Travelling through time

“The past and the future lives inside the present’s energy
So show a little tenderness now and love flows endlessly
Time is on a loop like the sun, that’s it’s destiny” - Riz Ahmed

Time is not linear. There have been many moments when I have been shown that but wasnt entirely sure because my perception gets warped a lot. For much of my adult life I have experienced what I called "broken glass brain" on a regular basis where all of a sudden the reality of life would overwhelm me and my thinking would shatter into a thousand pieces. Sometimes it would feel like each of those pieces could hang there in the air in slow motion, while my human vessel panics frantically and cuts myself on the sharp edges. Until eventually a few days later, as if by magic, the pieces glue themselves together again just as fast as they'd shattered. 

These days I understand this to be an autistic meltdown. It is painfully excruciating and scary. The world (and time) as we know it completely disappears from view. But I realise now that what underpins these moments and sensations is the same thing that underpins the many beautiful mindblowing moments I've had during connection building, creative activities or sex where my brain explodes and time stands still, speeds up or goes on forever. In each of these moments, the painful or the ecstatic ones, I believe what I am experiencing is both infinity and nothingness. Its almost like this world disintegrates and my consciousness is floating around in the dimension above us.

And in these moments it's as if my past or future selves can pass messages to me. Many of us are well versed in communicating with our past selves - for lots of us they still exist as visibly as the person in the mirror. The fear and pain that I carry from the past is present constantly, the teenager or child that came before can speak through me whenever they choose. As traumatised beings we are rarely relating with the person right in front of us.

But the future is different. Many of us don't believe people can see the future, let alone speak to it, but when I first experienced the depth of my connection with my partner I realised we are swimming in it right now. 

When I simultaneously and suddenly fell in love with my anchor partner there was a moment where it felt like I saw and experienced every single layer of our existence all at once. Initially I believed the sensation was a signal of some forms of past lives. As if my cosmic being had been searching for this through past eras and other dimensions. As if we had known each other for a millenia on a cellular level. What I have come to believe now though, as I unlock more wisdom about the way time moves, is that in that moment I saw the entire universe forever. 

As I think back to that moment the closest way I can describe it is through the metaphor of a button switch for a floor lamp in a darkened room. Its as if my foot pressed momentarily on that button and it lit up everything in a fraction of a second. What I saw during that illumination was my fate. 

My fate to be loved wholly and purely, and from that point onwards to forever be seeking to connect with that love no matter what separates us in the years, universes and dimensions to come. Perhaps I will be stuck in an endless timeloop, replaying and re-exploring the depth and beauty of this love. If that is the case I am at peace and content. I am even content with the death or loss of the people I love as a result. When me and my partner had sex the other day it felt as if my future self had travelled back into my body to experience every layer of the person the other version of me was presently grieving many decades into the future. Knowing I did not need to fear the potential loss of the love of my life was profound. Knowing that our love and experiences exist infinitely - regardless of the direction we travel through time. 

Or perhaps time is not cyclical either, but instead concurrent. And with that I could reach through the expanses of time to the ghost of my grandma, or my child as an adult, and connect and settle our souls. If this is the case I can learn to stretch out through time, reaching into the past to tell my wounded self that this love is here to stay, or my future self that I am safe and I am home.

As I hone my ability to travel through time, I discover that my broken glass brain is more a signal that I’m not in alignment with where I’m supposed to me. And as I learn to follow my instincts I am finding I can access love, connection, reassurance beyond imagination. The other day I stood on the steps of a random hotel in Amsterdam, waiting for a friend to get a taxi home, and my soul travelled into the future and felt as if I was remembering a deep sense of gratitude for the evening we had shared. What a powerful feeling to know you are exactly where you are meant to be.

Loving as world-building

There’s a million painfully bizarre ways that people refer to the central relationships in their lives but one of my the least favourite phrases I hear people say is “we’re settling down”. We are often led to believe that the heat, energy, and electricity we feel within connections are simply symptoms of early days excitement, and that compromise and endurance are what ‘true love’ looks like. But what if both these narratives are incorrect? What if the buzz we crave from new relationships is because capitalism has stripped the every day joy and ecstasy that is possible when we go deeper into our humanity? What if when we look at the idealised long-term monogamous relationship we are being sold something that feels like comfort in order to ensure we remain quietly complicit within the broken systems that are rapidly destroying the world around us?

