I spent all week camped out on this island with two other teachers. They nicknamed us “the Island of Misfit Toys” but we knew who got the better end of that deal.

Sean sent me this email the other day, and it struck me just silly with happiness. He says he doesn’t mind my sharing.

Hey girl,

Liberation looks good on you

but your liberation also looks good on me.

because as MLK said,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1. People tend to assume that an open relationship is about “getting” (isn’t it weird how people use that word, which assigns connotations of privilege to something that most folks disapprove of?) to have sex with more than one partner. Folks get pretty hung up on the idea, and it isn’t really an important part of what I want to say. It’s distracting.
2. It uses that word “relationship” with the significance that I’m trying to separate from it. Relationships are everywhere, and I think it’s arbitrary how some get the capital R and others don’t. The most significant relationships in my life are not always with romantic interests

What I want to say is about liberation. I should have known I could count on Sean to help me find the words. He’s dead on.

Sleeping out under the pale night sky was awesome, and running upriver some sixty miles with hardly a sign of humanity was staggering (we passed another boat only once, cruising down from Circle with a snowgo strapped on). It’s hard to explain how it feels to find yourself in the middle of country as vast as the sky. Humbling and freeing, too.

I was under a lot more pressure than I realized, back when we were in a conventional relationship. Pressure to always be happy together, pressure to follow the standard relationship plot (love, marriage, babies, die together), pressure to be satisfied with the physical and emotional intimacy within the relationship, pressure to prop up the parts of the relationship that weren’t working to protect the parts that were. (I caused an important relationship to implode, once, by trying, in a very clumsy way, to confront these problems, and I’m still dealing with the fallout from that.) Every time I acknowledged my feelings of dissatisfaction, I felt guilty for letting Sean down. Things compounded.

It boils down to this: The relationship was constraining me, not supporting me (NOTE: don’t conflate the relationship and Sean. Sean has always supported me in every way). It limited my emotional expression and made me feel guilty when I stepped outside of those limits.

What a whopper of a realization that was. And it wasn’t Sean’s fault, or mine. We’d done everything right: we loved each other, we supported each other, and we trusted each other. We’d followed the recipe for success, so it was a sucker-punch when we failed.

The Yukon is full of gravel bars that are often completely hidden under just a few inches of water. Geoff explained that he avoids these by hugging the cutbanks where the water runs fast and deep, and by looking for swirls on the surface that indicate depth and power below.  This is basically the opposite of what I learned as a kid on the ocean, where it’s important to avoid squirrely looking water because it usually hides a submerged hazard.

Things got pretty bad last fall, at work, and I finally gave up and tried a little slash-and-burn, figuring I could start completely fresh: I quit my job and told Sean I was quitting him, and I cried a lot and promised myself I’d stick with it because temporary agony was better than a lifetime of tepid, nagging discomfort. It didn’t work well. There was too much to lose.

So, instead of cutting loose, Sean and I ended our old relationship and rebuilt a new, different one, where the key was liberation and mutual empowerment. The relationship would be flexible, all doors would remain open, and we wouldn’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, difficult feelings, or unconventional confessions.

To make this happen, we did away with commitment in the usual sense: We don’t count on a future together. We are not exclusive. We are reliably there for each other. That’s enough.

Security is a huge part of typical romantic relationships, and I now think that’s some bullshit. People lean on their partners to make them feel confident and wanted when they can’t love themselves, and that sucks. Typical romantic relationships impose limits on the partners so that both can feel safe.

I spent last week sleeping in a tent with the door open to the night sky and the river breeze and all the wild things in the wilderness. The yukon flats are not safe, but I wouldn’t trade the cool air and the sunset for walls and a ceiling.

Security should come from inside, like it’s the opposite of insecurity or something (duh). So Sean and I are working on helping each other feel secure from the inside out. The future is uncertain, but each of us is going to be awesome enough to deal independenty with whatever comes up. That’s our commitment. That’s our security.

