Love Relationships, Jealousy, Rejection and Liberation

by Adam Bregman.



  Love should be free. Nothing has the potential to be more
liberating. Here we have the power to take more control of our
lives and not be as tied down by clocks and bosses. Yet most of
the people I know have relationships that are more disabling,
confining or abusive than their jobs or school. I think one
reason is that myths prevail about relationships and sex that
reflect the thinking of an ancient society. Gender roles are not
crossed; boring, monogamous relationships drag on endlessly;
lovers feel that their lover's words are written in stone; that
all commitments are to be filled and that this relationship
dragged them out of the misery and loneliness they had before
and without this person, they can only fall back into misery and
loneliness. 

  People do not fit together like puzzle pieces. Love is only as
real as two people make it. It will not last forever. It may be
ecstatic for a short time and then completely downhill from
there, with both lovers trying to salvage what they had forever,
until they lose interest or pretend they need to stay together
because without one another they could only be lonely.

  Happy couples you see smooching as you watch them, feeling
alone and jealous, are not necessarily any more in love, happy
or emotionally fulfilled than anyone else. Both lovers can be
alienated within the relationship and be together for reasons
that may have little to do with the love that may have
originally brought them together. What really matters is how the
individual feels about oneself. Can they feel confident enough
about themselves to be relatively happy about themselves if they
are involved with someone or not? Will they let any one person
control how they feel about themselves? Will they look at
themselves through their own critical eyes or through someone
else's? When involved with someone, do they need to control them
like a possession? Do they need to know everything about them?
Do they ever need to tell them what to do? Can love not be free?

  Love cannot be completely free of painful, gut-wrenching
emotions. Nor will it ever be. Jealousy, alienation and fear are
a reality in a world based on coercion. But they can all be
dealt with without retreating into a  monogamous, confining
relationship or a lonely existence or uncaring attitudes used as
a defence against feeling. There is a happy medium 

{although it is not ecstatic or mythical.}

The true love or extended oneness that lovers endlessly search
for can never be found, because it does not exist and is not
reality. It is only a place in the imagination to roam and dream
about. But in the hard, cold, dark, scary reality that is life,
there is a balance one can find and survive upon that is happy
and free, but certainly never free of emotional baggage and
pain. No matter what your situation you can find that balance
that is happiness, but surely it is easier when you've taken
care of your most basic wants and needs. In other words, it's
harder to achieve any kind of balance when you're hungry,
obsessed or in ill-health.

  Most people think they need love and sex. Often when they get
it, they protect it and treat it like a possession. Love and sex
become a property. When their property is taken or tampered with
they become jealous, angry or depressed. Having sex or being in
love with someone does not imply ownership. We are all
relatively free souls in a trapped environment, and we all have
multiple desires which can be acted on or restrained. If desires
are always acted upon or always restrained they can only result
in unhappiness. Most people I know spend most of their lives
restraining themselves, because of commitments they have made to
their lovers or themselves. The rules they willingly follow
usually mirror society's age old rules regarding gender,
relationships or love. They are usually handed down from their
parents, but also are blitzed at us from every direction, from
the government; "concerned" parents who wish to make the rest of
the world as disjointed and boring as them; and the mass media,
which reflects as well as creates images regarding sex, gender
and love that people blindly follow and accept as reality. Their
reality gives you the freedom to possess and be possessed like
any other commodity and live age old fantasies of love that have
always lead to war, death and being stuck in the same old
dead-end routine for the rest of your life. This is the
contemporary and age old view of what love is, a rotting corpse
in a prison.

  Jealousy is a reality. There is no equality yet in our modern
society. Jealousy is an extension of what you think you have,
what you think you need to have and most importantly how you
feel about yourself. If you act upon jealousy and attack or hurt
someone because of your own alienation or anger, you are most
likely forgetting that neither you nor they can truly own
another person in a relationship. If two people are having a
relationship of their own volition, it does not necessarily mean
that you had nothing with this person, that this person doesn't
love you, that this person will never love you again or that
this person is trying to spite you. More likely this person is
acting upon their desires that may have little or nothing to do
with you. Are you a more unlikable or undesirable person because
this one person has chosen to leave you and do something else?
Generally attempting to get this person back will be futile. If
this person does come back, will everything be happy and dandy
like it was, or maybe never was, or surely hasn't been for quite
a while? Why did the relationship end? It really doesn't matter
why it's over, whether they come back or how soon you will find
another lover. What really matters is that this person has
become too big a part of your life and your happiness has become
dependant on them being there. You are not independent enough to
be happy on your own without this person. This can be your
lover, your parents or your best friend. It's not healthy to
channel so much of yourself into one person. When they
inevitably leave you, you will be all the more unhappy. It's
very comfortable and easy to get  really involved with one
person you know so well. It's much harder to take the risks in
an unfree society  and get to know new people, different people
and experience rejection. 

