I love these questions Nadia. My relationship with my partner improved TREMENDOUSLY when I began to treat them like a friend again. No unhealthy expectations, no sense of ownership, no desire to be fulfilled by them - just love, acceptance and being.
Oooh I’m so excited with this post, Nadia!! We are totally aligned on our research at the moment ☺️
So, because it’s late and I am just bursting to reply before I forget, I only read half of it, but I promise to finish tomorrow and come back to it.
Right 💪🏻
I absolutely agree with you and the conditioning promoting monogamy as the be all end all, deriving from the Christian Church (and mostly to repress women), and control the masses via their finances historically (women cannon own land, men can, but only if they are married), which also forced upon other societies that were conquered by the Europeans.
In fact there were matriarchical societies (and some still exist to this day) where women have many lovers, who do not live with her, and the babies have all her lovers as dads, and it is her brothers who help raise them (whilst they lead and work, etc). Romantic Jealousy is frown upon—they just feel compersion for one another (the joy to see your loved one enjoying love with someone else).
Polyamory is ancient and there are a lot of people who break free from the conditioning (and religion) and enjoy love with more than one. Because love is love.
However.
There is this thing “falling in love”. That intoxicating feeling with someone new. There maybe sex, there may not. Asexuals fall in love too!! So, I suspect it is not “the sex” that makes people want to meet with their new person they are attracted to. I’d love to research that, but my suspicion is that it is biological in nature.
In fact, polyamorous individuals can go through that same feeling with a new amour, and all partners expect that.
Your friend is right. A partner is one who will nurture you when you are sick, will share the domestic chores, and love you unconditionally (sex or no sex). You wouldn’t expect the same from a friend.
Unless! Unless of course, your friend is actually your metamour—your partner’s partner and you all live together as a family.
Also.
I’ve just found out, through my research, that there is another form of sexual orientation called Demisexuality. People who are demisexual are only attracted to someone sexually, after there is an emotional connection with someone (so there can be some form of attraction at first, like intellectual, just not sexual).
I am ADHD, so I fall in love really quickly and that person is at the top of the list for a while. When the fires settle, everything goes back to normal. But at the first stage, I would totally move mountains for someone I cared about—and two weeks is YEARS for my brain 😄
But I’m pretty sure it’s similar for neurotypical brains. It’s a drive, a force of nature and it’s beautiful 🩷🥰
I love “falling in love” with my partner every now and then, it feels so good! It’s more intentional and there is no competition, but I try not to take our relationship for granted, and for me personally, that type of passion is really important to keep our relationship alive (imagine a flame, that needs an extra little spark to build a lovely fire 🔥 for a little while… then rinse and repeat, with breaks, of course)
I am so lucky to have them too - but luck aside, it's also been WORK and effort to become a friend like that and to be a friend like that every day, for all of us involved.
Thank you for reading and leaving such a thoughtful comment! I am curious about your thoughts after reading the whole piece though!
I find polyamory fascinating and it does overlap with some of my thoughts about community, but again, the 'romantic' and 'sexual' part is not my main focus. It's the friendship - taking it to the level of partnership and life partners without the sexual component. That is what I am interested in and that is what I am questioning in how we live our friendships and lives - ultimately also because it is a way of upholding harmful systems, so there is actually a bigger goal behind changing our worldview and way of doing this.
Very insightful questions! I love that you're asking WHY and that you're questioning what's been told you. I can't help but agreeing with every single word! (also, you always have the most stylish profile pictures!)
I like reading your writing you write with depth someone who is keen to understand life and make it a better living experience. We all are learning in our life journey….
