Dealing with other people’s relationships
I’m going to start off with a story that will sound (painfully) familiar to some of you, and it might even sound like a selfish whinge about self-pity, but I assure you I’m going somewhere relatively optimistic with this.
I’ll admit something I don’t like to say out loud. When I have a very good friend for many years and then they establish a romantic relationship with someone new, I can’t deny that I often experience a sting of disappointment. Same feeling when a romantic relationship takes it up a notch and my friend tells me they plan to “settle down” or marry their partner. Yes, disappointed.
Before you get the wrong idea, I should clarify that my PRIMARY emotions reacting to such good news from my friends are all positive. I am delighted that they’ve found someone they can relate to. Thrilled for their future. Over the moon at the idea that something they wanted so much is coming true for them. I love my friends so much. I want them to be happy, and what they require to be happy isn’t for me to dictate.
But the shade of disappointment is in there. It’s because I’ve been alive for four decades and I know what it means for my relationship with them.
There are exceptions, but by and large a friend getting a partner and building a family with them means their relationship with me becomes less important.
This doesn’t HAVE to happen, but it DOES usually happen. And even if said friend might protest that their romantic relationship doesn’t outrank their friend relationship with me, it TRANSLATES to less time they have for me, less emotional investment in what we might have always done together, less designating me as a primary person to hear their problems and triumphs or help me with mine. Their love for and commitment to me might be untouched in their mind, but I am the one who will feel a difference in its manifestation. I currently have only one exception to this in my life–one close friend who’s in a romantic relationship and our support and care for each other has not changed.
I’m aromantic and non-partner-seeking. Other people in similar situations, especially if they’re relatively young, will see this pattern developing in their lives and perhaps feel panic. It’s justified–when people who mean the world to you can be diverted into other relationships and no longer provide or need what you were to each other, it can be devastating. But here’s the problem with how we react to it.
“They’re going to leave me. Everybody’s going to get wrapped up in their own lives and desert me. They’ll all have their own special other person and I’ll be alone. I need one too.“
See that? We’re convinced by fear of being alone that getting our own partner is the only way to save ourselves.
But my friends getting partners doesn’t make me want one myself.
I don’t suddenly want a partner because they got one. Getting a partner doesn’t stop me from losing them. Getting a partner doesn’t make it better. Getting a partner I DON’T EVEN WANT isn’t going to solve the issue.
I want THEM. I want my specific friends because I love them. It’s not a hole in my life that needs filling by someone who’s willing to sit there. I call myself aromantic and non-partner-seeking because I don’t feel that attraction and don’t have that kind of vacancy. It’s not some amorphous emptiness that hurts. It’s the absence of THOSE PEOPLE. There’s no reason I should have to change how I FEEL ABOUT THIS ARRANGEMENT because it’s better than having no one. I feel disappointment sometimes when a close friend establishes or cements a relationship because they almost always can’t figure out how to balance everything they want. I don’t feel that they don’t care about me. And I can choose to communicate with them–which I do–if there’s something they need to change about our interaction before I’ll feel compelled to go on with our relationship.
We all evolve and change, and if I had my own romantic relationship, I wouldn’t be safe from that evolution. We’ve all seen those relationships fall apart or be forced apart by tragedy. They have not saved themselves permanently from potential loneliness or hardship. Human relationships are like this no matter what flavor they are.
One of the major reasons I want to write about FRIENDSHIPS being important is that we don’t really respect them as a culture, and balancing them with romantic relationships is not modeled well in our society. I want to provide examples of friendships being important–being more long-lasting sometimes than romantic relationships, or being just as vital to our mental health. Yes, even past high school. Friendships aren’t a thing you do as a child before you know what a real relationship is. Friendships are relationships.
We need examples of this around us in the world, and some of the fiction projects I have in development reflect that. Those of us who don’t want partners shouldn’t have to associate that aspect of ourselves with abandonment and live in fear that we can’t qualify for long-lasting love in the flavors we do like. And we definitely shouldn’t be pressured into partnering up if it’s not what we truly want. I have no ideological quarrel with romantic relationships and no personal grudge against them, so I certainly don’t want to depict them as fickle or emphasize their potential impermanence in the work I do; that’s not helpful either. But I do want to provide perspectives as a counterbalance: romantic relationships are not the only way to access relative permanence and fulfillment.
