"With you, intimacy colours my voice. Even 'hello' sounds like 'come here.'"

--Warsan Shire

(via HappinessRuns...) 

"We all have a blind spot around our privileges shaped exactly like us.
And I’m telling you guys, we’re never fucking going to get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble more or less the economies of attraction of white supremacy. Finding people who practice decolonial love is as hard inside of a vast movement as it is outside. The actual standard of decolonial love, how little discussed, how little understood, and yet in many ways is the great test of who we are and of our praxis and of our communal praxis."

--Junot Díaz, Keynote Speech at Facing Race 2012

(via Tudo Bom(b))

I have as many speeches from this conference as are available on YouTube queued on my Watch Later list. Expect way more quotes at some future point.

I need this on everything for a certain friend of mine.

"Just because two people are capable of deeply hurting each other over and over again does not make them passionate, star-crossed lovers. It makes them two people who keep doing terrible things to each other. Someone's ability to make you completely and utterly soul-crushingly miserable does not mean that they are a soul mater with some deep insight into your psyche. They are just someone who is really good at making you unhappy."

--Andrea Greb

(via Tudo Bom(b))

"Our job is to love people. When it hurts. When it’s awkward. When it’s uncool and embarrassing. Our job is to stand together, to carry the burdens of one another and to meet each other in our questions." 

--Jamie Tworkowksi

(via Free Bird)  

"Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It's about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel 'same sex' or 'same gender' attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?) But queerness doesn't stop there.

"This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than 'gay' or 'lesbian' or 'bisexual'. A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to describe their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy.

"Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched in the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDS and other STIs.

"Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don't like in bed.

"We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don't expect one person to be able to fill all our diverse needs, fantasies, and ideals indefinitely. 

"Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed.

"Queer doens't mean 'don't label me,' it means 'I am naming myself.' It means 'ask me more questions if you're curious' and in the same breath means 'fuck off.'

"At least, that is what it means to me."

(via Tranarchism)

I dislike saying "people of this identity ARE [any subset of qualities]" because no they all aren't. So I'm going to replace the word queer in all of this with the phrase "people with healthy attitudes towards sex, love, and identity". Otherwise, ALL OF THIS OMG YES.

Reblogging for the first part

Because it is the truth.

Reblogged from On the Bright Side

 

The half-life of love is forever.

--Yunior de Las Casas, This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 

(via Choosing Pancakes)

I fall in love with people's passion. The way their eyes light up when they talk about the thing they love and the way they fill with light.

(via happinessruns...)  

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.

--Montaigne 

My love is a beast, an epiphany, a whisper, a roar; if you can’t rumble, don’t attempt to make love with me.

--Stacyann Chin 

i am a lover without a lover. i am lovely and lonely and i belong deeply to myself.

--warsanshire 

(via Square Dancing with Giants)

I place a lot of value on short-term relationships.

This is likely not unrelated to the fact that they're the only kind of relationships I've ever had, but regardless, I don't like it when people find it incredulous that I can have been so substantially emotionally affected by people I only dated for a few months (or less). I'm sorry, was I supposed to be closed and fake during the first few months and only open up and be vulnerable when we had hit a certain point? Is that point six months? A year? Oh, this question is silly? Then sit down.

The Anti-Intellect waxes on this in a recent post:

Underestimating love was our first mistake. Thinking it needed years to do its thing. We forgot-–or, perhaps, never remembered–-that love could come in a week and completely rock our world.

[...]

I had to embrace that notions of eternity, however comforting, don’t afford us the opportunity to do justice to our intimate relationships. Our obsession with length rather than quality thrusts us into boxes of obsession that render us incapable of judging intimate relationships on criteria other than “duration.”

When it comes to relationships, “long term” or “short term,” if it ain’t about mutual pleasure, understanding and love, I ain’t checking for it. I no longer seek long-term-relationships just to be able to say that I am in one. While length can convey certain things, such as commitment and conviction, it shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all when we look at love and relationships.

I enjoy being in a place mentally where I can enjoy a relationship regardless of its duration. I can value a two week relationship just as much as I value a two month or two year relationship. I treasure love when it comes. Nothing in nature lasts forever: seasons come and go, rivers dry up, and night eases into day.  I’m not caught up in “forever.”

--antiintellect

Sternberg’s Love Theory

freedom fighter posted this image a while ago, and I bookmarked it because it makes me think. It makes me think deeply and a lot. It makes me contemplate my relationships and my choices and my definitions of things and it makes me ask myself what I'm looking for in my life. It's rare that I come across an image that seems to actually be worth a thousand words, but this one warrants deep exploration.

