I love my family, and am blessed to have the folks I do. However, it has never been drilled into me that creating a family needed to be the primary focus for loving someone, or building a relationship.
Some enter into marriage or partnership with just that view: it’s time to build a team / framework that will allow us to perpetuate [insert vision here], and in order to do that, we need to birth and raise children.
That’s not my baseline.
.
If anything, I’m drawn by connection, karma. That connection can take many forms, and exist on many levels.
A man I enjoy as a lover may not be relationship material.
Someone I could “build a team with” may be someone I can love and respect, but never feel passion for. Long term commitment devoid of that would threaten to kill my spirit.
Some connections came with a time limit, and I acted accordingly. If we’d tried to turn it into forever, we’d have hated each other by the end.
I was never told or taught that any of these scenarios was wrong, invalid, or “better than” any other. There was no godly axe waiting to fall on my head if I had 2 lovers or 12 in my lifetime.
I was taught to trust my feelings and (mostly) allowed to express them. I knew to require respect and care. I was told to enjoy my life and learn myself before giving myself over to anything too permanent.
So this is what I’ve grown into.
My freedom and sense of self are feared and misunderstood by men coddled and conditioned by patriarchy and male privilege.
How will those fragile egos get fed if they can’t convince us to birth and rear babies, or do all their emotional work for them?
What will we create in their “absence”, when we have other priorities?
Can they truly build the resilience to survive being loved and left - on her terms? To become fully emotionally aware human beings?
