Let’s see if I get myself in trouble with this one…
Last night I found myself unexplainably thinking of a boss I had many years ago. It was unexplainable because I hadn't thought about her in a few years and there was really nothing that made me think of her. We got along fantastically, to the point where we became nearly best friends.
I don’t think it was any secret that we were both attracted to each other but she had a husband and a kid and I had a girlfriend and neither of us wanted to complicate the beautiful relationships in our lives so we acknowledged the mutual attraction and essentially decided to keep our it a secret and act like it wasn't there.
Funny timing that I was thinking about her last night. A friend sent me a message early in the morning describing a similar but more one-sided attraction. Her boss essentially admitted to being attracted to her though she doesn’t feel the same about her boss.
While some people might focus on the legal or ethical issues of confessing such things to a subordinate, I believe this is really a case by case thing and if there is no pressure or coercion involved, it’s fine in my book, especially when it’s a small company and when the staff isn’t really married to the job.
(Obviously there are many times where coercion or pressure IS involved and people, especially women, are made to feel they could lose their job or face consequences if they don’t return the feelings, and there are situations when someone comes across as obsessive or stalkerish. None of these apply here, my friend made a point to say she didn’t feel uncomfortable at all).
On the contrary, since her boss WAS respectful and made clear this had absolutely no impact on their work relationship, and they are essentially friends, I personally see nothing at all wrong with it. Having met her boss and finding her overwhelming energetic and a bit rigid despite trying to be openminded, I admire her for being so honest about her feelings because if handled respectfully, I feel it’s usually better when things are out in the open. It’s also nice that she can finally admit that she has a curiosity or attraction towards women.
I believe the more we can live naturally without actively disrupting or pressuring people around us, the better off we and everyone around us will be. I can get a little radical with the extent that I consider this an ideal, as you will probably see by the end of this article.
Her (female) boss is married (to a man) and comes from a relatively traditional culture but seems to be beginning to explore her attraction to women. The conversation sounded like just as much of a coming out and confiding in my friend as it was a confession of attraction. She essentially treated my friend as someone to confide in.
Whether she is also attracted to men or whether her marriage only came to fruition because she was holding back her true attractions… whether this is just curiosity (because she still sounds a little unsure) all seems to be up in the air. Either her boss doesn’t know yet or she is only starting to get comfortable expressing her true orientation.
I don’t intend to talk much more about this situation my friend is in with her boss, although she gave me permission to write about it, but I was really struck by the timing, just a few hours after missing my previous boss for the first time in years.
In my experience, such so-called “coincidences” point to other interesting connections, difficult truths, signs of progress, potential challenges or patterns that many people are experiencing at the moment.
“How does this make me feel?”
It’s hard to express without explaining that I have a very different view of relationships and marriage and attraction.
To me, loyalty and monogyny are not the same thing, and respect and love is expressed by what you DO, how you treat your partner, not by what you promise NOT to do. I don’t consider anything cheating if you never promised not to do it. I also know that this is not the world most people are living in, and that even those who claim to have healthy experimental or open relationships aren’t actually happy. It’s just an ideal that I hold and work towards, one of free love and pure and honest expression.
If I am attracted to someone besides my partner, I believe it’s absolutely detrimental to my mental and emotional health if I hide it from myself. It leads to a pattern of hypocrisy when we can’t even admit to ourselves how we feel. Whether or not I tell my partner is another issue.
That being said, I believe the deepest trust will result from a relationship built to be able to survive such admissions.
That’s why when I started my relationship of almost a decade, I said up front “I’m going to be attracted to other people no matter who I am with. Whether or not I do something about it is another story, but if I ever had the urge, I want to be able to speak about it with you. For me monogamy is just a tool for making a partnership more manageable”.
I know this must be driving a few of you mad. I realize that some people who read this are more traditional and come from very different backgrounds and have very different experiences. Please treat it as culture differences, not just the culture of nations but just a way of living based on my personal values.
I told her that our trust in each other is more important than how we express that trust. So if I can tell her I am attracted to someone else, she is free to express that she doesn’t want me to pursue it. Then I am free to behave how I feel is best and she is free to stay or leave. But in all this, if we are working together as partners, I will never recklessly put our connection at risk, that much I can promise. I believe we have natural urges and at the very least we should be able to work through them with the people we trust the most and I want to trust my partner to that degree.
And so we agreed that any attraction to other people would be mentioned if we ever thought it could lead to anything that might be perceived as cheating to others. We agreed to not be reactive and not o leave the other based on anyone's desires as long as we discussed them with the other person in mind. We made clear that our priority was building a happy and balanced life for both of us and that no particular norms of society needed to be followed to achieve that if we could agree on what was right for us.
To me, love is about true appreciation of the other person, and a relationship is about finding ways to express that appreciation. Allowing the person to feel, think and do what comes naturally to them is part of that, as long as they don't mislead or misdirect. The only reason I feel people tend to promise not to "cheat" is because they feel they need a signal or sign that they can trust the other person. Whether or not this is right or necessary think depends completely on the person and the circumstance and can change over time.
That is generally how I look at the world. There is no set of rules that I should blindly follow. Even if I became religious or patriotic, I would want to rediscover the value of the laws of that religion or country for myself. I do not want to accept something just because other people consider it right, and I don’t want to fight against something just because it’s what someone I dislike does. I want to be able to examine things freely, with as little bias as possible, and decide what is right for me. A partnership is just about being able to do that together with another person.