There is soooo much here to reflect on, so I’m going to share my initial response to this piece and then return later because I’m sure there will be more. A large part of it is conditioning, especially as women. That’s how it was for me at least. I can admit that my romantic relationship was at the top of the hierarchy and my platonic friendships were lower for a long while. I’m married now, and the importance of community is something that I just really started realizing a few years ago. Largely because I realized I was carrying an expectation for my partner to fulfill me in EVERY area, which he isn’t able to do. No one person is able to fulfill your every need. Like you said, we are wired for connection — and that goes beyond intimate connection. I had a need for sisterhood that went neglected for a long time, and that partially is due to the trauma I’ve had in my life with friendships with other women but that’s an entirely different story. But now, my friendships are just as important as my marriage. I think my husband knows it and my friends know it. I don’t shy away from sharing expectations within my friendships. “This is how I show up, and this is what I need in a friend. At the same time, I respect your capacity to give what you can.” I also date my friends. I pop up at their jobs with flowers. I make them playlists with songs that remind me of them. I treat them to dinner. They are an essential part of my community and my being. If my romantic relationship was the only one I nurtured, I’d only be a fraction of myself. My community brings out certain parts of me and nourishes certain parts of me that my husband isn’t able to — and the thing I had to realize is that it’s OK.
Oh Mariah, this gave me goosebumps! I love how you date your friends! I do similar things - basically being romantic in friendships as well 😍 This is so gorgeous and I am grateful you have shared your journey of building community here with us. Thank you so much for this nugget.
Umm, yeah. I will be sitting with these questions for the rest of the week and come back with a more thought out response🤣 but…my initial response to one of your questions regarding how this piece makes me feel in my body is EXCITEMENT. I am excited about the possibilities that can be cultivated as a result of reimagining what community looks like and decentering romantic love. Thank you so much Nadia💕💕
What a beautiful comment! Thank you Chelea! I am so happy it made you feel excited! That's honestly how i feel every day waking up and living with my closest friends. Such a joyful life!
You’re so very welcome! It’s inspired me to have a more expansive perspective when it comes to community. I do have a tendency to prefer solitude, but I’ve been challenging that preference. I’m originally from NYC and one of my dreams is to purchase a brownstone, I’m like what would that looked like if I made a purchase like that with my close girlfriends you know? Or if my friends and I do get partnered, what if we all lived together as couples!? That sounds so crazy when I say it out loud, but it’s something to think about!🤣 Thank you again Nadia🫶🏾🫶🏾
This was a very interesting read. The undertone I picked up on throughout reading your piece was expectation and heteronormative conditioning. I challenge you to explore more into the LGBTQIA2S+ community as these communities break conditional, “traditional societal norms” far sooner than those that define themselves as heterosexual. And the unlearning in those communities might not start in curiosity but derived from the need to survive, in survival, the NEED to find community outside of their families of origin is the only hope of staying in this world. The polyamory lifestyle tends to be practiced more in the LGBTQIA2S+ community because the patterns of heteronormative conditioning have been realized far earlier than the White Patriarchal heteronormative way of living.
Thank you so much for offering this thought Heather! Totally agree! Of course I grew up under heteronormative conditioning, all of us did - that is the root I wrote this piece from. But it's what I have left behind in the last 6 years or so because it doesn't feel like a healthy or sustainable way to live. And anyone who has been shunned by a group or community, like LGBTQIA2S people, like former church members (insert anyone else that aligns with such a break) can probably testify to the fact that they had to find a new meaning for family and build their own, their chosen one.
Interestingly though, what you say about the heteronormative lifestyle I have not seen very much in my LGBTQ friends. All of them still have a very normative way of living, with partner, maybe kids, in a small nuclear unit, like any hetero couple. So I wonder if that is a thing that was more present in the past, creating that alternative community? It might just be my environment too!
