That doesn't mean there aren't rules to the game. We have already agreed to inform each other as soon as we have so much as kissed another person. We have fully disclosed our past sexual history. I've been strictly monogamous my entire life; cheating or wide-open relationships isn't in my past playbook. I'm after love and intimacy, I'm loyal. These are me, parts that have both their good and bad sides.
Such is the world of modern romance; Long-term, she says she doesn't want what I want. I don't particularly choose life to be this way. I feel that I have to meld my personal beliefs with society and the other person. That doesn't even get into compromise and working together - we haven't gotten that far as making such a commitment. I had hoped that she would change her mind after she got to know me - but truth is that it isn't really happening. In some ways we have grown closer together, in others, further apart. Logic and emotions don't always meet.
Joseph Campbell speaks for me, perhaps explaining better what I have witnessed about life first hand:
This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? ... If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic [like] crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.
She enjoys my attention, she enjoys my affection, she enjoys my company. Intellectually I think she finds me boring and repetitive. I often am fascinated by very subtle differences in life, and she often knows of it but thinks it a waste of time. I also sometimes bridge massive caverns of ideas, relating things that most consider absurd - you can't compare apples and oranges in a serious conversation. Oh, but I can! When dealing with people - I am pretty sure the grocer does know that people consider which one to buy depending on season and what flavor they are after. It's all a matter of what level the microscope is turned on 10x magnification or 10,000x. I admit, I do seem to switch magnifications in ways that people often get frustrated with.
Life is just that way to me! Complex and rich, but also fine and detailed. Does it seem at times I randomly pick things to mind and others to ignore - yes. It isn't even a matter of preference. I sometimes just stop at a random time and place. For example, I may spend 40 minutes looking to discover what I might have overlooked. I even try to close my eyes and listen, or block the sounds and look. But even with these attempts, I expect there is always far more than I can sense or measure. I honestly observe we are all this way, I just feel more self-aware and articulate about it. Furthermore, I don't even consider my self-awareness as better! As I seem to irritate people and frustrate them more often then not with my way of thinking...
As I posted on my first blog posting some 3 weeks ago - I am not trying to be a player here. I'm trying to be loud and clear that what I want is a long-term relationship. How many months does it take to get to know someone? Should we move in together after one-month so we can get to know each other? Should the process be rushed? Should I use my flexibility and freedom to what I consider important in my life? At my age, I'm finding most women are divorced with children - so that's a complication.
Love is mine to give, unconditional love takes only one. A relationship takes two. Working together takes time.
Jumping topics a bit... I may relapse, I may repeat mistakes, I may have months of getting worse and worse. This is life to me. Think of it this way: Are all movie sequels better than the first? Does every book author produce a better book with each new year? Is every day always warmer and none ever colder? - yet I feel like our society expects me, a human being, to always: learn from mistakes, get my act together, to be what everyone else wants me to be. Life, and me, don't seem to work that way. I'm not going to fake it with denial.
I'm still looking... is that spark there, will you make the time? Will you put up with my inevitable declines and remissions? Do you accept all of me into a newly developing we? Will we find each other and let love clear the cruft and crud of life from our eyes?
More questions than answers. I expect this will repeat. I don't make the rules, we do.
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