Interpersonal Acts of Softness

For once, as I sit down to write this week's newsletter, I have the problem of too many things vying for attention in my brain and not knowing which to pluck. It's a welcome change from the frantic scrabbling for something, anything to make meaning of, but I'm struggling to figure out how to turn them into a cohesive peice.

Something about a conversation I had with a friend this past weekend during which we discussed our difficulties with figuring out how to have relationships. How to be in relationships. What we want from relationships. We're both feeling a lack of fulfillment from the way we've been approaching romantic love, both hopelessly devoted to people who can't or won't meet us where we want to be met, who can't or won't give us what we know we deserve. She is a single mother and longs for someone to walk beside her in the journey of parenting, to be there for her in practical, tangible ways, to help her bear her burdens and build and strengthen her family. What I want is not so much, only to be seen, to be wanted and chosen, for someone to know me and, through that knowing, to love me even more. I don't need to be their only one, the sun they orbit around, but I do need to be something. Not a friend. Something else. We have both concluded that we need to go more lightly, take it all less seriously. We need, perhaps, to settle a little. Stop wanting something grand and sweeping and accept what we can find. I suspect neither of us will be very successful at this.