Breakdown

Break down the myths of a perfect you, a perfect relationship and perfect sex. Freedom comes when you’re your own person, free from societal, family and religious expectations in upbringing. Sure, it’s nice to be part of something greater than oneself, but deciding what to create, believe and embody comes down to you. Finding a way to connect to your own personal arc, the life you’re here to live, is just as if not more important, than the expectations you and others place on you, however well-meaning. These disappointed expectations usually have to collapse for you to live something meaningful to you. With substance and an interior sense of guidance and authenticity, you can go your own way.

Flight

I’ve never had kids and that’s not the loss I might have imagined. I’m glad I didn’t go through the ticking biological clock. I was always tempted by a long distance flight rather than the long haul of motherhood. I had lost pregnancies which gave me dark nights of the soul for a while, the illegal termination in Indonesia, the miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. A clairvoyant had told me I wouldn’t be a mother. Accepting that reset my inner compass towards a differently interesting life. Of course I’m never going to know the sweetness of holding a nuzzling baby or the pride of graduations. Or any of the touching and difficult moments in between and beyond. I see my friends who are mothers, some with kids doing well and others struggling. I’ll never know that level of attachment or responsibility. I didn’t want it enough.

Call

I love change and I know it takes courage. Change occurs through dissatisfaction, boredom, loss or burn out. It doesn’t really matter how. It takes a while to act from hearing the sirens call. The call is scary, a mission with no promises of known results. But when you know you know, it’s time to go.

Re-write

We get to write and re-write the stories of our lives, and to make meaning of our adverse experiences. For that there needs to be shifts in perception, without bright-siding what happened to us. With distance and perspective we can see how through the humbling losses, and processes of healing, we’ve become more compassionate, less triggered, more aware of the changes we sought, and our contribution to the predicaments. With the commitment to freedom from our past, we can move towards wiser choices. And better stories.

Intransigence

Build trust in yourselves and each other. Most relationships have times where you’ll fall out and discover a stubbornness in yourself or your lover. Ultimately if you’d like to stay together that has to be incorporated rather than ignored. So better strategies than sulking or silence will help. Intransigence usually means an underlying value or belief or boundary has been revealed, so getting down to that and why it matters is often more important than the inciting incident. It’s going to help you know each other better and where the tender spots are, and if to leave.

Mute

The most important things are the hardest to talk about. How do we find ways to connect in the complexity of sex for greater connection, empathy and liberation? Sex and relationships are a place where we might need to be most understood, yet are mute. Silence reigns when we don’t have the words, permission, acceptance or safety to express who we are, what we long for and what has disappointed or hurt us in the past. Communication about the helpful pleasurable, confusing or erotic things can’t take place amidst secrecy, shame, or feeling too much or not enough. Finding the kind words is essential.

Asker

Are you an asker or a guesser? Can you ask for what you want clearly, or do you try to guess if the other person will say yes, before you voice a request? To be able to ask, you have to believe that it’s okay to ask. To ask clearly and cleanly, believing that it is equally okay for the other person to say Yes or No. To accept that it is natural for you to still have the wish, even if the person you’d most like to help or share the experience with you doesn’t want to. To see that No as clarity, rather than rejection it gives clarity and a change of direction. Being a Guesser requires different mental acrobatics to fit your desire into someone else's day. First, to work out if the other person is likely to be able to say yes, alongside the risk of being met with confusion. Someone wanted a lift, yet instead of asking me if I could offer a lift at a certain time, they started asking me about my plans for the day. I didn’t understand why until I asked them why they were asking. Asking for what you need or want directly is a great shortcut. For you and the other.

Quest

Do we have an erotic soul? I have no idea. I wonder what landed me in the world of erotic adventure at the price of love. I wanted to know something beyond the initial high, then tedium of many relationships. I wanted to be passionate. I wanted something that wasn’t there. Yet I had no idea what it was. So I went in search of what I couldn’t imagine. A soul journey turns out to be a quest, but I had no idea then. What if I’d set out to understand love rather than adventure? If we live life going forwards and make sense of it backwards, what if they’re the same quest?

Enough

What if I’m never productive enough, peaceful enough, what if I don’t meditate, fail to soothe my nervous system, fail to get my self-esteem tip top or walk 10,000 steps a day, and forget to eat green leaves, seeds and sprouts? What if I don’t take all the supplements or do all the practices? Self-help is a bitch and an inner slave driver. All this self-improvement sucks. What if I’m doing okay, despite all that not doing. Maybe I’m doing enough of what I can to get by well enough?

