A friend came to me for advice. She thought her boyfriend was lying to her and she was tired of being paranoid. It turns out he wasn’t lying this tie but he does sometimes. Even though it hurt me to say it, I think my friend is contributed to the drama in her relationship: how she demands all his plans, what he does every night, who is he with, who is he talking to… I think he lies to avoid getting smothered. I think he’s a good guy who wants his chance to shine, but she’s holding past mistakes over his head like this huge debt he can’t ever climb out of.

So this line stood out to me: “These things are like fidelity: they only mean something when freely given rather than required.”

I can’t and won’t try to ‘teach’ her this lesson but I hope she can see it with her own eyes soon.

I think of my own relationship when it when transitioned from high school to college… I know that it was only when I stopped trying to find security through what you describe here as tyranny, it was then that we were able to make our relationship into a healthy and happy and, yes, long-distance. It was scary to think how much of a “tyrant” I was then. An 18 year old girl trying to control her lover and best friend… I wouldn’t have thought I could do such damage but I came close to bringing down ruination on my own head. Now; power struggles have turned into power sharing, demands have transformed into gifts, we only destroy brick walls and not each other, and there is an acceptance for the “ebb & flow”, the “closeness & space”, the him & me.

Anyways, I adore this piece. I’m going to save it to my computer so I can read it whenever I start to feel even the littlest bit unlike like a queen and more like a despot.

LOVE your blog!! (New subscriber) Please don’t let this guy infringe on the writing time, no matter how wonderful he is.

Being purely selfish here … Kate

Thank you for the insights.

Seriously, Kelly, this is lovely. Much for me to ponder – and incorporate. I’m grateful, as always.

“I even see this trend towards coercive intimacy in parenting: who our children are becomes who we are, and so our kids must be poked and prodded and and sculpted and scheduled into our (self) images.”

I have an overly clingy mom, and in her family, disappointment and disapproval were used to keep the kids in ‘moral’ check with how we ‘should’ behave, rather than celebrating our independent selves as my brother and I grew up. It’s been hellacious understanding these patterns because that’s all I’ve really known in relationships, and when feelings of closeness must be maintained at the risk of one’s happiness and autonomy, it creates emotional havoc.

The more I’ve learned to breathe into space and boundaries, the easier it’s been to see these patterns for what they are: emotional manipulation.

It took space for me to let go of resisting intimacy – it’s still an ongoing dance, and actually, I hadn’t thought about it that way until this post.

Thanks for feeling your way around these concepts and sharing with us. Can’t wait to hear the merging theory.