Asymmetrical relationships

It’s not fair, three words I’ve heard myself say hundreds of times in the course of my life, in relationships with lovers, siblings and parents. It’s not fair, with the underlying unspoken line - it should be fair, things are meant to be equal, even, balanced.

But they’re not. And they aren’t. So maturity kinda feels like being able to sit comfortably with the disparity at the centre of things.

Power imbalances, one person listening more than the other, one person needing more emotional support, are these actually as problematic as the mind makes them out to be? How do we meet imbalance? And from what lens, do we deem it so? Do we measure listening time in our sharing space? How do we measure giving and taking and expressing and the space taken up by each individual human?

Come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever been in an equal partnership or friendship or container because we are giving or taking or misusing different things in different ways at different times. You touch me often and easily and generously and I touch you sparingly, yet I take time with the little details, with inspiring you to be healthy, bringing in my insight, my poetry, my care to the space.

All this time spent feeling shameful for what I wasn’t giving back, for the ways I could not be abundant towards you, for the lack of symmetry in our loving, has been based off the premise that relationship needs to be equal, that what you give, you must get and if you’re not getting or giving in balanced portions, then this is unhealthy, toxic, and someone is most definitely selfish.

You do not need to be generous in all areas of relationship.

You do not need to be generous to be good, to be loved, to be part of this union, this friendship unfolding, this human bond of mixed dynamics.

For all the ways I think that I am bad, I have been severely conditioned.

And oh, what a relief, to let myself be part of an asymmetrical love and need based relation. To hit the pause button on ‘even’ and often feeling like I owe something or that I’m needing to give the way you give and in this, disregarding the myriad other ways I show up, colour the space with my expression, my knowing, my silence and my devotion to truth.