Love is a word I have so much trouble with. I want to use it in relation to so many things, but sometimes saying it is incredibly serious and sometimes it's not. I don't always know what kind of love I think I feel or am definitely feeling or want to feel. But this might be a helpful (if somewhat problematic in its own ways) way to conceptualize it.  The triangles don't have to be equilateral--the length corresponds to how important that concept is in the relationship.

Nonlove doesn't register on any of these three axes. That seems fair. I don't think you can have something worthy of the word "love" in any form that doesn't have any of these features.

Romantic love is defined as featuring intimacy and passion, which also seems fair to me. I can imagine that many of my friends would balk at commitment not being included in that model, but I for one am perfectly (in fact, perhaps even more) comfortable with romantic love outside of long-term commitment. JB would argue that monogamy is in and of itself a commitment, which I suppose is true in the most basic of senses. I, for one, have never been one to need to fight potential suitors (and/or...suitresses?) off with a stick, which results in monogamy as a general condition of my life even when the situation does not call for it. I have at this point always been functionally monogamous, if not ideologically monogamous, so I guess I don't really see the ability to hook up with other people as this significant thing I'm giving up when I get into a relationship. Regardless of any level of mutual ownership (or partnership if that construction bothers you) engendered by monogamy, however, I don't think it implies any sort of longevity in terms of the commitment by definition. It's a fragile commitment, one that exists between individuals temporally but which is not committed to itself--it's almost an obligation rather than a commitment, and to me, that's why commitment isn't on the triangle for romantic love. 

Friendship is intimacy without passion or commitment. This makes sense too--our friends are among the persons we're most intimate with, but most of the friendships we make throughout our lives are temporary. They exist in certain times and/or places, and while their memory is carried with us and they may be rekindled briefly or for a substantial period of time, we are not committed to actively building them every day of our lives. 

Fatuous love seems like "dating just to date" to me. Like the first relationship I was in, which was based more on my desire to revel in his desire for me than in anything else. We were giving to each other, but not of one another. 

Infatuation is pure passion. Again, a no-brainer. No actual relationship is involved in situations of infatuation, so intimacy and commitment are impossible.

Companionate love might be the most interesting to me. I think that this is most clearly where friendship and love overlap. These are the friends you consider family. The kind of friends you say, "I love you" to. The kind of friends you don't have to say you love for them (and everyone else) to know. These are the kind of friends you know you'll have forever, even when that means actual phone calls and trips to see one another--that's where the commitment comes in. Friendships you will actively work at despite adverse circumstances fall under companionate love, in my mind. This is what I feel for TN, KS, SP, SH, EY, etc. I can also see this describing love between old people, who are completely devote to each other but past most/all forms of sexual desire. Hmm--this might be why really close friends are so often compared to old married couples.

Empty love makes me sad inside. It makes me think of people who are trapped in loveless marriages or who are too scared of starting over again to get out of a relationship they no longer want to be in. I want to banish it.

And finally we've reached consummate love. To me, this is conventional Love-with-a-capital-L love. It's a The Notebook kind of love. If I've ever come close to this triangle, it was a weird scalene version with intimacy being the shortest end, passion the longest, and commitment somewhere in the middle, but honestly I don't think the sides actually touched in the situation to which I'm referring. This is love after the romancing bit is over. When approaching equilateral-ness, this is a "real love", whole satisfaction embodied in one other individual. This is the kind of love for which I've been told sacrifices don't feel like sacrifices and obligations to the other resemble obligations to the self. This is the deep kind of love that mostly terrifies me, though a small part of me wants it at some point in the future.

An excerpt from a recent Thought Catalog article that really resonated with me:

"I’ve been raised in a society that both exalts love and fears it. A society that tells me love is rare and experienced only under particular circumstances; beginning with family and radiating outward to long term relationships and close, time-worn friendships. To love too quickly is deemed foolish. To love too many, is superficial. Our tragedy is that we believe something can only be beautiful when it is rare. We exist in a society that dismisses the beauty in everyday life. We overlook the small, fleeting moments that make up our day, because we’ve become jaded to the heaviness of a cat sleeping on our lap; the warmth of someone else’s fingers filling the space between our own... Sometimes it’s okay to abandon caution and open yourself up to the possibility of a connection with another human being. It’s okay to be vulnerable. We were born with an incredible capacity for love...The English language doesn’t contain the vocabulary to express different levels of love—instead using one abstract word to encompass the entire complicated spectrum of human emotion. In Spanish, love between family is separated from love between spouses. In Greek, there are four distinct terms, each with its own meaning. Working with such a limited capacity for expression, it’s no wonder our society as a whole appears to perpetually be in turmoil over the concept of love. We’re in constant pursuit of it, yet question it when we experience it; herald it’s beauty, yet fear that we will be left broken in its wake. Love becomes a contradiction. It simultaneously becomes the root of our joys and our woes."