I will come back to it with more answers but for now I wanna add.. friendship is such a last priority that people enter romantic love without having that foundation first, or they did and stopped being friends. Friendship love is about loving out of choice, instead of responsibility; many people doesn’t feel like they have a choice, they think romance is some sort of milestone adult need to reach, some sort of prize that adds value to who they are… I think is about conditioning and people perspective. Our society is filled with people that let things outside themselves define their worth.. — they assume friends are easy to come by, hence their lack of urgency to show up with tenderness for their friends. Having friends is for everyone, but romantic love.. especially marriage give people this illusion of social status.. ahhh!! So much more I want to Say! Great questions and conversation we need to keep having and revising
SO many good bits in one comment! WOW! Thank you so much Umi! "marriage give people this illusion of social status" "they think romance is some sort of milestone adult need to reach, some sort of prize that adds value to who they are" "they assume friends are easy to come by, hence their lack of urgency to show up with tenderness for their friends" - Incredible. Yes to all of this!
Although I would add that for me, while friendship love is choice, I also feel responsibility towards my friends. I think that is why a lot of friendship lack that intimacy - because people DON'T treat it in that way, but like a casual thing. I want to treat my friendships the same way our society tells us to treat romantic partners basically. No different :)
i’m not proud of what i’ve done in the past but i see a man in the mirror who is determined to make the necessary adjustments; To treat my friendship like the love they deserve, to nurture my people like the love i’m capable of giving.
I feel more like myself with my partner than my friends. My partner is male. Most of my friends are women. I don’t know how to fight and repair with them. I have struggled in therapy to learn this with my partner because of what I saw in my home growing up. My parents didn’t have friends. And those they did, they talked shit about. I don’t know how to make a community and I don’t know how to be in one. When I see others in community or even see friends with extended family as their community (auntie structures), I feel jealousy that is almost an anger. I realize that I’ve been alone. I have no elders that I can talk with. I know this is a great loss and grief. I know that knowledge and wisdom about life has been silenced in the chain of my family. I do get this in my friendships but sometimes I sense competition; like our lives are very different and we need to figure out who’s is best? And it’s about priorities.
Thank you so much for sharing this so vulnerably Elle! I appreciate it and I am sure you are not the only one with that experience. I am so glad you also found a friend in your partner, someone you know how to grow with and fight and repair with. And I am truly sorry you have had an experience of competitiveness in your friendships. My heart is reaching out to you for the grief you are experiencing because of this gap. And I truly hope you meet people with whom you can write a new story about friendships and community. And that you one day will be the elder you needed ❤️
Very well written about other relationships outside of romantic love interest. Friendship is the purest form of love. You do not choose your family but the friends you choose are special because they are your own choice. We should normalize friendships being lifelong partnerships like family, children, and spouses.
Thank for writing this! I've been trying to wrap my mind around the way I feel uncomfortable everytime I am asked or expected to want romantic relationships. I am also in a phase in my life where I'm building a community that truly cares for me and I for them so this piece came to me at the right time ❤️🩹
When I was in my teens I reached the conclusion that I'd be happier living alone than in a relationship. So I chose solitude.
Relationships to me are about romance & having children & living in a house with a white picket fence & building a life together & running errands & being transformed by the challenge of raising a family.
If you're not into the whole package, choose friendship, or career, or adventure. Or choose them all.
Perhaps a life of romantic love is reserved for actors genuinely immersed in their craft.
I was thinking of actors cast as the romantic leads in a movie. If they get into character, immerse themselves in the role, would the experience be real for them?
Highly recommend the zine Pals from Lee at Sheer Spite Press!! Lots of these questions discussed and really opened up the permission for me to fall in love with my friends ❤
A beautiful and compassionately inquiring read, friend 💕
Thank you for reading it friend ❤️
I love these questions Nadia. My relationship with my partner improved TREMENDOUSLY when I began to treat them like a friend again. No unhealthy expectations, no sense of ownership, no desire to be fulfilled by them - just love, acceptance and being.
you can’t not love JR! Your heart is special.
Very true!
Oh that is such a great insight. I love this. They say the best relationships are the ones where the partners are actual friends!
