Protecting each other's solitude
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think about love.
Why are so many of us programmed to approach love from a place of control and possession? I’m asking myself as much as you.
I’ve been thinking so much about love and relationships lately. My relationship with love was broken for so long. Even now, I’m not sure I quite understand it. It seems to change with every person—every romantic interest, family member, friend, and every version of myself.
“People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves,” the saying goes. I’ve been hit by this reality over and over again as both the person who ran from depth and the person whose depth chased another away. Depth is scary and requires a release of control. A meeting of shadows when the sun is setting and the honeymoon is waning.
I still believe that when compatible depth and shadows meet, we won’t run away—we can’t. We might try to, but we’ll be drawn to each other like two souls with magnets tucked away in the deepest crevices of our bodies.
They say you should choose relationships that push you to grow and heal, but why do we still spend half—or sometimes all—of our lifetime chasing potential, or desperately holding together a crashing tower, or replaying the dynamics that hurt us when we were young? Why are we programmed to suffer so much?
I’m talking to you, but you literally can’t read this.
I really wish for you to love yourself more, but I can’t do it for you. I wish I could magically get you to understand this quote by Rilke:
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.
To protect each other’s solitude means protecting each other’s growth and wellbeing. Isn’t this the ultimate act of care? To believe that a healthy union consists of two whole parts, not just halves. To work towards this vision even if we’re only quarters. We don’t save each other, and we don’t seek each other’s love for validation or completion. We mirror each other’s deepest wounds and support each other’s healing. We live our separate truths and come together to build a third thing called the relationship.
Interdependence is what they call it.
Some days, this task feels unattainable in this lifetime but I want to believe in it. I know that you wouldn’t believe in it even if you understood it. I don’t expect you to understand me anymore.
It’s OK. I love you all the same.