I have been told before that I say those words too easily. I've had friends freak out when I drop it in casual conversation. I've gotten raised eyebrows from others when I direct it towards a friend. I've even had people criticize my and my ex's use of the phrase during our relationship. ...Such interactions confuse and annoy me. There are so many kinds of love. I'm sick of everyone privileging romantic and consummate love over all of the other loves. And then next time someone suggests that I'm wrong in my usage, I'ma direct them here, to what I think is a comprehensive guide to all the ways you can love someone who isn't family. 

"'Do you really love me?' means, Will you accept me in process? Will you embrace what is different about me and applaud my efforts to become? Can I just be human, strong and vibrant some days, weak and frail on others? Will you love me even when I disappoint you?"

--Angela Thomas

(via Free Bird) 

Things I Can't Stand Number Next:

when people don't believe that a man and a woman can be close friends without romantic feelings lurking under the surface on one or both parts. 

My best friend on this campus is a man. Since wresting that title from the women on this campus who used to share it, he has also managed to supersede people from home who have known me since the days of Lunchables and Sailor Moon. Not only do I never feel like I have to pretend to be anything I'm not when I'm talking to or hanging out with him, I also never feel like I can't be anything I am--those are very different sentiments, even if they initially seem like two sides of the same coin, and I've actually never had that before. We can communicate with just a look, and finish each other's sentences, and I feel like he truly and thoroughly gets me. I have this wonderful feeling of home-ness when I'm around him or talking to him that I hope never dissipates. 

But I'm not romantically interested in him in the least. First off, while I recognize that he's a beautiful man, I'm not attracted to him. Sometimes we party together and will find a section of a dance floor to dance around each other in, but I can't imagine actually touching him while we're dancing. I find the thought of grinding with him both disturbing and hilarious. I actually can't even bring myself to imagine kissing him. I don't even want to think about his dick. Even typing this has me skeeved out. We very rarely make physical contact of any sort, but I can come to him crying because my boyfriend just dumped me or because my mom is going to be in the hospital for a month and he will help me put myself back together again with just his words and the way he cares.

But when I casually mentioned to two of my former roommates that he and I had talked about maybe living together next year if he also got a job in D.C., they started making skeptical and disapproving faces at one another. I asked them what was wrong, and they both said, "Nothing." It was obviously something, so I pressured them on it, and M finally said, "Don't you think living with him is a bad idea?" I don't understand why it would be, and said as much to them. They launched into this big spheel about how living together will bring feelings that I don't know that I have to the surface and how I'll be jealous seeing him with other girls and yada yada yada. I was listening to them spewing this nonsense and this scene from Awkward Black Girl actually played in my head:

 
They could have asked things about how neat/messy he is, or whether we fight about silly stuff that would get really annoying in a shared space. They could have brought up the fact that living with J almost destroyed our friendship sophomore year, which is both valid and relevant. But no, these bitches--who actually know me quite well--basically went straight to this idea that I'm already in love with him and just in denial and how living together would force me to quit playing.

...The fuck?!

I wanted to rebut that I didn't fall for either of them when we lived together, even though we were very good friends, but Idk how much they know about my recently embraced non-heterosexuality and didn't feel like putting my shit on blast in the middle of an already tense conversation.

I don't understand why people assume that having a very emotionally intimate relationship with a person is, by definition, a precursor to wanting a physically intimate relationship with that person. Do I love him? In some ways, more than I've ever loved anyone. In other ways, not. at. all. There are countless ways to love a person, and I don't think any of them necessitate any other. It deeply offends me that these ladies seem to think I'm incapable of non-romantic love with a male-gendered person I like to share various aspects of my life with.

Enjoying someone's company v. liking them "enough"

Two of my dear friends have been dealing with similar interesting and unfortunate situations recently. It's a situation both I and my ex went through a version of, and some might say we paid for not paying enough attention to it. 

