Give My Whole Heart
Monogamous people tell me that my Way won’t work for them, because they’re interested in giving their whole heart to one person, and having that person’s whole heart. It makes me wonder,
When you're single, where does all that love you have to give go?
Truly, where do you funnel it in your life?
When you "have love" aka romantic partnership with someone, do those funnels run dry?
If they do, how does that feel to the ones you love, to you, and to your partner as you begin to rely on them as the only source and bless them as your only beneficiary?
If they don't, if you keep funneling love into your life and the people you love, are you really giving your WHOLE HEART to your partner?
The myth of the Whole Hearted Love is damaging to community and to personal agency. It's as delusional and as delightful as the idea of a "dessert stomach," where there's somehow more room for sweets even though I'm full up on dinner.
The myth of wholehearted love also calls people to live into it, distancing from the world to give their "whole heart" to that one person, even alienating their family and friends for their "love." But Love would never ask such a thing.
I've been told that my Way only applies to those in open relationships, those who love multiple people at the same time.
I say—get real. You are already and always in hundreds of love-relationships. You love your friends and your family. You love children. You love elders. You love the person who makes your coffee every morning. If you practice a version of partnership that alienates you from these loves, it will keep falling apart in service to you.
If you practice "agreements" that are out of alignment with the truth of your desire, it will keep falling apart in service to you.
If you live into and own the agreements you have with your partner, if they are of your true essence of lovership, if you love the hundreds of others you love in this Way of Devotion and in embodied alignment to your own commitments, your life will flourish without any need to adjust the parameters.
If you are one who wants sexual exclusivity, you will live into that and have deep and meaningful platonic connections in the rest of your life. Your love will live bold and true, with a calculated reserve, curated, calibrated, delivered and exchanged in full AND in alignment with your every commitment.
We do not give our whole heart in any one form. We do not need to hold out for the form of partnership to be in the practice of wholehearted loving. We give our whole heart in a Way, devoting to the truth of the moment and the obvious and subtle parameters invoked by the connection.
It does not occur to us to give our whole heart to our mother by attempting to marry her. But are we giving her our whole heart as our mother? This Way is not one form, because it can take infinite forms.
My friends and family are all the way in this with me. They are in my life with me, devoted to the experience we are creating. I have their wholehearted love and they have mine.
And when I have a partner, my wholehearted love will also go to him.
Love is infinite and indivisible, immediate and everlasting. The only thing that hurts is withholding it. When I can't or don't give my love, I am in the beingness of suffering. It truly is as simple as that.
In any given moment, I can be giving my whole heart. Or else I can be suffering. It's totally up to me.
