on asexuality & intimacy

thursday night, i had the privilege of seeing David Jay, of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, speak on campus. it was really interesting: he talked more about intimacy and about how we do and can relate to other people than about sex or a lack of it.

i say this as if i think asexuality is ordinary, but really, it's just that i've been exposed to so many different ways of approaching and experiencing sex that this is just another one. it takes a lot to shock me, and almost nothing surprises me anymore.
our LGBTQ student group, with which i am deeply involved, brought him to speak. before the event, someone asked me, "what does asexuality have to do with being queer?" my response? "how is it not? it's another way of looking at sex that doesn't fit the accepted standard." but i digress.

i particularly liked what he had to say about the major things that go into any successful relationship:
shared passion: you're not going to get along with anyone unless you have something in common. i think you could probably define "passion" loosely, although obviously the stronger the definition you can apply, the stronger the relationship has the potential to become. however, i also find this risky, and moreso in (monogamous) romantic relationships than in more community-oriented ones, because balance is so important. one person cannot be your entire life, so if your shared passion is (only) for each other, you run a serious risk of getting quite literally lost in each other. on the other hand, if you start dating someone based on a shared passion for, say, environmental activism, but that's all your relationship is, it's not likely to succeed either, because you're prone to getting lost in the activism. and we could argue about what it means for a relationship to be "successful."
emotional expression: in my understanding, this includes all means of expressing whatever emotion(s) you feel for a person, whether verbal or physical. presumably, in the relationships in question, those emotions are largely positive, but i don't just want to say "love" or "affection" because i believe the english language has a severe lack of words for such things, and i don't want to leave anything out. how do you feel about each other? how and to what extent do you express that? there has to be some communication of those emotions.
explicit expectations: you've gotta talk about it all, and make everything very clear. something i'm working on lately.
*i should probably note at this point that my exposure to asexuality was preceded by my exposure to (and experience with) polyamory--something else i've been meaning to write about for a long time. this means that COMMUNICATION is incredibly important to me (which may be further evidenced by my recent posts on storytelling/language/etc). i don't believe you can build any successful relationship, be it romantic, sexual, or otherwise, without open, honest communication, so this part of the talk really struck me.

in another part of the discussion, he brought up a bunch of binaries that need to be broken. the point (or one of them) being that there are spectra everywhere, and especially, it seems, where most people are least likely to expect them. the one that i feel requires the most attention on my part is the dichotomy of partnered intimacy versus community intimacy--which relates to the dichotomy of "partnered or single." this stems also from my exposure to/experience with polyamory, as well as experiences in which i have felt very definitely neither partnered nor single (a friend of mine asked me the other day, "how are things with your not-girlfriend?").

but yes: partnered intimacy and community intimacy. the last (serious romantic) relationship i was in was an open relationship, which we defined essentially as "do whatever you want, but you must tell the other person everything, and both people must be okay with it." this was very liberating for me, as i have shown a tendency to fall in love with more than one person at the same time, but i had never been in a situation where that was acceptable. i think most people assume that if you love someone else, it must mean your love for one person is somehow less....but this has not been my experience. and where would that leave parents who have 5 or 6 children? growing up, my mom always told me that the heart never runs out of love; it always makes room for more. maybe that's why my views are unorthodox! i further believe that love can never be bad: if something you call love is leading you to do hurtful things, then it's not really love, and you should probably reexamine what's actually going on. real love helps you to love everyone better, so why should it keep you from any one specific kind of love? [this is beginning to sound like it should belong to another post.]

in that light, partnered intimacy should never keep you from other forms of more community-based intimacy, and there's a whole range of possibilities in between. what i've found is that i really like being in a primary relationship, having that base to come back to, someone who i know will be there no matter what else happens, on a level that's different from but which enables and supports other relationships. but i also develop very deep friendships--and where is the line?

i haven't yet figured out how to make multiple romantic/sexual relationships work, and i'm not sure i want to. [i know i don't want to at the current time, for any number of reasons.] you could say i'm monogamously-minded with a polyamorous philosophy, which doesn't sound like it makes any sense. i [think i] would prefer to be in a monogamous relationship, but i'm not closed to the possibility of an open relationship, or polyfidelity, or any of the other options that i don't know about yet. people should do what makes them happy. the key is that open, honest communication: everyone involved must understand and accept the desires and expectations of everyone else involved. this is how you build successful relationships, sexual or non-sexual, romantic or platonic, monogamous or polyamorous.

[all three of the people who i know read this blog were in attendance on thursday night--i'm really curious to hear all of your thoughts on it!]