Square peg in a heart-shaped hole

I consider myself something of an expert on relationships. At least insofar as I know that if you’re looking for an expert on relationships, you are no longer looking for a relationship. Too often, it seems, people are more concerned about how to make a relationship work, than they are about how it does already or doesn’t (and never will) work. Seldom do they recognize the difference between mechanics versus organics.

DTR. This humble little acronym hides in its appalling abbreviation a terror being visited on modern relationships that outweighs the threat of divorce, infidelity, the battles for and against marriage… you name it. No other seemingly harmless idea I have come upon represents a worse infraction against love than DTR. “Define The Relationship.” DTR refers to that moment or discussion in which two people who are attracted to one another, probably having sex, and no longer certain of whether the relationship might infringe or has already infringed on their respective individual habits, preferences, hobbies, etc. sit down and decide what are the boundaries of that relationship, the expectations, and the care instructions.

It is, in essence, when the first of possibly many contracts will be made between these two people. Why many contracts? Because, like people and personalities, relationships evolve. Nothing short of a living document will sustain the woebegone couple fixed in the headlight-glare of their DTR moment. And so the DTR has its sequels; even, I imagine, past the point of what many of us would assume the final DTR, the marriage vows.

When I imagine two people sitting down for their DTR (which, I think we can assume, they scheduled with each other by e-mail or text or using the Google application best suited for such an event), I imagine them going over issues like fidelity, monogamy, exclusivity (vitally different in tenor, I think, from monogamy; one dates exclusively as a trial or as a favor, but one is monogamous for far more profound reasons). I also imagine other things come up. Can he be friends with his ex? Can she still flirt with the guy at the 7-11? Does mutual masturbation qualify as sex? On what end should the toothpaste tube be squeezed? And, if he doesn’t load a new toilet paper roll, or leave the seat down, or wipe the sink after shaving, is it grounds for separation, or simply another DTR?

Does it qualify as a DTR to tell the current SO that it bothers her when he hums from his seated position on the toilet, even if telling him only takes a moment? If he asks her to please wear a skirt when she meets his parents, is that also a DTR? Or are these kinds of small suggestions meant to be amendments to the previous DTR, and only discussed when the next DTR summit occurs? Who keeps track? Is it not helpful to have discussions of preferences and desires outside of a DTR forum?

“Could you…. please?”

“Honey….”

“What?”

“I told you in our last DTR that I won’t do that for you. If you want me to, we should schedule another DTR. But, for now, that’s out.”

Why is this the worst terror being visited on modern relationships? Perhaps I overstated my case. After all, had Arthur and his Gwenevere sat down for an initial DTR, they might not have had all that trouble with the French knight, Lancelot. Had Gwenevere understood Arthur’s boundaries around infidelity, and the consequences that his reactions to her flirtations would reap (i.e., the fall of Camelot), surely she would have handled the whole affair more civilly. Instead of the great Arthurian romances, we would instead have the great Arthurian treatises: civil, sensible discussions about intimacy and responsibility between the Round Table’s first couple.

Indeed, because the very notion of the DTR allows for an accepting, objective view of love, sex, and desire, even the Marquis de Sade could have avoided his notorious notoriety. He could simply have sat down for a broadcast DTR with all of French culture.

Bill and Hillary probably had a DTR – or several. How else could she have reacted so implacably to his trysts? All things are possible, so long as there’s a DTR.

What the DTR does, at least, is free us from the pressing need for empathy with our SO. Because all things get discussed, revelations do not need to come from tears, from misunderstandings, from unexpected childhood stories. During the DTR, we are allowed to put anything on the table. All is open to discussion.

“You were neglected as a child, and so you have a need to be snuggled? Hmm. Well, I was smothered as a child, so I don’t like to be touched when I sleep…. That’s okay, we’re just brainstorming here.”

I don’t have to honor your needs if they infringe on my own. Also, if we haven’t had our first DTR, I don’t have any responsibility to you at all. I could be seeing two other boys and a girl for all you know. Without the DTR, there’s no need to consider your feelings at all. Once the DTR’s accomplished, however, and we both leave the discussion satisfied, there are rules to be followed.

(I wonder if there’s an Excel spreadsheet preloaded with DTR criteria?)

Were we meant to fall in love this way? In many of the more esoteric philosophies, the body is not ruled solely by the rational brain. It is, instead, ruled by many different things – the heart, the soul, the senses – all equal to the brain in power, facility, and electoral votes. Each perceptive organ has its speciality. To the brain is given problems of the mind, of organizing the world into bits and pieces. To the soul is given the deepest knowledge of truth. To the heart… you guessed it: love. The heart also sees that all things are one, that the universe flows back and forth, comes and goes, gives and takes. The heart forgives automatically because it understands that what one day disappears will, another day, return inexplicably.

