Agreement & Ambiguity: Self/Other Balance

And our agreement needed ambiguity, uncertainty and semi-silence so we could grow as individuals and as a couple and get to the place of comfort we both enjoy today.

Along with distance balanced love symbols and directionally balanced relationship metaphors comes finding the right balance between self and partner. This balance is tricky however as it’s comprised of three different balances and two different perspectives on those balances: each individual strikes an interior balance between themselves and their partner, they negotiate with their partner for a third external balance, and of course they each have their own perspective on all three. Yet these together allow individuals and couples to know where and how they are and aren’t integrated with their partner, where and how they may and mightn’t, will and won’t, intimately ‘meet’ their partner.

When I first approached my wife with the idea of having a female led relationship*, I was seeking to (re)negotiate our love symbols not only in order to get more adequate love symbols to express myself (this is my interior balance between self and partner) but also so that we might meet and integrate with each other better and more intimately (which is my perspective on our exterior balance between self and partner). Well, my wife was rather skeptical about my idea. She naturally wanted adequate love symbols for her (her interior balance between herself and her partner) but she also wanted to get wherever our relationship was going in an organic and non-artificially structured way (her perspective on our exterior balance between herself and her partner).

Negotiating between her desire for organic growth and my desire to already have the symbols I wanted took some time, and if during that time the issue wasn’t exactly an open secret, it often felt like the unspoken elephant in the room. But like my open secret theorizing, our agreement to retain ambiguity and semi-silence over the issue was an instrumental part of a slow change plan/process for acceptance and the (re)negotiation of love symbols, an instrumental part of a way to balance individual need for relationship fulfillment of desire with a partner’s need for emotional space and comfort.

It wasn’t a real open secret since she knew generally how I felt, what I wanted, what I intended, nearly as quickly as I was aware and since all the specifics were always readily available nothing was being hidden. At the time I felt strongly (and still do) that it was of utmost importance to communicate to her what I was generally thinking and feeling** even if she didn’t want many specifics. Likewise did she manage a basic communication about how she felt, and again even at the time I thought she was right not to listen to me past a certain point. As she said, since I didn’t have adequate symbols to communicate what I wanted there was no point in talking about the issue until we verbally worked out some negotiated plan. Our relationship should be allowed to grow of its own rather than placing uncomfortable and artificial strictures and outlines around it, whether to stretch or hem it in any way.

Thus, both having good points, we ended up looking for a good (negotiated) balance between [1] what I wanted for us and the symbols I thought would better fit us down the road (direction) and [2] how she wanted our relationship to grow and how she wanted symbols that fit us constantly between the “here and now” and “wherever we end up down the road” (speed). And though our subsequent semi-tacit agreement was  somewhat akin to the frog in a pot scenario I’ve mentioned before, there yet remained a great deal of intentional ambiguity about what her specific (speed) limits were for my pressing uxory were, and over where (direction) our negotiation might ultimately lead us. And our agreement needed ambiguity, uncertainty and semi-silence so we could grow as individuals (grow our interior balance between self and partner) and as a couple (grow our exterior negotiated love symbol balance) and get to the place of comfort we both enjoy today.

The (semi-)silence was a tool, the anti-intimate distance between us was a tool, ambiguity itself a tool, one we actively and consciously agreed to use in order to attain a better more adequate, more intimate, (negotiated) balance between us. And when the silence did not serve us we did speak of the elephant in the room, especially if she felt I was driving to hard, ‘exceeding the speed limit’ (metaphors driving metaphors), if she felt I were uncomfortably playing a role ‘at her’ rather than organically playing myself with her. And the idea of playing roles speaks quite well to her fears at the time and to why (as I said above) she wasn’t sure she wanted to know and talk about all the specifics of what I thought, wanted, felt and fantasized. For no matter how “no strings attached” such information about my interior is, she knew she’d always feel confronted and obliged to do something (anything) for me because she loves me.

That information about my interior can easily affect her perspective and the way she negotiates love symbols with me – indeed even seriously compromise her perspective and negotiation. In a way by maintaining distance from and ambiguity about my interior she was protecting our relationship – because if she were to lovingly catering to my ideas, symbols and fantasies out of a sense of obligation or guilt, she might actually help that larger process of organic and balanced love symbol negotiation instead devolve into a fantasy-based role-playing relationship.

And in another way, she was using intentional ignorance to protect her freedom and choice (which are part of her fiery self): by not knowing all the specific details in my head she didn’t have to feel (as) guilty or obliged when she made choices towards what works best for her, by not talking about some things she could get the ‘space’*** she needed to deal with the issue the way she wants to, the way most comfortable for her, the way that maintains her interior balance between herself and myself. And because I knew this at the time I didn’t press the issue, because I don’t want to be on her “to do” list - because if she hates feeling obliged, so too do I hate making her feel obliged.

Of course, it is always difficult to make the choice to be patient, to accept and cope with having an interior imbalance long enough to grow your relationship, to grow and balance your exterior love symbol negotiation in the way that’s best for both you and your beloved. Yet it can very much be a choice between making your partner feel obliged and making you both feel guilty on one hand and on the other hand feeling as if you are suffering in silence without happiness or fulfillment. With any fortune one can cope/manage an interior peace for as long as is necessary – because coping and living with a bad choice is worse than being patient, appropriate and considerate when (re)negotiating love symbols with the one you love most.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Today I might point out how “uxorious” is a better dynamic descriptor for us than “female led” and that even uxorious has it’s problems as a label, but back then I didn’t have any better or adequate words, symbols or metaphors to communicate my meaning.

** This is a significant and distinct difference from the so called “stealth submission”, which I think is semi-deceptive and do not condone in anyway. For her not to have that basic information about me and my thoughts, for me to withhold basic information about how I feel and what I want, would not have been fair or loving to either of us.

*** To her credit (and apropos of ‘where does it all end?‘), if there were always and only ever going to be this neverending frog-in-a-pot semi-tacit process of potential guilt and/or uncomfortable obligation and the closing of her freedom, if there were never going to be any set of symbols “good enough” for me, if she were doomed to constantly working to protect and defend her freedom and our relationship, then I wouldn’t blame her for wanting some sort of space. To be ever, always and increasingly uncomfortable? No, I do not want that for her; I don’t think anyone would want that for the one they love.

Advertisement