distant from my own emotions. These might just be my justifications - while I need none - to say that I am clear that I want to be with a man.

But the second relationship also happened - as a result of some very strange circumstances. I did not will it. I played along. And it is important to note the fact that I have allowed love and relationships happen to me in the past.

When I finally interacted with men in my post graduate college, life changed. There wasn’t a concept of dating that I knew of. So I did not look for that either. I went and loved the men that I did. I do not think I was expecting anything to go anywhere. I had the idea of marriage as a clear milestone and I know others did too. But I don’t think I was thinking too much when I interacted with the initial few men.

I fell hard with one guy, in my first year. I spent the entire first year pining for him. I was around him all the time. But he was in another relationship. I slept with that man almost every day for a year in the same bed, without as much as a kiss. I looked out for him. I was just there - waiting for him to take me. But he was committed. And that was the first time I faced rejection. Somehow, that quickly died. I guess that’s how young heart is. It gives more, heals faster.

Then I fell harder. This was possibly the first ‘normal’ relationship for me. I did not seek this one out. It happened. He wasn’t seeking out either. But we were driven towards each other. A very odd circumstance once again. He was just out of an 8 year old relationship. Then he was here, loving me. However, there wasn’t any tag. I wasn’t a girlfriend. I was possibly the rebound. But I know on this date, I wasn’t. But that romance was shortlived - atleast then. This time, however, I was really in love. I cried. Over and over. That it ended. It ended rather abruptly. Primarily because he wasn’t ready for me then. Things happen for a reason. I couldn’t move on from this one. For the longest time. I discovered that a little later in my timeline.

Then, once again, walked in a man - quite literally so. He picked me up from my crying dump and loved me. I loved him too. However, I am not sure if it was meant to be a relationship that it was. I mean, obviously it was. But truly, it was never that intense for me. It was my rebound. But he was safe. He was giving. He seemed like a logical conclusion. I graduated from my college with him by my side. He was the most loving person I have known this far.

During the course of seeing him, the previous man did come back many times - seeking me out. I didn’t have the courage to move out of this relationship. It was fear and inertia. I didn’t know how to break up. Because I had never done so before. Primarily, because I hadn’t been in a real relationship - except for my girlfriend. We had broken up because she was moving to another country. Since I didn’t know any better, I just continued what I had. I didn’t have it in me to break this man’s heart.

I got married to him after 4 years of live-in. Things didn’t really change for us. Except, they changed for me when I started my own company and met another man. He introduced me back to me. He gave me courage to really break out of the mould I had set myself into. I was always free in my mind, he set me free physically.

With this man, I felt those butterflies I had felt 5 years back in college. I enjoyed sex the way it was meant to be. I learnt so much. I was besotted. This was meant to be. I got the courage to finally let go off the only man who had loved me and committed to hold my hands always. I did not know what lay ahead for me. I didn’t care. In that moment, it seemed the right thing to do. To set my husband free - and not to hold his life hostage with mine.

That was a milestone. Because standing today, my marriage was the last real relationship I had - where I was someone in someone’s life.

That love went places in terms of distance, but nowhere in terms of displacement. We were only business partners and friends then, we continue to be that today. But there is a long journey we covered together in between. We are better for it.