In many ways I had a fairytale romance when I married and had kids with my best friend. We’d ticked the boxes and we were ready to be ‘settled’ as a nuclear family (albeit within a life full of debt and unhealed trauma). But to sustain the love story we’d need to commit to repressing whole parts of ourselves - in fact as two trans people hiding within a heteronormative world we actually needed to hide ourselves entirely. And this is not uncommon even within monogamous relationships between two cis hetero people. When ‘two worlds collide’ it is commonly believed that you have to lose parts of yourself if you want to maintain that connection. Goodbye solo travelling. Goodbye to the hobbies that consume ‘too much’ attention. Goodbye affectionate friends. Goodbye to the mother that annoys your other half. Goodbye to challenging the status quo because it’s better to be stay safe and contained now that someone loves us.  Goodbye to changing the world. And that’s if we’ve even bothered to bring our full selves to our relationships in the first place - most people connect with others by presenting a narrow, curated version of themselves that they believe is most palatable to their colleagues, friends or lovers.

And while some of us might “choose” to settle down and narrow in these ways, many others find themselves forced into this way of living and loving as a result of their partners’ possessiveness or wider cultural or societal expectations. In “Abolish the family” this type of love is described as ‘property love’.

Until my relationship with my anchor partner Nick, I had no version of love that demonstrated anything other than the above. I never knew what love looked like because my free will/spirit had been crushed under the weight of the cis heteronormative white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. In “Abolish the Family”, Sophie Lewis shares a quote about “Relinquishing the organised poverty in favour of an abundance we have never known” and it makes me realise that my love only transformed when I accessed/ allowed myself experiences that were completely beyond my imagination. It is through those moments, where I step out of this world and experience a whole new world, that I learn how to keep expanding what is possible. It gives me the tools, insight and knowledge to build and shape an existence more powerful and profound than I could’ve ever dreamed.

When my partner says “We’re going to keep building a world where…” it runs through me more than words like ‘I love you’, ‘Marry me’, ‘I’m yours forever’ ever could.  Because it shows me that our love is alive and active, and it doesn’t simply exist… it creates! As an example, when I have an autistic meltdown I no longer feel the need to shut down parts of me to protect my relationship, and Nick doesn’t feel like he has to pretend to be okay with things to protect me. Instead he holds it all, even when it doesn’t make sense, and says “We’re going to keep building a world where your brain and body has more of what it needs”. And this is now how I want to love everyone.

With my kids I don’t want my love to be expectant or imposing. Instead of “Because I love and care for you, you should listen to me”, we will get creative together. We will explore the shape of our love, and let it shape the way we live together. I also won’t love them passively out of duty and biology. We will work hard to create worlds together where we can discover our authentic connection, and our love will grow when we need it to, and retreat when they need more from others.

In addition to this I think it’s important that this world-building form of love is open and expansive. Sometimes we shelter within the worlds we’ve built - as a queer trans person this has been deeply necessary at times in order to protect my energy. But many people exist within a ‘batten down the hatches’ or ‘us against the world’ form of relating - creating isolation, separation from community and fuelling toxic cycles of co-dependency.

In ‘The Mushroom at the end of the world’ Anna Tsing talks about the symbiosis that occurs between fungi and other plants and trees. She talks about how humans have often focussed on categorising individual species, but that actually fungi often join forces with other living beings to create whole ecosystems, and that the ‘individual species’ within this would not exist without the other.   

When I think about this, I think about the partners, friends and family I actively choose to connect with to create community. Community does not passively happen because we are simply connected. There must be investment in how ideas, culture, and value flows within that community. We are a community because we can create worlds together. Those worlds can simply replicate other worlds or we can love even more actively and put the work in to actually cultivate something magnificent.

And when loving is about world-building we can finally discover the true power of it. It is an endless expanding, renewing, cyclical resource. I’ve often joked to partners that the energy I feel as a result of mind-blowing sex is revolutionary, and that more good sex could be the answer to most of societal problems. But there is a half truth in that. As described in Radical Intimacy or this blog post on queer platonic relationships, capitalism has attempted to commodify everything including love and relationships. When we finally realise that our love can not be contained, and that loving others should not need to involve making ourselves and our worlds smaller, we might actually discover an authentic existence that is both electrifying and rooted, freeing and safe. An expansive world where loving is the currency that keeps us all thriving.

Are stability and relationship anarchy incompatible?

