idwraith

I hate the phrase soul-mate.

I acknowledge that people instinctively start to stratify their relationships. That as primates we start categorizing people in terms of how much affect they have on our lives. We all have dominant and secondary people in our lives. The higher they are in our internal pyramid the more influence they have over your decisions, actions and emotions.

But I don't like that people feel the need to try and make claims as to who is MOST IMPORTANT in their lives. It started because of a comment my wife made about not liking to designate anyone as "best friend" because she has several different TYPES of friends. I mean, do you say that the friend you have the most experiences with is your best friend? Do you say the person you feel is most in synch with you emotionally is your best friend? Do you think the person you have the most fun with is your best friend? How do you categorize it?

Putting a person under that kind of category is like placing them up on a pedestal. It becomes their job to be the first person to comfort you in every situation. They have to have the good advice. They always have to be available to comfort you. They have to always be ready to lift your spirits. This kind of pressure is unfair to anyone. It means that when things go wrong they go WRONG. Serious emotional crashing involved. You feel hurt, betrayed, confused. How could your friend disagree with you, how could they do something you didn't expect? How How How?? You've built up this idea of what a Best Friend is under a mental framework and you're not inclined to look positively when that framework is broken by the reality of actions or thoughts.

The same goes for saying someone is a "Soul-Mate" only its even MORE extreme. To claim a person is the mate of your soul is to say that they complete you spiritually. That your souls are harmonizing with each other, filling all the gaps, smoothing all the rough patches. To my mind, a true "soul-mate" would mean that you no longer have need of friends, of family, of other lovers. Because you are saying that that person fills you to the core of your spiritual being to the point where you have merged on a metaphysical manner. Frankly I just don't like that, I don't buy it. Especially not when it comes from people who can't get a handle on their emotions and take the long term view.

There is nothing wrong with living "in the moment" but when you combine labels like "soul-mate" with living "in the moment" you end up with people who just off willy-nilly every time their emotions shift and change. You end up pursuing the dream ideal and forgetting to just enjoy the person for who they are. They become a symbol for who you want them to be. It's not fair to anyone and usually reflects a serious problem with short term thinking.

I like to think of love as being something nourishing, something that makes the "body" wholesome and healthy. I think you can look at someone you love as a restaurant. You go to them for nourishment, you take from them and feel better. You grow because of what they give you. There are good times and bad times, sometimes things aren't quite right, but over all its a place you really love to eat. I look at the polyamory side of things in that people don't eat at the same restaurant everyday. They visit other places, some wholesome, some a bit unhealthy, and some exotic and spicy. The variety of things make you feel satisfied, they provide you with a lot of experiences and a lot of different things to enjoy. Having a broad palette doesn't take away from your enjoyment of each individual things, but teaches you to value each meal for its specific charms.

I would love to say that I could appreciate the wide variety of loves in the world without determining where and what a person means to me in relation to the other people in my life. That I've gone beyond that. But I'm still working on it. I still define relationships in terms of primary and secondary, still determine who is a friend, who is an acquaintance and who is family. But I'm working on no longer needing to define things in such a way.