  Rejection is not a personal statement about you, it does not
sum up your being or what you're about. It can be the result of
a large amount of factors, that may have something to do with
you, or have absolutely nothing to do with you. Rejection and
jealousy are emotions that need not be sources of great
unhappiness. Nor should they be internalised or cast aside as
childish or something to be embarrassed about. Rejection and
jealousy are real, intense emotions. But by looking at them
through open eyes and with an open mind they need not be
debilitating. Nor should jealousy or rejection be used as an
excuse to cause harm to someone you're probably trying to tell
you love. 

  Your true honest emotions that you want to express should not
be repressed. Your point of view on anything regarding love, or
your personal relationships is likely to change daily or hourly.
Honesty must surely be used with a balance or you might tell
everyone you know what you hate about them and be left
completely alienated or more likely you might passively accept,
everything that goes on around you not to your liking and be
left totally depressed surrounded in what displeases you. The
latter is what most of the people I know do. They will passively
submit to anything that falls in to their routine, as long as it
is a comfortable part of their schedule. They will complain or
internalise their complaints and continue to walk the same paths
and will usually end up blowing up a long ways down the line.
Too much passive acceptance, toilsome routine following and not
enough new, mental stimulation produce the emotional basket
cases that are many of the people I know.

  Class is a big factor in who can be with who. Not just rich,
middle class and poor, although that is a big factor, but class
differences that have to do with cliques, fashion, popularity
and most importantly image. Real emotions are hidden behind a
veil of acceptable, correct behaviour. This kind of conformity
rears its head in almost every group.

  Gender roles are explicitly laid out for you so you don't have
to think or choose. Your parents and the rest of the world most
likely ingrained them in your brain from early on. Males are
supposed to be masculine and in charge. Females are supposed to
be passive and accepting. Males want to get laid. They think
with their dicks. Females are manipulative. They tease men and
fuck with their emotions. Men who sleep around a lot are studs.
Women who sleep around a lot are whores. Both parties are
supposed to be virtuous and true once they decide to commit to a
relationship. Men are supposed to drive and pay. Women are
supposed to look pretty and put out. No one should ever get
involved with their lover's close friends. Private lives should
remain private. Homosexuality is still taboo, but now relatively
permitted as long as it stays far away. All of the above is well
accepted and all of it is complete bullshit. Men and women
should be able to do whatever they want with their sexuality.
They should not have to hide it. They should be able to express
it non-coercively anywhere they please. Sex, even with "AIDS"
killing off thousands, should not be used as a tool for more
repression. Bringing everything out into the open and exposing
it for what it is, can only help to kill off the disease. Hiding
away behind untruths and ignorance is very comfortable and has
never helped to cure anything. Sex can be fun, safe,
gender-bending and openly free. Variety can only add to
happiness. Monogamous (I've used the word monogamy several
times. I am not limiting the word to strictly pertain to sexual
intercourse. I am using it to mean the restraint of any kind of
relationship that might be defined as inappropriate by a
possessive lover) relationships or lengthy loneliness can only
detract from life and repress desires. The act of sexual
intercourse in itself will not significantly emotionally
liberate anyone. 

  Only accepting oneself for what you are while continuing to
change the act freely to do the things you dream of doing will
liberate yourself from pain and alienation. I cannot say and
will never say that I am free of the intense emotions lied to
love and relationships that possess everyone. I can say I am
happier when I express my desires freely and I can accept
jealousy and rejection as real and never something to make all
important. One of the most liberating things I can do is laugh
loud and real loud in the middle of the most uncomfortable
emotional predicament or in an act of extreme passion and see
most clearly the great humour and horror in the emotions and
relationships that so often encompass and possess us.



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Reprinted with permission from "Anarchy: A Journal of Desire
Armed" #35 - 2.00 pounds from cool shops or from AK
Distribution, 22 Lutton Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH8 9PE.