Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Straight out of the gate to be cut off at the knees.

Eventually in the genesis of a given relationship there is the risky step of revealing mutual feelings of affection and the establishment of shared trust. Oddly enough, it seems like this step is just taken for granted or overlooked whenever folks decide to talk about relationships or even write a book on the subject. I don't know why. Then again, I don't know many other men who really find themselves sitting down and dissecting the messy and struggling creature that is a relationship.

And with that metaphor, there'll probably be even less, from both genders.

I honestly don't understand why it appears to be assumed that everyone fully comprehends the issue thoroughly. There are adults who fail to comprehend their own genitalia beyond one or two gross anatomical landmarks. There has got to be a sizeable pool of the populace who are just as lost, if not more so, on this particular subject. Especially since if everyone knows this stuff then obviously they are doing everything right and any problems experienced in relation to mutual feelings and trust are deliberate choices.

Perhaps the subject is so often passed over for the reason that it's largely insoluble. Either it happens correctly and so those involved are now onto later facets of relationship building or it doesn't and they're back to square one. For therein lies the rub, once someone commits to the action, the time for maneuver is ended, thus the resolution is immediate.

You cannot tell me that the very first sincere declaration of love is not utterly saturated in anxiety, hope, fear, and the unmistakable sense of throwing yourself blindly off a cliff. It is never something said without expectation of response, whether it be the same declaration back, poleaxed surprise, loss of bladder function, or spontaneous limb amputation via their own jaws. The only truly unforgivable sin is a lack of response. The thunderous silence, features blank of expression, the evasion of topic, these are the fangs poised to plunge into the suddenly too vulnerable heart of the speaker. It only takes the blink of an eye to feel that pain, only milliseconds before the damage is permanent.

You might feel I am being overly dramatic. Surely I am merely allowing alliterative language to carry me away. I don't believe I am.

The issue is that this is one of those moments of spontaneous intimacy that can arise between two people and a denial of a matching depth of sharing is a sharp rebuff, a betrayal on a primal level. It remains a far-reaching crisis that only gives a split-second to resolve.

Relationships rise and fall on reciprocity. If one side gives one thing, the other must give something of equal import back. Anything less cannot hold. Inequity is unsustainable. At a fundamental level when one person admits to a strong emotional bond and the other reveals a lesser bond is felt back, it presents a major hurdle. If both sides communicate with equal candor, the relationship can perhaps be re established at the lesser level. If the other person does not reveal anything in response, it is functionally a refusal to be candid. On that basis, there is not much of a relationship at that point. Additionally, if both sides are not equally open with each other, the relationship cannot be healthy.

Informational vacuums require leaps of faith to compensate for. The more gaps that exist, the more of that relationship is based on simple faith. When one side is called upon to take more on trust or faith than the other, it puts a strain upon the whole. One only needs to look at how high the incidence of divorce is amongst those where one spouse maintains a top secret security clearance and the other does not. It is impossible to have a partnership or function as equals when significant details are denied to one side.

If you tell someone you love them and only get silence in reply, it doesn't really matter why the silence happened, the fact it did happen is a death knell. Only in rare cases and TV dramas is it not. From that moment forward you will never be sure their words or actions are sincere. From that instant, you will be at an emotional disadvantage.

2 Comments:

Blogger Chris said...

Ouch. So true. The silence is death. The uncertainty is torture. Plainly, it fucking sucks. I find myself at this emotional disadvantage but without the desire to leave, to abandon it yet. Yet now my feelings are always in opposition. There's always that gnawing doubt, fueled by that damn silence. Maybe I need to redo in sobriety. Pound in that last nail.

5:02 PM  
Blogger Jeanne S said...

I certainly hope you weren't writing this post due to any sort of current personal relationship issues!

7:00 PM  

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