Oooh I’m so excited with this post, Nadia!! We are totally aligned on our research at the moment ☺️
So, because it’s late and I am just bursting to reply before I forget, I only read half of it, but I promise to finish tomorrow and come back to it.
Right 💪🏻
I absolutely agree with you and the conditioning promoting monogamy as the be all end all, deriving from the Christian Church (and mostly to repress women), and control the masses via their finances historically (women cannon own land, men can, but only if they are married), which also forced upon other societies that were conquered by the Europeans.
In fact there were matriarchical societies (and some still exist to this day) where women have many lovers, who do not live with her, and the babies have all her lovers as dads, and it is her brothers who help raise them (whilst they lead and work, etc). Romantic Jealousy is frown upon—they just feel compersion for one another (the joy to see your loved one enjoying love with someone else).
Polyamory is ancient and there are a lot of people who break free from the conditioning (and religion) and enjoy love with more than one. Because love is love.
However.
There is this thing “falling in love”. That intoxicating feeling with someone new. There maybe sex, there may not. Asexuals fall in love too!! So, I suspect it is not “the sex” that makes people want to meet with their new person they are attracted to. I’d love to research that, but my suspicion is that it is biological in nature.
In fact, polyamorous individuals can go through that same feeling with a new amour, and all partners expect that.
Your friend is right. A partner is one who will nurture you when you are sick, will share the domestic chores, and love you unconditionally (sex or no sex). You wouldn’t expect the same from a friend.
Unless! Unless of course, your friend is actually your metamour—your partner’s partner and you all live together as a family.
Also.
I’ve just found out, through my research, that there is another form of sexual orientation called Demisexuality. People who are demisexual are only attracted to someone sexually, after there is an emotional connection with someone (so there can be some form of attraction at first, like intellectual, just not sexual).
I am ADHD, so I fall in love really quickly and that person is at the top of the list for a while. When the fires settle, everything goes back to normal. But at the first stage, I would totally move mountains for someone I cared about—and two weeks is YEARS for my brain 😄
But I’m pretty sure it’s similar for neurotypical brains. It’s a drive, a force of nature and it’s beautiful 🩷🥰
I love “falling in love” with my partner every now and then, it feels so good! It’s more intentional and there is no competition, but I try not to take our relationship for granted, and for me personally, that type of passion is really important to keep our relationship alive (imagine a flame, that needs an extra little spark to build a lovely fire 🔥 for a little while… then rinse and repeat, with breaks, of course)
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!! 🥰🩷
Also, how lucky your friends are to have you!!!
I am so lucky to have them too - but luck aside, it's also been WORK and effort to become a friend like that and to be a friend like that every day, for all of us involved.
Thank you for reading and leaving such a thoughtful comment! I am curious about your thoughts after reading the whole piece though!
I find polyamory fascinating and it does overlap with some of my thoughts about community, but again, the 'romantic' and 'sexual' part is not my main focus. It's the friendship - taking it to the level of partnership and life partners without the sexual component. That is what I am interested in and that is what I am questioning in how we live our friendships and lives - ultimately also because it is a way of upholding harmful systems, so there is actually a bigger goal behind changing our worldview and way of doing this.
Very insightful questions! I love that you're asking WHY and that you're questioning what's been told you. I can't help but agreeing with every single word! (also, you always have the most stylish profile pictures!)
Thanks so much Barbs! Appreciate you sharing this space with me!
I like reading your writing you write with depth someone who is keen to understand life and make it a better living experience. We all are learning in our life journey….
Thank you so much Arun! I appreciate you being here and learning with me.
