We decided that wanting someone was the illness.
That needing to be held was a disorder with a name.
We built whole languages for not saying the thing.
I statements. Soft startups.
Poised bodies leaning across the table at each other for an hour and a half saying nothing that costs anything.
We are so skilled at the draining tug of war where everyone leaves intact but no one gets what they want.
We call this resolution.
We call this growth.
We go home to the same ache and we journal about it.
Taking space is the nice thing we call dissociation.
Sitting on a phone, working out, spending an hour complaining… just to come back refreshed and get on our same invisible wheel again.
We have decided that jealousy is a character flaw.
That anger belongs in a container.
That caring is co-dependent.
That desire should have no edges, no values, no address, no claim on anyone.
And yet we know that good sex is full of strong preferences and contrast.
We tell people: expand your capacity.
We mean: become roommates.
We mean: ask for nothing real.
Your wife decides she’s a lesbian and the world has rearranged itself.
Open the marriage.
Hold space for her evolution.
Do the work.
Become who she needs you to be.
Your husband disappears every afternoon into a sea of teen-like naked bodies.
You fill the gap with wine and a chat window with your ex and a crew of other women who share divorce lawyer numbers and preach that being angry all the time is a gift to the world.
We are so evolved.
So free.
So open-minded.
We never make a scene.
We let things drift or we burn them so precisely only the parts we didn’t say catch fire.
But, love is not a regulation. And you fucking know it.
Love is the moment the other person reaches behind you and finds the thing you have been hiding from yourself and does not leave you even though it burns them too, at first.
That is the terror of love.
That is what we are managing around.
We have built a whole culture on managing our collective fear of reality and called it emotional intelligence.
The cure is working.
I write primarily to support my small business, christinaelaine.com
I am a somatic coach, writer, and curriculum creator writing about the interior life of modern relating, weekly on Medium & Substack. I also host interviews on YouTube.