een tekst - in het engels - die ik aan het schrijven ben over de relatie tussen iemand kennen en van iemand houden.
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“But then you cannot really know someone else.”
Oftentimes, this is the way people react when I tell them I’m polyamorous.
What? Not even a question? This statement, this judgement fat with suppositions?
“If you have sex with several people, then those relations remain superficial, and you don’t get the chance to really know someone.” - To make the ball of clichés, platitudes and prejudices even more inextricable…
Trying to understand, trying to disentangle … what do people mean when they talk about ‘really knowing someone’?
“Understanding what drives the other. Understanding what makes him/her happy/unhappy. Knowing what is truly going through their mind.” Is that really knowing someone? “It’s impossible to know the other completely. Even after many years, you can discover things you would have never imagined.”
The Western True Romance Imagery seems to presuppose that really knowing someone means you completely know the other. Ideally, you know everything about what makes the other happy or unhappy, what the other thinks, what goes through his/her mind … It is understood that knowing the other in this way is a condition sine qua non for loving the other.
In some way, I understand. At first glance, this idea seems to go beyond the idea of basing love relations on crushes. At least it allows for a conscious, informed choice for the other, with all the knowledge at hand, the choice for the other with his/her qualities and less likeable traits. (cfr crushes)
But is a person not much more than his/her likes, dislikes, his/her thoughts, desires, …? Is there not much more to a person than the identification with his or her mind, thoughs, desires, likes and dislikes … ?
In any case, defined or presupposed as knowing everything about likes and dislikes, about what is going through the mind, knowing seems to relate to same possession realm in which the whole western true romane imagery is drenched. To fall in love and be possessed by the other. To possess the other. To know everything about the other. To master the mind of the other. To know is to master, in true modernist scientific sense. To know to avoid surprises. To know seems to belong to the realm of power, of possession also, the realm of crushes and love/hate relations, the realm of the egoic mind. ELABORATE.
Not surprisingly, that kind of ‘love’, that kind of ‘knowing’ requires sexual exclusiveness. I belong to you, and you belong to me too. Just to get to know each other better. What? I’ll love you, on the condition that you love me, on the condition that you are sexually exclusive to me. Why? For most, it is enough to make the presupposition of sexual exclusiveness explicit to see that it has little or nothing to do with knowing someone else better. However, the presupposition is deeply ingrained, and polyamory is often mistaken for ‘veelneuekerij’ that it is worth to make the point here.
Even the True Romance affictionadi (most of us are to some degree) will admit that the ideal of completely knowing the other cannot be reached, whatever time you allow. I’d go further, and argue that, even if it would be possible to know someone completely, it is a very undesirable state. It is an unhealthy, fear-driven obsession that actually blocks the capacity to love.
In many ways, the ideal of and obsession with completely knowing the other runs contrary to true love. True love is unconditional, an not on the condition that the other only has sex with you or only spends time with you. True love is wanting the best for the other without egoic interest. Without the egoic desire to know and master the other. Withouth the egoic desire to be ‘loved’ – at least in return, so there is no debit. The UNCONDITIONAL in love is exactly what distinguishes polyamory from monogamy (short term for the western true romance imagery in which you find your soulmate, marry and be sexually exclusive to that one person for the rest of your life).
Stangely enough (at least for the tri-afficionadi), it is through unconditional love that you get to know someone else better. Unconditional love makes you listen, and so you will know the other, you will learn about desires, likes and dislikes, …. More importantly, loving will let you come in contact with the real other. What lies beyond his/her desires, likes and dislikes, what lies beyond the other’s IDENTITY. You will get into contact with more than the egoic mind of the other. You will get into contact with her/his being, which is love.
Onderwerp: knowing someone - loving someone 
zo jun 15, 2008 4:11 pm
