Self-Bonding > Pair-Bonding

Almost three years ago, I started wearing a ring on my left middle finger because I found it in a box while I was moving, and I thought it looked cool. After a bit of research on ring symbolism, however, I found that the left middle finger represents order, structure, and personal responsibility. In astrology, it represents Saturn which coincidentally is the dominant planet in my natal chart. Saturn governs restraint, the ability to set boundaries based on logical principles, and it often results in rather conservative social viewpoints. I was like “sweet, that sounds like me”, so I kept wearing it and still do.

One of those viewpoints is that you should not get involved in someone else’s life until you have yourself somewhat figured out. I didn’t date in high school, nor did I have much of an active interest in women until I was in my mid-twenties. As a young observer not totally blinded by my testosterone drive, it seemed to me that people couldn’t set proper boundaries for themselves when it came to relationships. They couldn’t help deferring to others in the face of their own problems, sometimes at huge costs. As a Saturnian, I just didn’t understand that lack of self-restraint.

Most relationships seem unhealthy to me; most people, in my rather psychoanalytical view, seem to enter them on the basis of a deep personal and potentially clinical issues that absolutely must be dealt with. The individuals are pawns during each other’s healing, making a dramatic demise inevitable. There is plenty of folk psychology meowadays, unknowingly based on immature social-constructivist philosophy, that says that this is “totally OK” (emphasize with an annoyingly feminine tone of nurturing approval) – that we should learn to heal in the context of a relationship because that’s just how people naturally evolve as social creatures. We cannot have the foresight to avoid having to learn from our mistakes, so we attract those who are roughly as emotionally fucked up as we are, and the goal of a relationship is to grow out of that fucked-up-ness together.

While I see value in that, for we do attract and deserve no better those who are as emotionally as fucked up as we are, it is far from ideal and totally preventable to enter a relationship on this basis. We can cultivate our intuition and develop foresight to not always learn the hard way.

Perhaps I am not much of a social creature, and maybe my sex drive is lower than that of the average near-prime male, but a good person to me is self-aware, identifies and deals with their problems alone, and goes to great lengths to avoid involving others in that process. If you cannot stand to be alone, then you should practice by getting your own place, and get comfortable with the fact that when you’re left alone staring at a wall on a Saturday night with no one to entertain you, your subconscious mind will bring some very dark and disturbing things to you consciousness. You should learn and accept that these are very real parts of yourself which, if not meditated on, will eventually control your behavior without your conscious consent, at which point you will be so ego-controlled that you still may not learn from those mistakes. So, do that before you involve yourself with others, or else those others will be collateral, helpless while you sloppily come to terms with yourself because you couldn’t just sit down and meditate without having a screen of useless, dopamine-triggering bullshit in front of your face for five minutes.

At least for me, being with someone else is for mutual enjoyment and for nothing else. The last thing I would want is for them to make their problems mine (at least without the intention to improve – I’m more than happy to help someone who needs and wants that) and for me to burden them with my problems. I have my faults, but I am very well-adjusted in at least this way. I have a perfect track record of having had no relationship drama as a result of this principle. I can honestly say that I have seriously burdened not a single soul with my troubles. How generous of me.

In my years of maturation, have grown obsessed with being alone. It all started… well, from birth of course. This is in large part a natural proclivity. My parents sometimes recall my waking up in my crib and happily entertaining myself with my toy cars for any length of time until my parents decided it was time to take me out. Later on, I remember going to sleepovers and on camping trips with other kids (on the rare occasions that my parents were able to convince me to), playing variations of hide-and-seek, and feeling most at peace while I was by myself, hiding, especially in stark contrast to the social context of being with other kids minutes before which epitomized ‘unpeaceful’. My thoughts were finally able to flow without distraction. My mind and body were finally able to rest. It reminds me of how a married man with kids says he only has time alone while he is in the bathroom taking a shit, and he cherishes that time sweetly. Being the “old soul” that I am, I was so relaxed in those moments of hiding that I felt my bowels move too, and I do recall once or twice actually shitting my pants. So, even as a very young child I felt alone, but I was was at home in that state. At home, alone, with a shitpie in my pants.

I have had roommates over the years who certainly did not understand the concept of healthy solitude, so they couldn’t respect that in me or in anyone else. I would spend an unhealthy majority of my day mulling over how imprisoned I felt from having to live with them. They simply didn’t understand what I thought were common social rules: having the basic decency to avoid bothering the people they lived with unless they really needed something, keeping their shit out of the common areas and cleaning the kitchen after use, turning the handle before opening and closing a door in the morning and at night when they weren’t sure if their roommates were sleeping, etc. These are basic things, no? Unfortunately, one or two of them were good friends of mine, but it was still not worth keeping them in the house even if that meant ending those friendships. My mental health was at serious risk. I had to kick multiple out for “disturbing the peace”.