There is soooo much here to reflect on, so I’m going to share my initial response to this piece and then return later because I’m sure there will be more. A large part of it is conditioning, especially as women. That’s how it was for me at least. I can admit that my romantic relationship was at the top of the hierarchy and my platonic friendships were lower for a long while. I’m married now, and the importance of community is something that I just really started realizing a few years ago. Largely because I realized I was carrying an expectation for my partner to fulfill me in EVERY area, which he isn’t able to do. No one person is able to fulfill your every need. Like you said, we are wired for connection — and that goes beyond intimate connection. I had a need for sisterhood that went neglected for a long time, and that partially is due to the trauma I’ve had in my life with friendships with other women but that’s an entirely different story. But now, my friendships are just as important as my marriage. I think my husband knows it and my friends know it. I don’t shy away from sharing expectations within my friendships. “This is how I show up, and this is what I need in a friend. At the same time, I respect your capacity to give what you can.” I also date my friends. I pop up at their jobs with flowers. I make them playlists with songs that remind me of them. I treat them to dinner. They are an essential part of my community and my being. If my romantic relationship was the only one I nurtured, I’d only be a fraction of myself. My community brings out certain parts of me and nourishes certain parts of me that my husband isn’t able to — and the thing I had to realize is that it’s OK.
Oh Mariah, this gave me goosebumps! I love how you date your friends! I do similar things - basically being romantic in friendships as well 😍 This is so gorgeous and I am grateful you have shared your journey of building community here with us. Thank you so much for this nugget.
Umm, yeah. I will be sitting with these questions for the rest of the week and come back with a more thought out response🤣 but…my initial response to one of your questions regarding how this piece makes me feel in my body is EXCITEMENT. I am excited about the possibilities that can be cultivated as a result of reimagining what community looks like and decentering romantic love. Thank you so much Nadia💕💕
What a beautiful comment! Thank you Chelea! I am so happy it made you feel excited! That's honestly how i feel every day waking up and living with my closest friends. Such a joyful life!
You’re so very welcome! It’s inspired me to have a more expansive perspective when it comes to community. I do have a tendency to prefer solitude, but I’ve been challenging that preference. I’m originally from NYC and one of my dreams is to purchase a brownstone, I’m like what would that looked like if I made a purchase like that with my close girlfriends you know? Or if my friends and I do get partnered, what if we all lived together as couples!? That sounds so crazy when I say it out loud, but it’s something to think about!🤣 Thank you again Nadia🫶🏾🫶🏾
This was a very interesting read. The undertone I picked up on throughout reading your piece was expectation and heteronormative conditioning. I challenge you to explore more into the LGBTQIA2S+ community as these communities break conditional, “traditional societal norms” far sooner than those that define themselves as heterosexual. And the unlearning in those communities might not start in curiosity but derived from the need to survive, in survival, the NEED to find community outside of their families of origin is the only hope of staying in this world. The polyamory lifestyle tends to be practiced more in the LGBTQIA2S+ community because the patterns of heteronormative conditioning have been realized far earlier than the White Patriarchal heteronormative way of living.
Thank you so much for offering this thought Heather! Totally agree! Of course I grew up under heteronormative conditioning, all of us did - that is the root I wrote this piece from. But it's what I have left behind in the last 6 years or so because it doesn't feel like a healthy or sustainable way to live. And anyone who has been shunned by a group or community, like LGBTQIA2S people, like former church members (insert anyone else that aligns with such a break) can probably testify to the fact that they had to find a new meaning for family and build their own, their chosen one.
Interestingly though, what you say about the heteronormative lifestyle I have not seen very much in my LGBTQ friends. All of them still have a very normative way of living, with partner, maybe kids, in a small nuclear unit, like any hetero couple. So I wonder if that is a thing that was more present in the past, creating that alternative community? It might just be my environment too!
I love this post and I feel sooooo seen!!
