When it comes to relationship, we need to be able to listen to ourselves. We need to be able to speak the words that are trapped in our bones to those who matter, and we need to know there is no single way to do it right.
I just ‘unfollowed’ all the relationship coaches I ‘follow’ on social media (even the good ones) so I can more clearly hear my own heart.
What’s the saying by some spiritual guru or another? Our relationships are not here to make us happy, but to make us conscious.
Oh gawd, here’s the full quote, and it’s by the little android troll who I actually cannot stand, Eckhart Tolle. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. And I have knack for pulling quotes from geeky gurus who I severely dislike so here it is:
“If I accept the fact that my relationships are here to make me conscious, instead of happy, then my relationships become a wonderful self mastery tool that keeps realigning me with my higher purpose for living.”
My deepest witchery comes from what is sometimes referred to as the ‘red-handed path’. I am a lover.
I hold deep wisdom and am also a natural teacher of the esoteric, but it is through my own intimate relationships where I experience the most growth. These are, some of them, romantic in nature—erotic. But eros is not always sexual; it is sensual. So the red-handed path is for those who tend to learn, give, and grow through the honing of our senses, and deepening relationship with our bodies.
My body is wise, though instinct-injured at an early age in life. It was mistreated by someone who should have protected it at all costs, but that story can be transposed onto several other relationships besides the one I referred to. I have been deeply hurt by those closest to me, and those are the injuries that leave the most tender scars. It is still unforgivable to be mistreated by a stranger, but by those who we know most personally…that is a unique type of wound.
It is not uncommon for we who are drawn to the red-handed path to have such a history with violence and abuse. The intensity wakes our bodies in ways that being handled more gently may not. And it is this awakening of our senses where we find our deepest medicine.
In animal bodies that are not instinct-injured it is as natural as breath to know what is safe to feed from, fuck, or kill, but in instinct injury those signals are all mixed up and cross-wired. Combine this deep level of somatic confusion with overlays of endless advice on how to ‘present’ ourselves in order to attract a mate or even remain palatable to friends and family and it is no wonder that so many people feel alienated and isolated not only from each other, but from themselves.
That was me in a nine-year-long relationship, the longer we stayed together the less I felt like I knew myself. To say that I or he were the only ones that suffered from this self (and shared) deception is short-sighted. Our families, too, were part of the charade, my daughter, in particular, took an unfortunate brunt. All of our relationships are actually part of a larger ecosystem, and the system isn’t ever really going to be as healthy as it could be when its various components are ill.
Though we can absorb advice from various sources, it is ultimately up to us to determine what is healthy and right for us and what is not, in relationships and in life.
Every relational path is a bit different in what it needs, what it offers, its challenges, its gifts, and our own levels of tolerance within it. What is ‘toxic’ to some provides needed fertilizer for another. And though no one should need to suffer emotional or physical abuse in a relational context, that is not the world we live in. It’s not. It hurts to admit this, but it is true. And judging people for staying in situations that you, yourself, could not tolerate is lacking in compassion and insight. It is utterly impossible for us to know what another soul—what another human—needs for their growth and development.
Relationships are primed for peril because to be vulnerable with another person is to give them the weapons and ammunition that they could use to destroy us—and we are trusting that they won’t. We are hoping that they will do the opposite: they will tend our existing wounds rather than view them as horror shows to be shunned and fled from.
This is all complicated enough, but to add to the din we have 30-second videos prompting women (and men) with tools to manipulate themselves into someone’s life, and coaches training women how to be the least self-possessed version of themselves so that they can be assured to become some alpha male’s possession.
Ugh!
Newsflash: You can’t get to know someone (for real) if you can’t be yourself. The more contrived the machinations of our interactions are, the deeper the plunge off the pedestal and the more painful the peeling away of the mask will be.
Yes, of course we need to protect ourselves, but we cannot lock away a living thing—like a heart—that needs not only air, but others to thrive.
Perhaps there is some sort of perceived safety if we are only showing people what we are willing to have rejected, but the real pain is that no one will get to know us, not our lovers, not our family, not our children, our friends, colleagues…no one. How sad, how lonely, how tragic.
Then there is the legitimate learnings on attachment theory: childhood wounds and the ways they nudge us to connect later in life. And amongst all the chicanery and performative indoctrination are genuinely beneficial sources of information. There are ways we can learn to listen to our bodies and our nervous systems—guidance systems that are so deeply instinctual they remind us of who we are, what we need, and what it feels like to be safe.
And there are times that we will throw caution to the wind when we are either so foolish or brave that we are willing to feel our way through the dark and (sometimes) into the unsuspected warmth within.
The path of heart, the red-handed path and all the wicked eros and purgatory-promising-pleasure that it incites may be a bit more dangerous—a bit more wild—than other mild-mannered aesthetic practices, but it is full of life.
It is full of feeling.
Yes, no doubt our heart will lead us astray. It will have us diving through thorny brambles for magic rabbits that we ‘know’ are there, which we cannot even see. It will have us building sand castles right where the surf will dissolve them, but it will also have us reaching for hands that can hold us. It will have us stripping bare in the moonlight before adoring eyes and worshiping hands.
It will have us come to life.
And I would far rather risk getting cut by a lover’s blade, than to live my life preserved in plastic.
What we feel, what we know, and what only our hearts can truly perceive matters.
Lotsa love,
~Justice