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At dinner a few nights ago, I told my housemates (my boyfriend and our friend AG) that I was writing a piece for BlogHer about where I thought my relationship would be 10 years from now, and where I wanted it to be.
The conclusion to the story I told them was “and I’m going to say I hope I have more than one meaningful relationship 10 years from now, and maybe that other relationship will be with someone like C.”
“Wow,” said AG.
“Are you going to say talk about who C is?” was A’s response.
“Not really,” I responded (you see, I have to keep some things private.)
While my primary relationship, and the one I hope goes on forever is with A, my partner, I don’t see our deep connection as precluding other meaningful relationships. I love A deeply, am thrilled and amazed we found one another, and would like to spend the rest of my life with him. But—at those cost of sounding like what my friend Christine describes as West Marin hot tubbers—I have to say I can’t believe that, ten years from now, I won’t also have other loved, wonderful people in my life. Like C, who I don’t know that well, but who I think is wonderful.
Of course, on one level, I am amazed I found A at all. After all, this relationship with A is fairly new. A and I will have been together two years come July. We’ve “been in love” for 15 months, and we’ve lived together, in a place we both moved to live in, for just 5 months. But before I was with A, I dated some great people, and before that I was married for twenty-something years. When my marriage ended, I didn’t expect I’d meet someone that I would want to live with, and here A and I are together, in the same house, and it’s all good.
But on another level, I know one of the reasons I fell in love with A is that we share similar values and outlook. We're both progressive, values-driven, identify as queer and non-monogamous, see sexuality as both personal and political, and want to build and participate in meaningful communities. As we grow older, say ten years out, I’d like to think that our ability to work together to meet our goals and build the life we each imagine only gets better.
For one thing, A and I want to live in community. Like our friends Raines Cohen and Betsy Morris, we’d like to find, or help create an intentional community in an urban area like Oakland where progressive dialogue and projects for positive social change happened every day. Ten years from now, I hope we are living in a community we helped to create, with a diverse and interesting group of people, making our community better.
Ten years from now, I’d also like to look back and note this month as the moment when A and I defied the odds and tackled our mutual issues with weight, emotional eating, exercise and making caring for ourselves a priority. We both have the habit of prioritizing work over working out, and we’re of an age it’s time to change that. It would be superb to look back at March 2009 as the moment when our resolve to exercise every day, go to the gym 3X a week, hike, bike and walk took hold in a consistent and meaningful way.
I’d also like to look back at the respect, compassion and trust with which we honor one another, and feel like that’s remained intact, and transferred to how we treat other people. There’s no question but that A helps me to be a better partner to him than I have been in the past to others, and that the love I feel from him keeps me centered and stable (along with the love and support of my family and son). His skill in communicating what he likes and doesn’t like—and sharing things that bother him—makes it so easy for us to talk together.
I know this isn’t something A can do with everyone, and it’s built on our mutual trust, but boy, do I l love it!
Ten years from now, I’d still like to feel like A is my best friend, my soul mate, my partner and lover. I hope the joy
