Relationship Reciprocity

Way back when I first began showing my passion (also here, here and here) and sharing my erotic truth with my wife, one of the first things she wanted be clear about was while this was fine for me and the way I loved from my interior, it was just not the way she was on her interior. At the time I practically laughed saying expecting your partner to be the same as you in all things, or expecting reciprocity from your partner in all things was a short sighted way to love.

I think this is still true about love and reciprocity and I don't think I ever suspected then just how true it was. For instance, recently I realized part of the reason I have been constantly telling her just how important she is to me, how important our relationship is to me, is because since she doesn't find as much existential comfort from daily stresses in the security of her partner as I find existential comfort from the daily stresses in the security of my partner. I even keep trying to comfort her when she is stressed out about practical things by essentially telling her, "these things will work out, and you have me, so don't worry" - well, this just hasn't been effective, ever. Just as I see that she and I both value comfort in times of stress but seek to obtain it differently, so too should I see that while we both value our relationship greatly, the way in which we value our relationship (and express it) can be quite different.

People are the same and are different; they might think differently about the same things or similarly about different things, or understand the same things differently, find similar comfort in different things, value the same things in different ways or value different things in the same way. Difference alone isn't good or bad; it's just different.

I have talked about how sharing the similarity of two interior spaces is what intimacy is all about, yet while similarity of exteriors might more easily lead to the intimacy of shared interior spaces, I think moving on to the difficulty of sharing similar interior spaces after taking the time and (intentional) attention to get over past and around those exterior differences can result in stronger bonds of intimacy. I have also talked about how it is all right for me not to value my wife's process to happiness the same way she does. Indeed one might argue that valuing her path to happiness in my own unique way is precisely what makes me able to dedicate myself to her so avidly without losing my own sense of self. The differences and similarities of individuals in a relationship is what makes the love symbol negotiation so fascinating and the need for symbol feedback so clear: we give and we take in love, different things and similar things, and somehow, amazingly, the economy of love is yet not reducible to mere widgets bartered.