Regarding the broader subject of asexuality, I’ve made videos and written essays and published a book partly because I wanted other people like me to know they’re not alone. Based on the responses I’ve gotten from tearfully grateful people hundreds of times, it was NEEDED. I would like to similarly extend a more nuanced examination of aromanticism and non-partner-seeking perspectives into my work for people who don’t know where to turn on this aspect of their lives. This is NEEDED too, but after the relief of finding out others have the same problems, what happens next?
It’s a good question. “I want them to know they’re not alone.” They find out they’re not alone, they experience relief and feel inspired or free or empowered or satisfied, and then … yes, what then?
I’ve seen that a bunch of times–people go through that thrill of discovery and posting their personal story online and a bunch of people saying “me too,” and then … well, what do you do?
What do you do when you know you’re in good company, but you still have to go back to your life surrounded by people whose personal happiness almost always necessarily leads to you losing yours?
You take comfort in knowing that others have struggled with this too, and you reach for fulfillment on YOUR TERMS, compromising within reason.
People in relationships have not unlocked a secret room to Happily Ever After. I assure you they are likely to be struggling with plenty themselves, and you are not being excluded from the magic solution. Explore and find out what makes you happy (and what gets in the way of you being happy), and try to pin less of your success on what others will allow you to do.
The usefulness of this advice is limited, I know. Many, many people are not free to have certain things on their terms, especially if they require others’ assistance to live their day-to-day life or are struggling/failing to meet their physical needs. It can be awfully difficult to ~pursue what makes you happy~ when you work a low-paying job that steals all your energy or you have an illness or condition that limits your options and makes you dependent. And it probably seems that if you could just have a partner or someone who wouldn’t leave you, it wouldn’t be as bad.
Well, you’re probably right.
And I’m just saying there are options other than a partner that can make life worth living and satisfying for you.
I’ll continue to be disappointed if I think someone’s established relationship will make OUR relationship change in a way I consider detrimental to my happiness, especially if the other person suddenly turns oblivious and shuts out everyone who used to matter. (It’s incredibly hurtful when that happens.) But I’ve made sure to build my house on a foundation that can’t crumble when someone takes their support away. I’m not an island and I’m not removed enough from the rest of society to say I’ll always be okay if someone deserts me; it’ll hurt a lot and it’ll be a blow. BUT I CAN GO ON, and I can still enjoy things and love my life, and not live it in fear.
You can love. Love can sometimes hurt you. If you don’t love in the same way others do or your love doesn’t make you want what people usually do when they love, it can become synonymous with pain and I want you to know that’s not inevitable.
The first step is knowing you are NOT alone in this, and the next is figuring out what you’re going to do about it. So BE a good friend–BE someone valuable to those you love, and hopefully they will also conclude that it would be very painful to lose you too. Continue to support people you love even when they do things that make you worry they’re leaving you (I mean, until or unless it leads to you getting used or hurt). Be there for them in the good times as well as if they cry to you over relationship woes. Don’t sit around wondering if you’ll go back to being valuable to them as a friend if they lose their relationship, hoping it will happen. You need to find a way to still be important NOW THAT WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO THEM INCLUDES THIS OTHER PERSON, and don’t view the situation as having roles you used to provide “stolen” by their primary partner.
I know THEY might have no ability to designate more than one person as having primary importance, and that’s what’s been modeled for them so they’re probably being taught it’s weird for you, the friend, to still be important. Understand they’ve got these pressures too, and are probably feeling like they’re supposed to derive most or nearly all of their social satisfaction from a partner who becomes their family. They’re probably not happy either when it doesn’t work. So keep touching base with these kinds of friends and keep doing what you used to do, to the extent that it’s reasonable. Do it until your friends do figure out the balance to having their partner and maintaining their relationship with someone as important as you.
Because they probably miss you too.
