I’m discovering that many of my relationships have been complicated – especially the older those relationships are. Some of that is attributable to growing together, some just the compromises two personalities make to try to find joy in one another.
My best friend and I have a very complicated relationship. We’ve known each other for nearly 40 years and have been through a lot of changes. He’s been without a girlfriend for about 4 years now – and sitting at the bar with him the other night it dawned on me that I had become his nurturing relationship. In that moment I felt my feminine side, and began to understand something that I’d already begun to think about.
In simple terms, I’m redefining my archetypes of masculine and feminine. Reframing my belief that equality AND differences in nature can exist at the same time. This shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone – and wasn’t really to me… but the way I chose to frame it is new to me. My inability to ascribe natural sexuality relevant to gender was really called out in that conversation – that’s what set the lightbulb on.
As I was growing up, when I developmentally tried to build personal archetypes I used my parents as models – much in the way I guess any child would. The only way for me to wedge my sexuality into that archetype (built on my mother as archetypical female) was to build a construct around it that would legitimize sexuality. My mother’s personality and my parent’s marriage & partnership was asexual. No physical contact, they did not sleep together, and any displays of affection were perfunctory at best.
Now that she’s gone – I’m finding the archetype is collapsing… and I’m awakening to the blending of strength and pliability, dominance and submission, masculine and feminine in the same space – just to varying, and oftentimes shifting degrees. I’m beginning to build a more complete (and admittedly complex) archetype now – one where a woman I am attracted to can both go play in the mud AND rock a little black dress. The internal transformation in my worldview is profound right now. I’m discovering a world where I don’t have to be “Dominant” to be sexual. A world where I can just be “me”.
It’s late in the game for me to be coming to all of this. I’m trying not to regret so much time wasted and so many hearts dismayed. But maybe I can bring all of this around and become balanced, fun, joyful…
…or as a trusted and loving soul recently said… Human.