Many people within my life, whether they are monogamous or polyamorous, have responded with caution when I mention the concept of relationship anarchy. The concept of relationships being shaped and reshaped, and individuals having complete freedom over what they share with who, can feel daunting for some people. In a world where we have not developed enough skills to navigate fluidity and change, it can feel overwhelming to have to continuously question what a relationship is and design it based on the deeper fundamentals of who you are and what you desire at that moment in time, rather than on a simple label or static status.

Quite often people incorrectly believe fluidity equals instability. This belief is held both by people with systemic power who want to maintain a status quo which provides them with comfort and control, as well as by people who are oppressed and harmed by the system. We are taught that if we can manage to gain some security and certainty we will be safer within that system. Even though my body and brain actually feels more steady and grounded when I’m able to flow and loosen my grip on the world around me, there are very few situations where I feel comfortable enough to flow in that way without harm or risk. As a result someone like me could incorrectly assume that it is the fluidity and uncertainty within my life that is dangerous. But the truth is simply that our systems and structures are not built to support fluidity and flow - they are rigid and ruptured - and so therefore flowing within them can bring risks. 

Rigid categorisation is deeply woven in the fabric of our society and legal systems. Throwing away that categorisation (and the inherent hierarchies that come with it) is like stripping off naked at a party. While that might be liberating for some, many of us may experience more vulnerability than others when enacting that. As Andie Nordgen writes in the Road to Relationship Anarchy: “The cost of making a completely custom relationship agreement can look very different for different people, and the tyranny of “structurelessness” must be considered — where too little structure can turn into power and benefit for those who already possess it. Relationship Anarchy must be equipped with this power analysis, and be open for declaring structure to relationships when it’s needed to protect individuals from each other.” (Thanks to my good friend Chan for bringing my attention to this quote)

In addition, regardless of the structures we are part of, we do all crave and need consistent love to feel secure. Whether that’s from ourselves, our partners, or our friends. Within our society we have falsely presumed that monogamy and romantic love is synonymous with commitment, consistent love and stability. And in turn we have wrapped up all forms of relating into that monogamous commitment - sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, financial support, co-habiting etc. This is why it is easy for so many of us to perpetuate the hierarchy that suggests romantic love from a single partner should be prioritised above all else. 

While many people perceive Relationship Anarchy as anti-hierarchy, in my experience the underlying nature or need behind some hierarchies may still exist. It’s just that there isn’t any hard or fast rules around them being arbitrarily dictated by labels. Instead you are consciously engaging yourself and your connections in deep work to ensure you are making choices that reflect your autonomy rather than narratives that have been put upon you.

Relationship Anarchy allows me to unpack presumed norms around what stability and love is, and instead create more conscious, valuable  and aligned versions of love and care with my partners, friends and communities. For me it is about unpacking every layer of care and pleasure that we might share with other people, and actively deciding whether that is truly important or not within a given context. We design our relationships based on us as individuals and collectives rather than presuming you have to do something or prioritise something because other people tend to wrap those things up together, or because that’s how you’ve done things in the past. 

As an example I used to think that sharing your money with a romantic partner was a sign of deep connection, trust and commitment to mutual support. But having been through a relationship where much of the latter wasn’t actually present and I experienced financial hardship as a result, I’ve learnt that there might be situations where I need to maintain financial independence regardless of how much I care about someone else. At the same time there are other contexts where it makes entire sense to share finances… not necessarily because of love but because of a communal commitment to investing in a particular kind of life together.  At a more basic level an ex of mine used to praise me for bringing them a glass of water when we went to bed - saying I demonstrated so much more care than their other partner who would never do this. At the time I didn't see it as a important act of love, but the status they had given it made me panic about regularly servicing them with water to show them I cared. And since then I’ve event found myself having momentary unexpected feeling of resentment when my current partners don’t bring me water at bedtime - even though it never was and never will be important to me personally.

Within Relationship Anarchy, if I am someone that needs more emotional intimacy than others, then I am free to seek and cultivate that from multiple sources. I can make it central to all kinds of different relationships, whether that’s my partner, a friend, a therapist or the person that runs my local gym. The same goes with sexual intimacy. If that is core to my experience of the world and it helps to keep me grounded I can seek that with whoever I wish whenever I desire. Or perhaps sexual intimacy gets in the way of emotional intimacy for me, so I can choose to prioritise the latter as core to a relationship with a long-term partner, and only enjoy the former sporadically with other connections.  