So you have this friend, or this acquaintance, and you're trying to figure out whether your feelings for them go beyond friend/acquaintance-ship. Maybe you've learned that they have feelings for you. Maybe you just like spending time with them so much that you're conflicted about what you're feeling. Whatever. The point is, how do you know where to draw the line between liking someone as a person and liking them enough to be in a relationship with them? What are the ethics of entering a relationship for exploratory purposes? Should you have to feel some romantic-comedy-esque "spark" or intense desire before embarking on the whole relationship thing, or is it cool if you just like to kick it with X or Y person and want to make your kicking it an official thing?

I guess what I'm really driving at here is this: 

What exactly makes a lover different from a friend?

Apart from sexytime fun, of course. Because as hard as I try and try to think about what separates them, I'm coming up empty. I feel like both of the relationships I've been in were like, suddenly I had a new best friend I also got to regularly hook up with and be cutesy and publicly physical with. And even though the ends of these relationships had me feeling like a hot ass mess for days, the level of emotional commitment I felt to them can't even touch the foundations of the emotions I have for some of my friends. But saying that sex is the only difference seems...just somehow fundamentally like I'm doing something wrong, though Idk if it's my friendships or my romances. I have never found that I necessarily like the person I'm dating MORE than I like my closest friends, and honestly I'm not sure I would trust such feelings if I ever developed them. I even get conflicted about choosing to hang out with a partner over hanging out with my besties. 

But I'm getting off-topic. I begin with the above question in order to better understand the point and goal of relationships. I was at an event on Black Love on Tuesday night, and one of the icebreaker questions asked at the event was something to the effect of, what do you look for in a relationship, and my answers were basically the same things I look for in a close friendship. Which leads me to re-realize (because I've addressed this before) that I'm unsure what prompts me to turn friend/acquaintance-ships into relationships besides knowing that the other party is romantically (sexually?) interested in me and me not being actively disinterested in him (or, theoretically, her). And this question has never been posed to me directly, but I'm afraid that if someone asked me, say, what I wanted to "get" out of a relationship, I wouldn't know what to say but sex and companionship...and neither of those things really necessitates the title. I'm fully comfortable giving and receiving the title expecting only those two things though, and it seems a little bit ridiculous to me to expect anything more than those two things going into a title-based situation. 

Where does the l-word come in? (Love.) I...don't even know what that word is supposed to mean with regards to any sort of relationship, but particularly not with a romantic relationship. Do I NEED to get to that level for a relationship to be "worth it"? Can I still just use it to mean something in me resonates with something in you and I like the frequency we're vibing at? If I like the way that spending time with you makes me feel, should I just say that instead of trying to fit it into ambiguous constructs like "love"? Is that revolutionary or am I copping out? Maybe I should be trying to expand the definition of love to be applicable to all those various situations, but...even though I guess that's what I do now, I'm not entirely comfortable with that. Maybe it's a word that should retain some sort of special value, so that everyone knows what you're talking about when you use it.

How do we have legitimate and meaningful interactions when we're not even sure what we mean by the words we're using?

I'm getting off topic again, it seems. It seems to confuse some of my dear friends that I have no problem with what might be called "casual" relationships. By this I mean I can go into a relationship that I know isn't going to last and still be committed to and emotionally invested in that relationship. (This most likely stems from the fact that I conceptualize relationships as transient and ephemeral in nature, thus if I was unwilling to involve myself in romances that I didn't think would last, I would be committing myself to spinsterdom.) And yeah I guess that sounds like I'm just setting myself up to get hurt a lot, but again...that's just part of the way I fundamentally understand the game. I also get a lot of joy and contentment and comfort and satisfaction. 

All this to say, I'm unsure whether I really have even a fuzzily defined line between liking someone as a person and liking them enough to enter into a relationship with them if they expressed interest in something of this nature. I have trouble even imagining what sorts of characteristics would bring someone from one side of this hypothetical line to the other. This means I have nothing on which to even base an understanding of where people are coming from when they're averse to trying relationships with persons whose company (and maybe even affections) they enjoy. I want to understand, though...I really do. Because sometimes my perspective doesn't seem healthy to me. 

“the only way to master love is to practice love. you don’t need to justify your love, you don’t need to explain your love; you just need to practice your love. practice creates the master.”

- don miguel ruiz

Reblogged from come correct

Things that make me squeal with joy:

Gay military couples and their being able to celebrate their love openly. Maybe it's a little objectifying, but they make me so happy. 

Exhibit A:

Reblogged from Smile and Nod

 

"After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony."

--Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

Reblogged from Indie Art Nerd

"Black women don’t need to be taught how to love. Despite what the common narrative may tell you, we are loving beings–no more or less so than any other group." -- Tami Winfrey Harris, who is currently working on a project on Black women and marriage