It seems really stupid, now, but when we killed our old relationship, it felt like a big deal for me to get my own bedroom: I could stay up all night reading without bothering anyone (or not), I could have as many blankets as I wanted (or not), I could invite cuddles (or not), and I didn’t have to feel guilty about any of those things because we weren’t in that kind of a relationship anymore. I had always felt guilty before about wanting my own space (both the walls-to-decorate kind and the room-to-grow-as-a-person kind), like denying my partner access to my whole world was a sign of failure.

I think if I had been less-inclined to challenge myself and prod my discomforts (guilt, claustrophobia), things would have been different. I know people who are happy in conventional relationships, and I envy them the simplicity of that comfort. For me, though, I know now that it can’t work. The typical restrictions that a relationship imposes are too uncomfortable.

Typical romantic relationships impose limits on love, intimacy and sex.

1. Mainstream culture treats love like it’s a limited commodity, and it’s plain to me that it isn’t. I’ve noticed that the more confident and secure I feel, the more broadly and deeply I am able to love. This used to look like a paradox: when I was happiest and most loved, I was most inclined to extend love beyond the romantic relationship. Instant guilt trip! Pow!
2. Emotional intimacy is limited naturally by space, time and luck, but typical relationships impose other limits (and have other limits imposed on them by society, as I described here) that are, at best, pointless and, at worst, cowardly. There’s this idea that intimacy between partners diminishes if the partners are close to other people, too. Dumb.
3. Then there’s sex. Why does mainstream culture make such a big deal about sex in the terms and conditions of acceptable relationships? Isn’t emotional intimacy more important, anyway? No, it turns out, not to most people (I learned that the hard way). I talked to Sean about this last night, and he said something like “meaningful, emotional intimacy is way more important, but you can’t see it or measure it or even always recognize it, so people use physical intimacy as a symbol.” Swoon. There’s also a long history of oppressing women here. I don’t think I even need to touch that, but I want to mention that it’s time we got over it.

Why is it that there are socially-acceptable degrees of non-intimate relationships, but when sex or love is on the table, polarization occurs? Either you are, or you aren’t “together”, “dating”, or “in a relationship”. Bullshit. I’m in a relationship of some kind with each person on the planet. Why shouldn’t each relationship be unique? Why shouldn’t the people involved get to decide the terms and conditions?

I know some people who, in reading this, will miss the point. They’ll say, “wait, are you guys broken up, or not?” I asked Sean about that, too, and he said “that’s silly. If they hear what you’re saying, they’ll understand that ‘Breaking Up’ isn’t in the jargon for you anymore. You don’t cut someone loose just because something isn’t working, you change the relationship and find something new that works better. Creating space isn’t the same as failing. If they think that, it’s because they need a paradigm shift, not because you aren’t explaining it well.” He’s right, too, my brilliant partner.

From where I stand now, I don’t have to feel bad about wanting space and fresh air and freedom. The feeling is mine, and I love me, so the feeling can’t be wrong. I can embrace it and follow through on it, and the best part is that having space of my own somehow makes more room for Sean, too. I am not kicking him away to make space for myself in our relationship anymore: I am inviting Sean into the limitless space of my life.

I no longer have to wall myself off against new intimacy in order to protect someone else’s feelings. I can blur the usual lines between friendship and love to suit what’s in my heart. I’m more honest about my feelings now than I’ve ever been because there’s no need for guilt or censorship or dissembling. My discomfort, my crushes, my cravings for solitude; all of this I can embrace as mine and speak of freely. There’s no need to push down the stuff that wells up because, no matter how peculiar or unwelcome it may be, it’s mine and it’s part of what makes me awesome.

Now, I don’t have to think about someone else’s future when I make my own. I can move to Alaska without a plan to come back. I can say “I will never get married” and “I am going to buy a boat” and that’s it. It’s done. There’s nobody I must consult.

It’s a little scary, living outside the walls and ceiling, but it’s awesome to finally find a place where all of me fits comfortably.

Isn’t this cutbank on the Yukon awesome? It’s something like 25 feet of sand with a thin layer of soil on top. We stopped to watch chunks of sand the size of my torso fall from the bank and plunge into the river. Nothing in Alaska is slow or small in its magnitude.

In conclusion, I return to the beginning:

Hey girl,

Liberation looks good on you

but your liberation also looks good on me.

because as MLK said,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”