CallaFirestormBW
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Joined: 6/29/2008
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Although the OP specified that this wasn't about dealing with unhealthy relationships, I'd like to relay a little something from my 'very nearly vanilla' days. For a while, in my life, I chose to have a monogamous, mainstream sort of marriage. Of course, we re-wrote our vows so that they wouldn't promise things one or the other of us knew we couldn't promise, and didn't promise each other 'forever'... but the relevant portion comes out of our -very- mainstream, not kinky even in the bedroom relationship, and an incident that happened shortly after he and I became engaged. He came home one afternoon to find me in a tearful conversation, if you could call it that, with my mother. She was berating me, over the phone, so loudly that he could hear every word across the room. I was sitting, silent, tear-stained, and stoic, because by this point in my life I'd figured out that there was no way to argue with her--not only would she not let anyone else get a word in, she -also- didn't hear anyone else, even if they spoke... just kept on her rant until she was damned good and ready to stop.
Now I'm not very accepting of help -- I've done everything I could in my life to be completely self-sufficient, but my parents were a weak spot for me. I'd been raised to "Honor thy father and thy mother", and at this point (at 19 years old), I still believed there was -something- I could do that would make them proud of me and make them accept me as a worthwhile person.* My fiance, an astute man, if somewhat beleaguered in his own right, took the receiver out of my hand by force, hung up on my mother, and informed me that I was -never- to use our phone to contact that woman again, talk to her on the streets, or invite her into our home, until she had come to -me- and apologized for ever making me feel like an unworthy person. And if my Papi couldn't deal with that, -HE- could just be added to the 'no call' list.
I need to be clear that, when it came to my marriage, I was "the rock". I ran the household, and directed the discipline and controlled money, time, and major decisions... we weren't 'kinky', but I could no more put aside my need to direct my own life and the lives of those who put their faith in me than I could stop breathing... but this man, willing though he was to let me run every other aspect of our household to suit me, stepped up to bar my mother from our home and even from contact and conversation. So when I hear people screaming "abusive... abusive" and being so vehement about stating that -every- situation is the same and underneath its all about insecurity and abuse, I have to shake my head and wonder about how people who know -virtually nothing- about another person's circumstance except for a few words on a message board can be so certain of what is going to be 'healthy' for that person and relationship.
Everything boils down to intention, responsibility, and consent. If all of those things are present, and the people who are involved have a level of trust and respect for one another (yes, respect) and for the sanctity of their -relationship-, pursuant to its terms, then the relationship is healthy, regardless of the opinions of outsiders concerning the trappings that relationship contains.
Dame Calla
*PS: I need to state here, that my father eventually -did- come to both cherish and respect me. But he only did so after 10 years of no contact, and me standing up and telling him, in no uncertain terms, that if he wished to have a relationship with me, he would have to accept who and what I was... and if he felt that he couldn't do that, with solid information about the reality of what I was and how I lived, in a way that was going to be healthy for -him- in accepting things he found distasteful without that information, then maybe it would be better if we just didn't communicate. He chose contact, and has learned a LOT about alternative ways of living since then. He's still skittish about some of it, but has been gracious and accepting of myself, my companions, my piercings and tattoos, my belief-path, my work, and has accepted me as an adult -friend-... and without my ex's input, I don't think that would have ever happened.
< Message edited by CallaFirestormBW -- 6/21/2009 12:54:32 PM >
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Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"
"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer
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RE: Banned Friendships - 
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