Love Anniversary

I never thought I would be lucky in love.

When I was nine, it's true, I imagined someone — a man with long hair, sitting under an oak tree —looking kindly at me. But I lost that friendly notion soon.

I wanted a warmhearted, reciprocal partnership more than anything. More than that, I wanted to be married in heart, body and mind, like when a woman in the Hindu religious love poem cycle says "Let the earth of my body be mixed with the earth my beloved walks on." But I didn't think I would ever be able to attract someone who loved me who I also loved. "Incapable" was the word I used — I thought I was in some way "incapable" of this.

If you'd asked me what I meant, I would have lied to you. And said I doubted I was capable of a longterm partnership. That I simply wouldn't have been able to make one work. And it's true, I did not have those skills then. But what I actually believed is much more sad: that there were qualities of being loved by someone wonderful that I just did not possess.

How long did I wait, how long did I think I wasn't lovable, couldn't be precious to someone? In shame, I kept having relationships with women who treated me badly. One told me right away that I hadn't been her first choice. One arranged for me to meet her at her apartment on the morning she had someone else in her bed. One was an hour or two late to meet me every time, and described our relationship as a "bagatelle" ("a thing of little importance.") I kept dating her anyway.

Sprinkled in with these were some women who I wasn't actually attracted to, but who seemed safe. Because desire — actually wanting someone beautiful— was terrifying to me. My assumption was that the truly hot would either not be interested in me, or treat me with such malice I could never recover.  

Writing this shocks me, frankly. I was not aware of how little I must have valued myself. How meagerly I assessed my own worth. Also how much I seem to have believed that cruelty was the price of love.

Now I have what I want. It is scary to write that sentence, but I don't actually believe in nasty, jealous gods who strike you down because you dare to admit you're happy.

I'm with a woman who turns me on profoundly, the sight of whose big hands and wonderful shoulders fills me with joy. This woman also loves me, and is the kind of sensitive and tender partner that I always wanted. Q is someone of ridiculous integrity, like a bright shining light walking around our backyard. A person who, when I tell her what I need, thinks deeply about how it might be possible for her to give it to me. Even if it seems in conflict with some need or desire of her own. Using insight and creativity, she tries to find a way to get us both what we need. I try to do the same for her.

Nobody can meet all of another's wants and needs, and that's OK. We don't hold each other to impossible standards, and we are so at home in each other that small things like farts and putting the mayo lid on "wrong" don't disturb us. For deeper conflicts, we find a way.

I never thought I would be rooted in another person. I would have dismissed the idea as a frightening erosion of boundaries, a kind of monstrous sinking into each other. But now I love being rooted. Q is the ground on which I do the work that matters to me, the ground in which and on which (and, every day, with which) I play. She is the soil in which I grow, through which I build relationships with others and even relationships with whole new categories of things (flowers! keyboard playing! making up silly songs!) And I am honored to be that ground, that rich and fecund earth, for her.

We have not lost our separateness but built on it, so that we have ourselves but have this third thing, too, an astonishing home in which to live.