(I first wrote these words on September 20, 2002)

I'm not happy all the time, every day. My emotions wiggle around the entire scope, sometimes all within one day. This is true now, being single, and it was true for the 2+ years I was a polyamorous primary boyfriend, and it was true for the 7+ years I was a monogamous live-in boyfriend.

So, I'm not really talking about being "happy" single. I'm talking about something deeper than that. Being OK, or satisfied, or accepting, of being single. Except that right now I'm going even deeper, I'm talking about a commitment to being single.

Since making that commitment to the Zero Boyfriend Zone I've asked a couple people to go on "dates" with me, and a couple fellas have asked me on something resembling "dates", and I've had visitors, and I've gone to parties, and I've had sex with ... I don't keep track ... lots of fellas.

So, I'm not exactly being celibate, I'm not a hermit.

But I've made a commitment to myself -- that I'm not going to try to solve my problems, whatever my problems might be, by looking for a relationship I don't yet have, with people I don't yet know.

Along the way, I see other people trying to lift up their moods by ... looking for a boyfriend. I see people wanting a boyfriend, in some generic way, without even knowing which boyfriend they are talking about. They use a variety of methods to meet total strangers, hoping that one of these strangers will blossom into a boyfriend, dumping these strangers when they fail to develop appropriately.

I see other people going through wild mood swings depending on whether they have a new boyfriend, or whether they have just been dumped by a boyfriend.

I see debates about whether boyfriends should be monogamous, and about what sorts of ground rules are best in open or poly relationships, and about how to juggle multiple boyfriends.

I see people worrying about whether they should keep their boyfriends or dump them and try for someone better.

I see people wondering whether they've acted like a good boyfriend, or complaining that their boyfriend is not acting like he should.

I see jealousy.

There is so much activity and angst that I can avoid just by not wanting one at all!

What does a boyfriend give me that I can't get in other ways? If I want to live with somebody I can get a room-mate. If I want sex -- that certainly hasn't been a problem, people are willing to have sex with me. If I want snuggling or massage, I can get that from pets, friends, or massage therapists. If I want to go to dinner, or a movie, or play games, I have friends who'll do those things with me. I have friends who will listen to me and comfort me when I'm depressed. I have friends and family who love me.

I can get all these things without a boyfriend. So, I'm wondering what the big fuss is all about. Why have a boyfriend? Why did I spend the last 20 years of my life thinking that my life was not complete without one? My life is complete. Now.

-----

I was talking with Roger a bit about my recent ramblings regarding relationships.

I spoke in terms of "cherry picking" and having "multiple suppliers" because "single source suppliers have too much leverage."

He suggested that people don't like to feel they are being used as suppliers, that they like to feel special, and that one reason to have boyfriends is to have somebody say "you are special".

I said, "Why can't I feel special because I think I'm special? Why should feeling special require that other people tell me I'm special?"

(Now I'm wondering why we need to feel "special" in the first place ... where does that need come from? Why can't we accept ourselves however we are?)

Roger started using his boyishly-ironic voice that I love so much, and said, "Because we live in a co-dependent society! Other people must tell us we are special!"

Feeling special ... maybe we mean feeling cared for, that we like to feel cared for, that as human beings we know that we are not 100% self-sufficient, that we need other people to help us through our rough times ...

Back when I was living monogamously with KWC I used to think about our relationship as a form of insurance, that no matter what happened, we would be there for each other. That insurance evaporated one day. After it did, I wondered whether I'd feel better or worse had he died instead of merely breaking up with me. As long as he was alive I could blame him for leaving me, eh?

Seth (the author of Seth Speaks) made a good point during my reading last night -- that good and evil are not perfectly balanced, and that an expectation of perfect balance can cause misperception.

At times I've believed that every good thing that happens to me must be counteracted by an equivalent bad ... but now I realize that this was a misinterpretation.

Good and evil are also entirely subjective ... dependent on both point of view and focus, and desire ...

I used to link good with possession and bad with loss ... assuming that each possession must be balanced by its eventual loss ... therefore that each good thing that happens to me must eventually become undone ... the excitement of each new relationship must be balanced by the pain of its future disappearance ...

-----

However, the concepts of possession and loss are tricks we play upon ourselves, pretenses at permanence. Life is lived in progressive cycles, we breathe in, we breathe out. We arise, we slumber. We grow, we decay. We are born, we are extinguished. Each day is entirely different from the previous day. Our moods cycle, the seasons cycle, we careen from mastery to frustration and back again. To label one part of the cycle "good", and another part of the cycle "evil", is an attempt to cut the cycle in half, an attempt to breathe in and hold the breath and never exhale -- an attempt which ends in either failure or suffocation.

-----

Paradoxically, by living in the moment too well, we can forget or ignore the encompassing nature of these cycles. On our way up, as we breathe in, as we acquire, as we master, we are boundlessly happy and see the world as a bright and comfortable playground. On our way down, as we breathe out, as we lose, as we fail, we are lost in despair and see the world as a meaningless and threatening hell.

First written on September 19, 2002

There are those who repeat their patterns, and end up hurting, and fall back into the same patterns anyway.

And, there are those who think they learn from their mistakes, and try new methods, and end up hurting anyway.

Either way, we armor ourselves with our stories, stories in which certain details are conveniently forgotten, and others are stretched, because story-telling is not an exact science ... the requirements of telling a story warp our pasts into bite-sized packages.

We are never the heros, we are never the villians, we just are.