“Home” is a sanctuary – a place for peace – regardless of how poor or well-off you are. Those who don’t define ‘home’ in this way are not peaceful, and they seem to lack awareness of others and of themselves. I’ll pay the extra money to live alone no matter how bad things get, always. The point is, though, that these people also had serious problems in their relationships if they were able to have one at all. Their inability to be alone made it difficult for them to pair-bond intimately. I didn’t really have a problem with finding a relationship. Looking back, I just didn’t want it. I just saw it as the only way to explore sexuality in a safe and consistent way — a trap many fall into (I’ll eventually write another piece on why that norm should be destroyed for the sexual well-being of all).

I remember telling my girlfriend at the time, who conveniently lived over an hour away, that I could not wait to have my own place and that I foresaw my wanting to live alone for the majority of my life. It was then that certain adult values started to surface for me, and coming home to peaceful solitude everyday was one of the main ones. She of course was bothered by this as it didn’t line up with her scheme.

At 20ish years old, I suppose she didn’t have the foresight to know that it wouldn’t work out in the long-run. Maybe I should have been more clear that it was never my intention for it to, but that is difficult to realize and articulate when taking it day-to-day is the natural approach. Genuinely taking it day-to-day, in practice, does not entail that kind of discussion to begin with. Does that make sense? Like, you can’t tell a quality woman (and I do consider all women of my past to be quality women. I picked them, after all) “Look, this is day-to-day. I live for myself. I’m here for our mutual enjoyment and for no other reason. No marriage, no kids. When one of us loses interest, we’re done. That could be tomorrow or ten years from now. Got it?” She’ll simply leave for a situation that that has more promise for the future no matter how deluded that promise is. I suppose I showed that enough. She would often say “I know that if you didn’t want to be with me, then you wouldn’t be.” That was correct, and it extended my interest in her. The breakup was eventually mutual and peaceful.

When I finally did get my own place immediately after college, it proved to be a necessary move. It was quite a lazy time though. I didn’t feel that I had the energy to be as creative and productive as I was hoping, but at least I spent much needed time resting, catching up from literally years of sleep lost and mental restraint due to living with others prior to that.

Relationships that followed further solidified my desire to remain single and alone. I successfully stuck to my strict no-cohabitation rule. This worked out so well for me that it made me question further why people pair-bond at all – i.e. why they don’t value themselves above shared goals such as family, and seeing other people, that require so much self-sacrifice. I don’t get it. What is in that deal for me? How would that do anything but hold me back, not to mention exhaust the hell out of me? I suppose that not everyone is a radical individualist like I am. Some people actually put social interaction, sex, nurturing, etc. above themselves in their value structures. Confusing still.

My confusion about this goes deeper, though. It spills into my confusion about love itself. People who pair-bond, move in together prematurely and sacrifice large parts of themselves for shared goals that don’t seem worth it, also claim to love each other. I cannot accept love as a virtue or a goal in itself at all if this is what love is.

Love to me should be freeing, liberating. It should be a deep understanding, acceptance, and enjoyment of the fact that I am one individual, she is another, and that there is nothing we can or should do to interfere with that. Maybe it will last one night, or maybe it will last a lifetime. Either way, it should be nourishing. It must not be a prison. It must not be a context for judgment or accountability, for that is one’s own responsibility. It must not involve overwhelming feelings of jealousy or possessiveness. It must be devoid of ego, fear, and expectation that the other will change to serve you. It must be peaceful. It must be vulnerable and open. It must allow for as much solitude as is needed. It must be intentional, however, and unconditional if true. It should be virtually effortless. If all of these things are in place, only then, maybe, shared goals could be seen as worth it and at all possible. Maybe then could self-bonding and pair-bonding coexist. If that is not to be, then love is not for me. That is fine. The right people will come and go.

To conclude, and maybe this is a bit Saturnian of me to say, but self-bonding should be a prerequisite for pair-bonding in every case so that the relationship will entail principles that will originate from and nourish the individual. Done right, one might find that he or she is not monogamous at all and that a pair isn’t necessarily the best structure for their romantic and sexual fulfillment. Regardless, I think that only a person who can truly be alone can also truly love another, given the deeper albeit more idealistic definition of ‘love’ that I have proposed. Only the loner can truly accept and enjoy another with intention and without expectation. Otherwise, there is a great probability that the love is simply ego-serving, validation-seeking, or the like. So, if you have never lived alone, I highly suggest that you do for a while before you go out and completely ruin someone’s life, because that clock is probably ticking. Seriously. Stare at your wall, and let your repressed dark thoughts pass. If you don’t, you may not get what you want from love, and you definitely won’t get what you need for yourself, for your conception of love will be conditional on some greater force unconsciously ruling you.