Old Love Made New
Julian here. When Sam told me about this blog and opened up for my input, that request came in the immediate aftermath of spending an incredibly intense six days with Anne, also known as Mrs. Planting. I met Anne when she was engaged to Sam, fell in love with her, and was there to watch her say yes to her best friend and chosen life partner. In what follows I will try to share some thoughts about this most strange, deep and beautiful love that we have come to experience.
At the onset, I feel the need to point out that although the three of us in some sense share in this incredible experience together, I am entering into this wild and, at least for the three of us, uncharted territory from a rather different starting point than that of Sam or Anne. I am single with no children, still in the middle of university studies; I live in another part of the world and I come from a political and social environment that, especially around issues of relationships, marriage and sex, in many ways differs from that of the US. My religious journey has led me in the opposite direction from Sam’s and Anne’s, and, most importantly, I don’t embark on this adventure with the potential risk, however slim and unlikely, of damaging a marriage or a common future; my risks are of another nature.
Recently though, for me as well, there seem to be no end to the ways in which my views on love are being challenged. A little over a year ago, my dad broke the news that he and his partner of more than thirteen years have opened up their relationship to a new person, whom they both love and who also loves both of them. Around that same time, he was diagnosed with an aggressive and fast-spreading form of lung cancer, which further puts all kinds of things in a new light. And in the middle of all that craziness, this long lost love from years ago, at the time only budding, suddenly sees a new spring and is allowed to blossom. And it does, out into a bursting summer.
The connection I experienced with Anne was instant. There is deep kinship, a great love, and what seems to be infinite tenderness. Sam is, as Anne’s life partner, inevitably a part of this.
In opening up ways of thinking about love, I find myself compelled to, like so many times before, wage a sort of loving war against the crippling conventions of language. So many of the words we employ and trust with the task of communicating those most important of things (although at times those words may be all there is!) are burdened by meanings that narrow our worlds, clip our wings and, in many areas, contribute to the upholding of oppressive social structures. When conventions are challenged, so must the meanings of the language that are inevitably intertwined with them.
Take “my wife’s lover”, for example. What are the connotations of that phrase? Although beautiful when used in a certain way (like Sam’s), to be sure they are not all positive and certainly they do not adequately capture very much of the relationship Anne and I share. For me, they lead straight into the trap of thinking about relationships in very neat and distinct categories — “lover” as distinct from “husband”, as distinct from “friend” and so on — these rather violent binaries with which our thought is so many times laden. “Lover” appears in a way to pre-analytically define mine and Anne’s relationship as the opposite of, instead of as very much compatible with, hers and Sam’s. It highlights difference and obscures similarities. I suddenly find I am defining myself in terms of comparative lack: no kids, no marriage, no part of anything. In short, the hat of “The Other Man” doesn’t quite seem to fit my head all that well.
On that note: “Forsaking all others”. As of yet, I have made no such promise to anyone. Does this make me freer or more chained? Does opening up a marriage to “love from the outside” entail a quiet disregarding of that little phrase, or, rather, a radical reinterpretation of it?
Saying goodbye at the airport after the week that Anne and I spent together brought with it a somewhat intangible feeling of an “unnatural interruption”. This wonderful love that we have come to, and been allowed to, experience has grown steadily and strongly, and to have it end so abruptly feels strange indeed. It is a fact that living it out fully — that is, to the extent that we maybe would have wanted — for many reasons is not an option. These reasons are not just worldly “circumstance” getting in the way, but are rather imposed by our, or at least my, understanding of what love and a true life demand. Although our connection has felt very organic, an underlying assumption which we’ve had good reason to examine is that a love like ours must necessarily lead to a specific life “setup”, such as kids and/or marriage, to be worthwhile. I have come to believe that our love is “worth the trouble” for its own sake, here and now, even if procreation and a joint household is not the end game. Over and over again and in many ways, love seems to operate quite separately from, and even confound, the category of the “natural”.
Seeing this love grow, and seeing the courage with which everybody involved, perhaps especially Anne, has answered to the demands of life and love to be taken uncompromisingly seriously, has thus far been remarkable. Things have yet to fall into place, be fully understood, and be integrated in the everyday thought processes and love “reflexes”. The process is not comfortable, not easy, and without indicating that I am somehow very different, probably not for everyone. But: so far, so good. And more to come.
