'What's so wrong about aimless relationships?'

Mar 7 2009

Transcribed below:

March 7, 2009

…What do I really need this man for, anyway? I just keep latching on to one after another, though I ostensibly find that habit humiliating. I was already thinking this anyway, before I even met Chris. So am I going to throw another couple years down that drain? I already know I’m not going to “end up” with him. In short, because he would not jive with my greater goals in life. It’s kind of disappointing to be with someone, full aware that I’m just passing the time, deferring the inevitable. And he knows all this but is hoping that I’ll come around, or placates himself with the handful of statements I throw at him to the contrary of all I’ve said here.

It’s all rather aimless. Like jumping trains as a lifestyle, riding the rails. Where are you going? Doesn’t matter, anywhere not here. Then what? Doesn’t matter, I’ll just catch another one. Well, why don’t you just walk instead of swinging from train to train? This, the unanswerable question. I’m not with my be-all-end-all person right now. And so what is the point.

Conversely, why does a relationship have to be perceived as the be-all-end-all? What’s so wrong with passing the time with somebody? Is it actually preventing me from doing something else with my life? Aren’t I having a well-rounded quality fucking life either way? Enjoying myself either way?

It is undeniable that I get a strong sense of satisfaction in making a partner happy. Fuck, whoever I’m working with, in any capacity, I’m there to goddamn help. I get off on it. Set it up, live it out. There is really nothing wrong with this at all, I sincerely believe it is the right way for humans to operate, Ayn Rand be damned.

However, my concern for this era of my life is to not let this capacity/compulsion of mine prevent me, for too long, of loving my life the grander way I want it. Because the relationship shit—

—is all fine and good, but it should not be the main focus of my life. This I have always firmly believed, and anyone else’s opinion be damned. And while it’s hard to say just how much it has been a focus in my life, historically, in percentages, I can say that throughout, I’ve been acutely aware that it all should be kept in perspective. That the project of a relationship should either assist me in my greater life goals (as Marc did, only), or should be ended before too much downtime passes. Additionally, I have always found it easy to feel (whether accurately or not) that my lover is not all that important in my life, that I could easily do without them, perhaps because I wished they’d just drop me because I wouldn’t much miss not having it, and that when there was a misfortune, or emotive scenes, I didn’t have to try to tell myself to put it in perspective: it always-already was. So little that I seem to care on these pages, it’s hard for me to understand why I have been faithful (well, technically faithful) to all and sundry. Why bother, if it’s all bullshit? Obviously I care, and care to do it right. But it’s largely a mystery why I care and what I should do about that.