For me relationship anarchy in a broad sense, and non-monogamy more specifically, is just an extension of how we should all be learning to relate to others if we want to create a society that values individual autonomy and collective care, over and above rules and hierarchies enforced by those who wish to oppress and control the behaviours and freedoms of others. 

Capitalism wants you to wrap up every single need into one person because it means you have to pay to outsource anything you can’t manage or meet within your household. In most situations it is nearly impossible for a couple to single-handedly raise children, financially support a family and still maintain nourishing intimacy - unless they can afford to pay a nanny to be their co-caregiver. Capitalism believes it is acceptable for a low-paid cleaner to help you out in your home, but it does not like it when multiple adults wish to live together out of love and friendship in order to share this burden collectively. 

Growing up in a society fuelled on isolation, it is no wonder that desperation for control and order becomes the stance that many of us adopt when it comes to relationships. As our one last life line to connection and care, loving relationships become a commodity that someone or something else could ‘steal’ at any time. Why do children act out so viscerally when they parents are glued to their phones? Because someone is stealing our attention. 

But we will only be able to access everything we need to cultivate healthy, stable, consistent care when we learn that we cannot control other people’s behaviours, and that our relationships are only worth as much as the value we wish to create together rather than the status or obligation that is bestowed to us by society based on exclusivity, marriage or child-rearing.

Relationship anarchy isn’t disarray and chaos. It is a way of building thoughtful, empowering relationships that generate mutual value for those participating in that relationship, Only once we are capable of experiencing multiple deeply mutual and profound relationships in a variety of ways within our communities will we understand what true stability and limitless love and care can look like.

When love becomes a world of endless possibility

Some of the biggest myths within our society centre around love as a “finite” resource. That we need to 'settle down’; that it is inevitable that sex and intimacy dries up eventually in all relationships; that the presence of multiple loving relationships is a threat; that if someone gives the same love and attention they give to you to someone else it makes their love for you lesser; that we must sacrifice ourselves for love.

But over this past year or two I've discovered that love is endlessly expansive. And that relationships are only relationships if they are forever changing and morphing and growing - being shaped by and shaping the people who are part of them. We were told to ‘settle’ so we could be controlled by our capitalist, patriarchal society. So that we would be in constant deprivation of all the love, and therefore separate ourselves from each other and from our own bodies, and instead seek comfort in other non-human forms.

Each time I have sex with my partners it unlocks a new level of understanding, of peace, of clarity, of joy. And each time I feel like I could both do that act forever and am overwhelmed by how much more there is to still explore. There isn’t enough time within our lifetimes to explore the expansive possibilities of sex. Which is a world removed from how I used to understand sex. The world I used to be part of told me that sex shrunk over time and wasn’t meant to be the centre of our relationships. (Of course when I say ‘sex’ I’m meaning far more than just intercourse and foreplay - sex is so many things now that I know even if my health does not allow for physical sex there are other ways of creating these endless experiences together.)

Each time I see my partners give their love and attention to another, the love between us continues to grow and expand. I still have to wrestle with the myths I’ve been told, sure, but I am mostly overcome with pure joy that it is possible for them to love at these depths. I see our love in a new angle or light from witnessing their love. And their love and my love for others is made possible, in part, because of the expansiveness of our love. There isn’t enough time to experience every layer of love to it’s full depths.

And when you get to a place where you know that love and sex and connection is a world of endless possibilities; when you understand that there isn’t enough time to even experience all the things you know are possible (let alone the things you’ve not yet understood); you learn to enjoy and savour each gift that love brings to you. To the point where you are experiencing the most profound layers of it even in the most mundane moments. That is expansive love.

It sounds like a dreamworld as I write this. And it is to many extents. But living in this space of endless love is not necessarily a walk in the park. It’s not like you suddenly become a human that is free of the societal shackles, or where love trumps every pain and discomfort in your life. In many ways I find I feel pain in deeper and spikier ways now because every inch of my soul and body is open to receiving love. I still feel the wrath of societal shame for my choices and judgemental concern from people who don’t understand that my security now stems from love rather than fear. So much pain and hate still exists among all of us. Moving to a place where love is a world of endless possibility requires us all to journey there, and that is a long journey for sure.

But knowing that that journey is indeed possible and that the narrow stories about what love looks like or feels like were incorrect - and that I’m not sacrificing myself any more for love but instead that I am love, we are love, and it’s expansive beauty is staring us right in our faces - that gives me hope and comfort through everything.