With partners I often talk about the way love moves through space and time. Love is an energy to me, and the people I feel it with feel it deeply regardless of whether we are ‘together’ in the physical or relationship status sense of the word. Love is also a doing word for me - to generate love we need to build, create, care, hold, move, travel, see, touch, feel.
And yet, even though I know all of this deep in my soul, sometimes I feel an urge to trap myself and others on the relationship escalator because the anxiety of feeling like an outsider in this world causes us to clutch at more normative, static indicators for relationships. I want my partners’ friends to see me as a certain type of valid, I want friends to label me as a certain type of important, I accidentally default to forms of hierarchy with my nesting partner when he’s dating. But the reality is the depth of love shared between me and my community is stronger than any form of cis heteronormative social approval could amount to.
And reflecting on this made me realise that there are so many acts of love that I’ve experienced over the past few years that for me demonstrate far deeper love than the socially accepted or expected forms of commitment, but could be misinterpreted as the complete opposite by those who live in a different paradigm to me.
Here are just some of my favourite non-normative acts of love:
1.Cancelling plans
In our society consistency is deemed as a key indicator of commitment to a relationship. Those who want to spend more physical time together are seen as “more in love”. But I’ve felt more love and connection these last few weeks when I’ve had to cancel plans in favour of alone time or to respond to chaos in my life because it reminds me that I have nothing to prove to the people that care about me and understand me. The other day I was talking to a close friend about worrying about not being there for them or my partner recently and they said “What is two weeks in a lifetime?”. The love they have for me isn’t expectant, it isn’t seeking anything from me, it just wants me to exist.
When I cancel plans, I do so because I want to be able to be fully present with someone when I spend time with them or because I need to give myself what I need in order to continue providing the people I love with care and consistency in the future. This isn’t always the place people are coming from when they cancel on you, but imagine if we started with that assumption more often? How could it change the ways we understand love and relating?
2. Reminding someone of their boundaries
It might be partly due to being autistic and not always understanding my own limits, but there is nothing sexier than someone reminding me of a potential boundary. I’ve had so many people cross my boundaries in the past that I often take it as a given that my boundaries are invalid or a sign that I don’t love people enough. I’ve dated and been friends with many people who try to tempt you to cross your own boundaries, but more recently I’ve seen how much love and care there is from friends who help you keep your boundaries firm.
I was dating someone new earlier this year and out of a desire to be fun and easy and sexy had said I’d meet them after a workshop and was happy to come back to theirs. But they said ‘I know you can find workshops draining so why don’t you see how you feel at the end of the day and if you need to go back to yours that’s absolutely fine’. Sexy AF.
Of course this wouldn’t make for as an exciting TV script as when the date you’ve just met urgently shoves you up against the wall outside the restaurant without asking first but that’s not the type of desire that I want in my life, and I think most people only see that as hot because the media tells them it is.
3. Planning a holiday without you
I still remember what a massive turn on it was when my nesting partner sent me a list of potential Airbnbs for me and my girlfriend at the time to go stay at. Me and my nesting partner don’t get anywhere near as much time together as we’d like, and if we could we’d holiday together multiple times a year, but we also know how important and valuable that sort of time away is for all sorts of relationships.
When my partner looked after my kids so that I could go visit a friend in Vienna I felt just as connected to him through that journey as I would if we’d travelled together, because it is his love and care that is making that trip possible. In relationships we don’t always have to be experiencing the world together in order to experience the world together. If you are connected all that you experience alone flows back into your relationship in a multitude of ways. And by making space for our partners to have adventures with other people we’re allowing other forms of love to deepen and grow.
4. Not having sex
I’m very sexual, but I also have a complicated relationship with it due to gender, sexuality and past trauma. Plus I’ve been raised to believe that my value is in the sex I provide to my partners. I love the fact that even though I’m still massively turned on by my nesting partner we have ongoing conversations about how we incorporate other forms of intimacy into our relationship and continue to think about ways of connecting deeply in case there are any times in the future where sex isn’t as present. The other day we were planning to have a sexy afternoon but instead ending up having a super indulgent picnic in bed and just holding each other in the most mindblowing way.
A friend of mine who I’ve had a sexy summer with also suggested we do a little experiment next time we see each other to see how it feels to be in a platonic space again so that we both feel confident we can sustain and value our relationship if either one of us ever want to change the dynamic. This level of commitment and care has only made me want to experience even more sexual intimacy with them mind!
5. Fighting
Being surrounded by british middle class politeness and repression meant for a long time I’d fear conflict in a relationship. If it surfaced with a partner or friend it meant something was wrong, and the love we shared would only last a handful of fall outs before we decided to distance ourselves from one another. But with my nesting partner, who wrestles with me on all sorts of things and in all sorts of ways, I’ve realised that fighting can be a sign of deep safety, care and connection.
Fighting doesn’t have to mean being mean to each other. But being able to express our passion, discomfort, anger or confusion is so important if we want to be able to deepen our understanding of one another. And each time me and my friends and partners move through friction or conflict together, my love for them deepens and grows.
6. Having an abortion
I’ve written before about how my abortion in the early days of falling in love with my nesting partner was a demonstration of our love, and our desire to breathe more life into the world. As a society we prize those who raise children together and pay very little attention to the other things that partners and friends create together. For me the experience of choosing to have an abortion was perhaps even more of sign of commitment to my partner and the life we wanted to build than when I did have my children…which was ultimately born out of a misplaced commitment to societal norms and expectations rather than to myself or the people I loved.
Society and the media are constantly barraging us with a narrow idea of what counts as love and commitment. I’m forever grateful that I found a different compass to love by.