Where is the heart in the DTR? Where is the joy of love, the wretchedness of it? Where is the humanity behind falling in love, being broken-hearted, finding hope again?

Here’s what I remember about love. Like shit, it happens. Like shit, you can’t control it. We don’t get to negotiate our lives with God. We don’t get to let the weather know that we’d really rather not have rain on Saturday, so let’s just plan rain for Friday instead, okay? That way, we’ll both be happy. We don’t get to negotiate whether or not we die, or our friends die, or our baby is born with Down Syndrome or with a psychic gift. Try as we might, nature will always foil us.

So why do we think we can make heads or tails of love? Our brains are powerful, but they’ll never comprehend what happens when two people fall in love. Your brain can’t, my brain can’t, and no expert’s brain can. The fact is, love is love is love. Uncontrollable, confusing, scary, blissful, ecstatic, redemptive. Enjoy it for all its failings and all its uncertainties and all its wonder.

Divine litmus

I believe there is a test for God. A test to determine whether your actions align with a divine will. A test of whether the call to behave in a certain way, commit a certain act, love a certain way, defy certain rules is a call from God. There is a measuring stick for every human experience, all human knowledge, even human intuition. Why shouldn’t there be a measuring stick for God?

Traditionally, faith has acted as our only way to know it is God we’re hearing in our lives, that it is the divine we are aiming for. But faith is sticky business. I have faith that, despite what the Christians say, I am not on the express train to damnation because of who I choose to love. The Christians, however, have faith that I am on that train, and that their suffering of my life alongside their own will lead to justification, vindication. So, whose faith is correct? Who is actually in line with God’s will? (We are wrong, by the way, in our conception of God… but I will cover that another time.)

I believe that we come into this world to have, in the end, one experience: the experience of joy. Ridiculous, unbounded joy. This is not joy built on conditions met (the right body, the right income, the right house, the right spouse) – it is joy at the cellular level, undetermined by our situations. A joy that comes from union, acceptance, and erasure. Union with our more divine selves; acceptance of who we have become, who are the people around us; erasure of our expectations for life, our hopes, our dreams, our demands, our promises. It is a joy that’s motionless, free both from acceleration and entropy. It stays. It is perfect enough that it does not need to evolve.

Probably, I sound more new age than I would like. Probably, I sound more optimistic than is characteristic for me. Probably, I don’t sound rigorous. And maybe I am giving up on empiricism, on pessimism and pragmatism, and rigor. Would that be bad? Is it somehow less credible to be gentle?

Recently, I have been perusing books of inspiration and enlightenment. Books written by characters in our world like Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, and the Dalai Lama. I have been wondering if I should write such a book. Do I have a similar message? has been my question as I go to their books. By way of providing the answer, each of these authors seem to have, between them, similar messages. In point of fact, each of the Dalai Lama’s books are nearly duplications of each other: they teach Buddhism, acceptance of self and other, love, and peace through detachment from expectation and desire. And while I recognize I risk being colossally reductive in saying so, I want to say that the most widely accepted spiritual teachings of our human history boil down to that same message: love one another, feel peaceful, be joyful. (And also: you are, yourself, divine.)

So, it seems to me that a good measuring stick for whether or not it is God who is directing you along a certain path is whether or not that path will lead you to this unconditional joy that comes from union, acceptance, and erasure. Will what you are doing bring you unconditional joy? If it will, is it fair to say God is with you? If you are acting to resist unconditional joy, is it fair to say God is waiting for you?

Maybe it sounds irresponsible to do nothing but pursue unconditional joy. Maybe that will rub our Puritan roots the wrong way. Certainly, it is not in keeping with the scruples of belief systems based on work, on a discipline of prayer, on spiritual activism. I don’t want to say these employments of faith are somehow incorrect, or are not useful. All of human life, every experience we can have, is useful. We learn from everything, if we choose to.

But I want to posit that it is our fear of being happy that keeps us working toward happiness. As long as we are working toward it, we don’t have to know it. As long as we feel movement – either acceleration or entropy – we know we are accomplishing (thriving and dying are sides of the same coin), and we can affix value to that movement. Stopping, standing still, feels like it would mean death; or worse, sloth. What we don’t acknowledge, or perhaps cannot accept is that happiness, that this unconditional joy, already is alive in our lives. Given permission, we can experience it. And what’s more, it does not mean stagnation.

It means evolution. Evolution through revelation (and revelry). The greatest risk we can take is to allow ourselves to feel joyful, because in doing so, we must strike out, off the path of our expectations, our severity and diligence, our insistence on self.

No one has to take that risk. It’s not mandatory, because the world is already unconditionally joyful. But the test is there, whenever you need it.