I will come back to it with more answers but for now I wanna add.. friendship is such a last priority that people enter romantic love without having that foundation first, or they did and stopped being friends. Friendship love is about loving out of choice, instead of responsibility; many people doesn’t feel like they have a choice, they think romance is some sort of milestone adult need to reach, some sort of prize that adds value to who they are… I think is about conditioning and people perspective. Our society is filled with people that let things outside themselves define their worth.. — they assume friends are easy to come by, hence their lack of urgency to show up with tenderness for their friends. Having friends is for everyone, but romantic love.. especially marriage give people this illusion of social status.. ahhh!! So much more I want to Say! Great questions and conversation we need to keep having and revising
SO many good bits in one comment! WOW! Thank you so much Umi! "marriage give people this illusion of social status" "they think romance is some sort of milestone adult need to reach, some sort of prize that adds value to who they are" "they assume friends are easy to come by, hence their lack of urgency to show up with tenderness for their friends" - Incredible. Yes to all of this!
Although I would add that for me, while friendship love is choice, I also feel responsibility towards my friends. I think that is why a lot of friendship lack that intimacy - because people DON'T treat it in that way, but like a casual thing. I want to treat my friendships the same way our society tells us to treat romantic partners basically. No different :)
You can trace back nearly everything to colonialism literally
PREACH!!!!! So frustrating right!!!
needed to be called out here.
thanks for holding up this mirror.
i’m not proud of what i’ve done in the past but i see a man in the mirror who is determined to make the necessary adjustments; To treat my friendship like the love they deserve, to nurture my people like the love i’m capable of giving.
i needed to read this today!
Thank you for adding your reflection here Tobi, with such honesty. I appreciate you! And I am sure your friends do too!
🫂
I feel more like myself with my partner than my friends. My partner is male. Most of my friends are women. I don’t know how to fight and repair with them. I have struggled in therapy to learn this with my partner because of what I saw in my home growing up. My parents didn’t have friends. And those they did, they talked shit about. I don’t know how to make a community and I don’t know how to be in one. When I see others in community or even see friends with extended family as their community (auntie structures), I feel jealousy that is almost an anger. I realize that I’ve been alone. I have no elders that I can talk with. I know this is a great loss and grief. I know that knowledge and wisdom about life has been silenced in the chain of my family. I do get this in my friendships but sometimes I sense competition; like our lives are very different and we need to figure out who’s is best? And it’s about priorities.
Thank you so much for sharing this so vulnerably Elle! I appreciate it and I am sure you are not the only one with that experience. I am so glad you also found a friend in your partner, someone you know how to grow with and fight and repair with. And I am truly sorry you have had an experience of competitiveness in your friendships. My heart is reaching out to you for the grief you are experiencing because of this gap. And I truly hope you meet people with whom you can write a new story about friendships and community. And that you one day will be the elder you needed ❤️
Very well written about other relationships outside of romantic love interest. Friendship is the purest form of love. You do not choose your family but the friends you choose are special because they are your own choice. We should normalize friendships being lifelong partnerships like family, children, and spouses.
The best kind
Thank for writing this! I've been trying to wrap my mind around the way I feel uncomfortable everytime I am asked or expected to want romantic relationships. I am also in a phase in my life where I'm building a community that truly cares for me and I for them so this piece came to me at the right time ❤️🩹
This is exciting Santhwana! So so happy you are able to build this right now! Wishing you so much love and grace for this journey!
When I was in my teens I reached the conclusion that I'd be happier living alone than in a relationship. So I chose solitude.
Relationships to me are about romance & having children & living in a house with a white picket fence & building a life together & running errands & being transformed by the challenge of raising a family.
If you're not into the whole package, choose friendship, or career, or adventure. Or choose them all.
Perhaps a life of romantic love is reserved for actors genuinely immersed in their craft.
Oh this is interesting. What do you mean by that last sentence? Can you elaborate?
I was thinking of actors cast as the romantic leads in a movie. If they get into character, immerse themselves in the role, would the experience be real for them?
Highly recommend the zine Pals from Lee at Sheer Spite Press!! Lots of these questions discussed and really opened up the permission for me to fall in love with my friends ❤
I love this and I am glad you found that permission for yourself. It's the best! Thank you for the recommendation! I will check it out!