-----

Once upon a time, after a boyfriend broke up with me, I told my story to a friend, and he was totally supportive of me, and critical of my boyfriend, and I said, "Stop."

"You've only heard my side of the story, and I'm a law student who is very good at his craft, so of course you are taking my side."

-----

Reacting against the past by forging in a new direction sorta makes sense, except that the new direction is bound to be just as perilous as the abandoned one.

So monogamy failed me, eh? I try open relationships instead. So my first open boyfriend was the jealous type, eh? I try one who is less jealous instead. That didn't save me from relationship problems.

So, I try having no defined relationships, a Zero Boyfriend Zone. How is this supposed to be a less perilous route? It is something new, something different, something to be excited about because I've never done it before.

Learning self-reliance.

Except, I'm not, not really. I'm learning to rely on many people in small doses, depending on who is available, at random. I'm not self-reliant. Self-reliance is always a fiction, just like having a boyfriend you can always count on is always a fiction.

Sometimes I want larger doses.

-----

Maybe I have learned one thing. Just one. From all my relationships.

It isn't a hard & fast rule ... meaning ... it won't make all relationships last forever, it won't avoid all relationship problems ...

But ... the rule: Relationships require a lot of attentive interaction. This is what relationships are. Relationships are not things we have, they are things we do. People continue to exist while we aren't paying attention to them. If we don't pay enough attention to them, they will drift away in search of attention from somebody else. Sometimes they want larger doses.

Of course, even this rule has its exceptions. It can be taken too far. People do need breaks from each other, and will need to wander on their own paths. Sigh.

There are no rules.

-----

I saw this book, "If the Buddha Dated" ... and the very first sentence belies the entire project, "Of course, the Buddha didn't date."

That's what I thought immediately before opening the book, damn it!

I paged through it, and it had a lot of standard relationship advice, yawn.

The second part of the book is called "Awaken Your Desire" ... which is the opposite of what the Buddha would've done, according to his modern interpreters.

I've come to the tentative decision that romantic relationships aren't a healthy goal, that they are illusory, that they promise too much, that the desires attached to romance can never be fulfilled.

I'd rather pay attention to the people whom I know, in a compassionate way, according to my abilities, without having any goals or labels or desired outcomes.

The hard part is deciding which people to attend to ... but does it really matter? Can I promote my own internal happiness by making good choices about the people in my life? All the people I could choose from have their faults (as do I), and I'll have problems whichever way I go. Can I really banish all the people who cause me pain? Am I supposed to surround myself only with people who are always happy and supportive?

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How extraordinarily complex is your cognitive self-image structure? Not complex enough, and most likely wrong on several points.

Though our self-images are often self-sustaining, because we hesitate to take actions that would challenge them, and we tend to focus on information that confirms them. We rarely force ourselves outside of the box.

One important way in which humans deal with the chaos of life is by creating cognitive maps. Cognitive maps help us to find food, shelter, companionship, entertainment, security, and lots more. Cognitive maps don't have to be perfect to work well, they only need to be good enough to work most of the time -- especially when the maps are shared widely throughout a society. Yet, we rarely notice that our cognitive maps are imperfect, we usually act as though our knowledge of the universe (and our human society within it) is the universe, and we don't often trouble ourselves with meditations regarding what we do not know.

Our imperfect cognitive mapping abilities apply to ourselves as well. If you listed all of your self-characteristics, some of them would be wrong. The picture as a whole would be incomplete, inaccurate, and imprecise. For example, have you ever heard your own voice on a recording device? It doesn't sound like "you", does it? It sounds weird to your ears. You are used to hearing your voice from within, not from without, and unless you are a professional singer or voice personality, you probably don't pay any attention to what your voice sounds like even to yourself. You probably freak a little bit when you hear a recording of your own voice, if you are like most people ;-)

Well, your self-image represents your actual self poorly in other respects also, not just with regard to your voice. You don't look like that person in the mirror, you know. That person in the mirror is, of course, a mirror-image, flipped backwards right-to-left and left-to-right. Plus, most mirrors distort your image a bit, and most mirrors are too small to allow you to see your entire body at once, and a single mirror doesn't allow you to see yourself from other angles. You probably have no idea what you look like from certain angles that other people see all the time ;-)

And, your psychological self-map probably reflects your true self even worse than a mirror does, because you don't get the same sort of instant feedback that a mirror provides when you think about your personality characteristics. Not only do you lack instant feedback, but your personality-map usually causes you to experience your personality as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every time you make a decision based on "I am [characteristic X]" you have created a self-fulling prophecy.

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One by-product of a vigorous Buddhist meditation practice is a gradual dissipation of the self-image (along with many other faulty cognitive maps). Buddhists spend a lot of time doing nothing, and focusing on their present surroundings. While this might sound boring and useless, under proper direction a student of the Buddhist path will experience many insights during his meditations. Mainly, these insights are about the way we create dramatic stories about our lives, full of opinions and judgments and faulty assumptions, because we want our lives to be a certain way -- instead of attending to and appreciating the way our lives are, as is.

We attach great symbolism to arbitrary events, we selectively remember and exaggerate key events, and our stories about reality become our memories about reality, and we believe these memories to be true. Instead, scientific research has shown that our memories are limited, biased, and faulty.

A Buddhist meditator realizes that his memories are merely memories, that his fantasies about the future are merely fantasies, and that reality is the stuff around us right now, the 4-D perceptual well, the perceptions assaulting our skin and its specialized sensory organs. His knowledge, his imperfect cognitive maps, can be useful ways of meeting his needs, but that is all they are.