Being Committed

Next weekend, two close friends of mine are having a commitment ceremony. I was flattered to be asked to read a few words on the day, and have spent much of this morning planning what I’m going to say. The rest of the morning has been spent with G, looking at pictures of our new house which we are moving into in two weeks time. Yes, I’ve taken the plunge and agreed to cohabit with a partner again, something that fills me with equal amounts of excitement and trepidation. With all these changes, the talk in my group of friends is of commitment, just as people in general are discussing similar issues following government proposals for some kind of recognition of same-sex couples. I had to ask myself: what can we commit to another person in this life? And with statistics on relationship breakdown and personal experiences of painful break-ups, should those of us considering commitment really be committed?

We are all encouraged to commit to somebody for the greater part of our lives. Religious ceremonies, laws and Hollywood movies alike tell us that we should focus on finding ‘the one’ and once we have them we should make a commitment to be with them for the rest of our days, in the immortal words of eighties popster, Rick Astley: ‘together forever and never to part’. Many women might have left the ‘honour and obey’ part out of the marriage ceremony in the years since my parents tied the knot, and non-religious types might have found secular alternatives, but marriages and commitment ceremonies still mostly include some notion of ‘till death do us part’, the idea of this relationship as our highest priority ‘forsaking all others’, and the notion of sticking together for better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health.

I’m aware of criticisms of these ideas on both a personal level, from friends who won’t be attending the commitment ceremony, and more generally, in the online discussions about same-sex unions that I’ve been taking part in. Lesbian and gay communities seem divided over whether same-sex couples should seek the same ‘rights and responsibilities’ as opposite sex ones (being recognised as joint parents of any children, having rights to each other’s property, getting the same financial breaks, etc.) or whether this is ‘aping’ the heterosexuality that queer people should be all about critiquing. Just as with some of the feminist battles we should remember that ‘equal’ does not always mean ‘equally good’. Perhaps there are fundamental problems with marriage that we should challenge for both opposite and same-sex couples rather than taking it on in its entirety. Certainly many lesbians and gays who have alternative relationships set-ups argue that proposed changes wouldn’t represent them, just as those of us in the bi poly community point out that they fail to recognise our multiple relationships. It is still all about ‘couples’.

My anti-commitment friends also argue that it isn’t possible to promise to love somebody forever. People change a great deal in their lifetime, and with the kind of lifespan most of us can expect these days, can we really keep the flames of romance, passion and fondness alive for fifty or sixty years? Wouldn’t it be better to accept that people come in and out of our lives and we may be together with someone for a time, learning from them and enjoying them, but that we may drift apart or change in ways that mean we’re no longer good for each other, and it’s OK to recognise that and move on. As for ‘forsaking all others’, aside from the problems this poses for poly people like me, I also feel distinctly uncomfortable about privileging of one romantic relationship above all others, including family and friends. Perhaps this is just because I’ve always had such a close relationship with my sister. I’ve never felt comfortable with the ideas of putting somebody else above her in a kind of hierarchy of importance. Also the idea of ‘the one’ partner forever places a lot of pressure on one person to be all things to us, to provide all the support, friendship, sexual excitement, romance, love, fun and advice that we need. Would it not be easier to have our needs met in a number of close friendships/relationships rather than expecting all this from one person?

My first long term relationship really left me questioning the notion of ‘in sickness and in health’. I met N at University and we were together for three and a half years. I had never connected so well with anybody before and I certainly thought he was ‘the one’. I promised that I’d never leave him and we moved in together pretty soon. However, by the end of the first six months we realised that he was suffering from severe depression following the death of his father. He went through various kinds of therapy, but his depression continued. He often encouraged me to see the world as bleakly as he did, he was very insecure about me and found it difficult if I interacted with other men, he sometimes obsessed about frightening images which he associated with me, and he found it very difficult if I initiated any sexual contact. Understandably this took a toll on me and I ended up in counselling myself. Luckily I happened to be referred to the famous clinical psychologist David Smail who, in one session, concluded that there was nothing wrong with me apart from being in a very tough situation at a very young age. It took some months for his remarks to sink in, but at the end of it I decided that ‘in sickness and in health’ was not all it was cracked up to be and actually N’s depression was damaging us both. Seeing the impact it had on me was really not helping him to deal with it. I moved out and we worked on building a friendship that would be positive for us both. I do wonder whether the pressure to stay with the person we’ve committed to, and the insistence that there is only ‘one’ and we’ll never find anybody else, might keep some people in even more damaging relationships than mine.

Given all this, should we just never commit to anybody else? For myself I wouldn’t go that far. I’m wary of promising to be sexually attracted to somebody forever because I know from experience that such feelings can change. I’m also concerned about agreeing to live with someone or have a romantic partnership with them for the rest of my days. But I still feel that I can commit to something: to be in somebody’s life in some capacity for always (as I am with N and with my sister), and I think I can commit to continuing to work at relationships, trying to openly address any problems and to find ways in which they can work positively for all involved. For me, it’s also important to promise not to continue a relationship if it is, for some time, causing more harm than good to anyone involved. But I like to think that I’m committed enough to try various forms of relating before giving up entirely.

For my friend’s commitment ceremony, I decided to focus my reading around something I feel is very important in relationships – willingness to accept and embrace change. I’m reading out the chapter of Kahlil Gabrin’s ‘The Prophet’ on marriage, as well as a passage from Martine Batchelor’s ‘Meditiation for Life’ which I think sums this up well:

‘When you love people, you care for them and want to be with them but you cannot become one with them. You are separate individuals who can influence each other, grow together and support one another. Part of your experience is shared but another part is your own. Two individuals in a relationship are like parallel lines that run close to each other but never conflate; the space between the lines is shared but the space outside is distinct. You can create more space between the lines but you must not forget that there is also space outside. Your outside experience also contributes to the relationship. The more each of you grows as an individual, the more the relationship will grow and develop. No relationship can remain stationary because both individuals will continue to change and grow in response to their mental, emotional and physical conditions and external circumstances.’ (p99)

As for my own relationships, I have committed to living with partners again because I want us to be part of each other’s day-to-day. I’m hoping that I’ve learned from difficulties in the past so that I can also commit to living side by side in a healthy way where we give each other enough space and accept that we will grow and change.

In the next few issues I’ll be continuing these questions of relationships, considering some more of myths about love that we might want to challenge and the skills necessary for managing relationships. Probably I’ll be focusing on how to handle living with partners since that will be particularly salient at the time!

Feel free to e-mail me with any suggestions, questions or thoughts you have on these topics and any ideas you have about how bi people should respond to the proposals about same-sex relationships.