Loophole

I’m a fan of loopholes, grey zones and seeing what’s possible. Any natural anti-authority stems from an unconscious belief that ‘the rules won’t let me’. It’s a drag. Yet, what if there is no big tantric rule book in the sky, what if there is a way through, and what if obstacles might disappear? These questions emerge from a curiosity about what’s true. Limiting beliefs are acquired in earlier years in response to not getting what we needed, whether that was the recognition of our potential, creativity, sensitivity or personhood. Operating from the unconscious, insidiously limiting our potential, restricting us from wholeness, while shrinking possibility and courage. Sadly, they weren’t true then, and they’re not true now. Yet the lack of feeling encouraged persists. The trick is to spot the limitations and consciously commit to moving beyond.

Truce

Polyamory done well is an art, there’s enough love to go around and no one feels left out, needs are met, security offered and compersion reigns. Another wonderful idealism when it works, challenging when it doesn’t. What if it's not whether we’re polyamorous or monogamous? There are so many kinds of relating. Maybe love is simply a truce? Of picking the person or people whose way of relating makes sense with your own to offer meaning compatible to the tenderness of past hurts as well as future desires. A meaningful island of sanity in a confusing cloud of options.

Grounded

How do we stay grounded in ourselves? I don’t know how you do it. It cost me a lot of cash, time and effort to get steady. I had to let go of hopes and dreams and create more realistic ones. Only after I’d turned up day after day, with a commitment to myself, to getting organised, to letting go of distractions and my natural proclivities to pursue escapism and pleasure instead of discipline. Reining in and following through. Determination played a bigger part than discipline. And then the magic happened.

Patterns

What are all the ways you’ve been disappointed in love? It takes a while to understand that old patterns play out. So, unless you find someone whose complementary trauma meets yours, and they or you are prepared to put up with a compromise for the sake of commitment, the relationship wheels keep on turning. A chance each time to cultivate self-awareness and to realise that all may not be well within ourselves. Acceptance of our flaws and recognition of our hidden gifts are as important influences as any of the other qualities on our putative lists of perfect partners.

Please

I don’t get this people-pleasing thing. I’m just doing my own thing over here. If you like it, great. If you don’t, great. You do the thing that pleases you.

Coincide

As individual personalities, we’ll be motivated by different impulses, differ in values, and see the world through a different lens. We’re not made for everyone to like us. Or be like us. What suits you might not suit me, and vice versa. Yet what interests me is where we coincide and what we might create. Can you accept enough of me and me enough in you, to make it possible to get on, spend time together, and head in similar directions, even for a while? Can we support each other, or do we need to veer onto different paths? It's cool either way; let's be a gift to each other when we have the chance.

Speck

You are amazing. A small miracle of existence. A piece of frisky stardust. A speck in time. On a big planet in an infinitesimal universe. I forget that, too. My insignificance is huge.

Mistakes

I’ve made sure to avoid politics after studying for a degree in it, and I avoided news after training as a journalist. Instead, I’ve concentrated on the personal, to have unconditional positive regard for individuals. To believe we’re all trying our best, even when we could act better. To know we all make mistakes, and while many of them are a valuable lesson, there’s still the burning blush of remembering my idiocy in my cheeks.

Nil sum

How do we resolve conflict when there isn’t a win-win? When it's a nil sum. When what one person wants is directly opposite to another. Whether that’s capitalism, colonialism or one person wanting sexual freedom, while the other would like intimacy contained in a relationship. We’re going to get disappointed, hurt, or lose out. We’re also going to be the ones who hurt and disappoint others. We can easily unconsciously be the person who over-takes, rather than the more socially acceptable over-giving. We often have no idea how much others accommodate our way of being, or give way so that we can have what we like. Living brings all these aspects into being. There’s an inevitability to inherent privilege which can shift when it’s expressed or when requests for changes in behaviour are voiced. When solutions are found instead of resentments. And an agreement made explicit about giving way more equally, or exiting the exploiting situation.

Change

I find change exciting. Novelty and variety are offset by loss and uncertainty. Change is great when you’re bored with one way of being. Less fabulous when you’re happy with what you’ve got. Either way, change is inevitable. Imagine if it wasn’t. I once read a piece inviting us to consider if the hours we spend in consecutive moments were done in periods over a lifetime instead. Imagine thirty years sleeping, 2 years showering, 5.4 years eating, 2 years making love, 4.5 years of arguing, 15 years of dissatisfaction, 6 years of failure, 7 mins of bliss, 25 years of television. It’s an invitation to choose what we do with our precious time. 2 years and 7 minutes doesn't seem enough.

Doors

Writing a book opened doors I’d never have imagined. Doors and corridors with more doors. Following the writing muse has taken me to countries, artists’ residencies, holidays, and desks with views of volcanoes. And wonder as words tippled out and stories told themselves. The sexuality journey was the same.