When someone says they want to “go with the flow” in a romantic relationship, it means the relationship will flow nowhere.
No problem.
Some connections shouldn’t flow anywhere. Some should only be enjoyed in the moment and leave you with a lifetime of memories of a dynamite fling that blazed like fire and ended on a high note, before things could turn to smoke. Some things are meant to be enjoyed like a shot of tequila, worn just once like a wedding gown, and tossed with abandon after use, like a condom.
Instead, too often, people make the mistake of holding on to these kinds of connections with a death grip. The freedom and carefree spirit that make them beautiful is strangled out, and all they’re left with is a limp and lifeless relationship that should have ended two weeks in.
When someone has enough foresight and honesty to acknowledge that they suspect a connection will not go far, but may be worth the momentary enjoyment, I admire that. But when someone tries to glaze over their desire to keep a lover in suspended animation indefinitely by using coded language, that’s when I start losing respect.
We live in interesting times. It seems too many want a no risk, no accountability, no-strings kind of love. (Of course, people also want bae to provide for them all the perks that would be tantamount to human sacrifice. But that’s a rant for another day.) There isn’t much that is new about that, except now the world is at our fingertips, and the Paradox of Choice means that there are so many options available to us that many never see a need to choose anyone or anything.
It’s a very tempting notion: Why not simply avoid falling into the traps that our forebears succumbed to by engaging in Love Lite? We don’t want their multiple marriages and divorces, sloppy, unhappy unions, dead-end religious dogma around lifelong commitment, toleration of abuse and neglect, and suffocating expectations. Why not just float on the edges of intimacy, sweeping up just enough scraps of each other’s time and affection to get by? Why not simply warm the bench of romantic connection for life and laugh as others stumble on the field?
Pro tip: Don’t think for a minute that people don’t have intentions for you because they claim to be going with the flow, not ready for anything serious, or down for whatever. That usually means they simply intend to use you for as long as you will allow.
Why not take the most precious thing that life allows humans to experience together and leave it all up to chance? Going with the flow is so much easier. No expectations, just a collection of spontaneous experiences. Whatever happens, happens. That’s the perfectly natural way to do things, right?
by Arno Smit, Unsplash
Wrong. Absolutely off the mark. Couldn’t be wronger (as fundamentally wrong as that grammar).
I’m not the boss of you, but I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that you stop being fooled by people who avoid reciprocity and meaningful connection by saying that they just want to let your liaison “unfold naturally”. And if you’re the one using that coded language, you may want to stop kidding yourself and trying to bullshit others. You’d garner more esteem (and probably get laid more) if you’re just honest.
The problem is that we’ve come to think of nature as something wholly wild and willy-nilly, as something that is primarily founded upon mystery and chaos. We often do that to people and things that we want to diminish and conquer.
We equate nature with womanhood, and since womanhood has historically been dismissed as irrational and unknowable, we take ideas about natural phenomena, like the Big Bang Theory, and run with it, as if it is not only one of many possible theories. Our primary takeaway from this theory is that worlds can be formed with no initiating order or intent whatsoever. We take that notion as law.
You can’t even initiate a trip to the toilet without intention, so tell me where the hell they do that at…
And it sounds so fun and breezy, doesn’t it? When a potential boo whispers that magic word in your ear, it conjures images of birds and honey bees, fragrant flowers and fruit trees, of endless sunsets and running barefoot along beaches.
And of course, sex. Au Naturale! It doesn’t get any more natural than that. The word, “natural”, drums up all these wonderful feelings and hypnotizes us with dreams of heaven on earth. And that feels good. We want what feels good.
Yet, Nature does nothing without intention. Nature is one of the strictest disciplinarians you will ever encounter. She is both a Master and a masterpiece of order and consistency. Her order lives in wedded bliss with beauty and a touch of the unexpected. Cycles are the threads holding this world and the universe together.
Galileo is credited with saying,
“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe”.
Nature is replete with pattern and structure. Whether or not you believe in a higher power, it cannot be denied that the planets orbit their stars, the sun and moon traverse the horizon, the tides ebb and flow, seasons change, oceans slowly morph into deserts, volcanoes erupt and islands emerge from dried lava, glaciers grow and melt, and poles shift, according to processes that haven’t fallen off since the beginning of time. Ice crystals, snowflakes, and seashells form, animals evolve adaptations to their environments, and diseases ravage bodies according to natural codes that astound our brightest scientists.
Nature is no effing slouch. She ain’t out here drifting on waves in the Pacific trying to figure out her next move. In fact, while y’all bitches playin’, I truly believe Nature’s intention to purge this place of the arrogant, greedy, disrespectful, humans who threaten to throw her off, is in full effect. Like an organism fighting off an illness, as below so above. Nature always finds her balance, and she won’t get caught sleeping.
Nature is nothing if not intentional. And what are we if not, well, natural? If we are part of nature and nature is intentional, life and love must be also.
At the core of nature is the aspect of time. I think it’s safe to say that anyone who evokes nature to defend a shallow, standoffish approach to love has no idea what nature is. They, therefore, have little understanding of or respect for time, especially yours.