Now my partner knows that I was attracted to my old boss and she also knows who I would probably explore possibilities with if we were ever to break up. We talk about hypotheticals like breaking up freely, and try to mind each other by expressing it softly. We both believe that jealousy is petty and that our trust and attraction should be strong enough to survive anything, and if it’s not, perhaps it was all just a learning experience for both of us.
When I ask if she would have a problem with me sleeping with or kissing someone else, she says "probably....sorry", and I accept that and prioritize the relationship while revisiting the question every few months or years.
She also tells me openly that she still loves and is attracted to her ex but that she doesn’t want to explore anything with him and that she would tell me if she did.
I’ve always said that if someone came along and made me question my relationship, I would question it. Funny enough though, while I have been physically attracted or emotionally attracted a few more times, nothing ever made me feel that I was on the wrong path with the wrong person, and as long as that’s the case, we will keep trying to make it work together, whether monogamous or not, though monogamy has always just kind of happened to us as a natural result of our devotion, not the other way around. Some day it may not, and that thought kind of excites me, but I will not bite off more than I can chew.
So as to how my friend's story made me feel…
It made me realize very clearly that my old boss was the only person who really posed a challenge to my relationship and that I loved her far more than I ever admitted to myself. This did not mean I loved her more than my partner or that I wanted to leave my partner, nor did it mean that my partner had anything to worry about, whether our feelings remained just feelings or whether we had a chance to explore them physically.
I do not think there is any world where I left my partner for my ex-boss and we would have been happier, I don’t think my boss would have been a better partner for me. But I do think we loved each other, and I don't think it would have been wrong to express that love physically at some point if we could have found a way to make our partners understand.
What a lot of people forget is that the time we invest in someone matters. It changes how we see them. If we build enough trust with them over time, real trust, there is nothing that can break that trust. So the only thing that could have caused me to want to be with my ex boss over my partner is if my partner actively tried to demolish our relationship by lying to me, hurting me intentionally or betraying me. Even if she wanted to sleep with her ex, it wouldn’t change things for me as long as she could discuss it with me before and after and didn’t start looking at me differently or prioritizing him over me.
I know this is a very very unpopular approach to relationships, but for me it’s a healthy one.
I don’t want to regret anything because what is done is done, not to mention, I am happy where I am, even if there is still room for improvement.
But I do feel that I am much more mature and emotionally strong and braver than I have ever been.
If I had met my old boss today, I imagine it may have gone differently. I believe that I could have probably shown my partner that she didn’t need to feel threatened by anything I may have wanted to explore with my boss. I believe I would have been able to talk about this with my boss with much more confidence and integrity.
Perhaps I would have been able to get the two of them talking about it together.
Rather than feeling guilty about our attraction, we could have used it as an opportunity to become closer friends or to strengthen the bonds with our partners to a degree that is rare in the world currently.
I have absolutely no idea if we could have convinced our partners to be ok with the idea of having a relationship together on the side, but I am 100% confident that at least on my end, with my partner, and with my boss, it would have helped all of us to grow and understand ourselves better.
I believe wholeheartedly that if my girlfriend chose to leave me over my being open about it from the start (rather than 2-3 years later) then that would have been the best outcome for both of us, but as things are, both of us continuing to grow and evolve, this is the current best outcome for us.
I also feel that I didn't need to consider her relationship as much as I did, that was her responsibility, not mine. If it was an absolute red line for her, she could have expressed that, and if their relationship couldn't survive such experiments, it would have been her job to draw whatever line she felt needed to be drawn.
I feel that when we talked about it we had too much guilt and we should have looked at it more pragmatically and allowing ourselves to feel our feelings fully, at least, I should have promoted that.
Any moment we decide to be more honest with ourselves and follow our hearts, I believe that from that moment we are on the right path for us. It doesn’t matter what came before.
I am not sure if I will remain monogamous for my whole life, and I don’t know if my partner will either, but if my partner is willing to continue being a partner despite that (and so far she has) then I don’t imagine we will split.
A big part of me hopes that we can become a bit experimental in our relationship because I love a challenge and I feel that the ultimate relationship is one that can survive absolutely anything. But I will not force it, and I recognize that most people still have a hard tome accepting such things so I try to be patient with them, and not to cross any lines that are drawn. I understand the world I dream of and the world I currently reside in are not identical.
I am not advocating my approach to relationships to others. I understand that this is still extremely idealistic, but I do think we should try to forge relationships of trust that aren’t so fragile and that are based on mutual respect and appreciation, rather than a desperation to keep that person by our side.
I find that being able to talk about these things with my partner has made me a much more honest person in general, with fewer fears around being myself and expressing myself. It has made me feel truly seen and supported and I can vouch that it has done the same for her.
I would not expect everyone to be able to stomach such things and dropping this kind of condition on a partner once in the relationship could definitely be disruptive. I think it’s best to start a relationship out on the right foot by not pretending to be perfect, by being honest about who you are and what you desire, and that requires you to be honest with yourself first.
People need time to get used to things though, so I think I was right in helping my partner get used to these ideas slowly over time, being that they weren't completely hidden in the beginning.
Ideals aren’t something we need to reach, just something we will feel fulfilled to work towards, a vision that helps us understand exactly what direction we want to move in. It doesn’t matter if it’s fast or slow or how far we get, as long as we keep becoming more of who we want to be.
—-
Novels/music/merch/social media/patreon:
https://linktr.ee/selfhelp4trolls
Untangled Knots podcast:
Japanese Upbringing Explained (interview my Japanese student)
Join us in the Deep shitdiscord channel to talk about deep shit, art and cultute differences
Confessions of the Damaged 1.1-1.3 on Amazont