Relating to Ships

I know how much we all love to break down the seemingly common place words that we use every day. I decided to write a follow-up blog to my Polyamory in Practice blog, and in thinking of what to say and how to title it, it occurred to me that the term “relationship” is very heavy with meaning that we may sometimes not think about!
Relationships… relation… ships… ideas of “ships passing in the night” as applied by poets and writers as a metaphor to describe two people who may or may not ever meet fill my head when I think of the word. We are each the captain of our own personal vessel, and as we meet others, we sometimes welcome people on board and sometimes simply wave hello from our separate ships. Sometimes our ships sink, and we climb aboard a friend or lovers until we are strong enough to build a new one. Some people build such a sturdy ship, that they don’t sink ever again, just need a patch up here and there. Some of us may not have our own ship, preferring instead to ride with others to get where we are going.
It seems to me that it is best to have your own ship. When we ride with others we are giving up our autonomy and simply going along with the other person’s decisions. When we pick people up and carry them on our ship, we are depriving them of the willpower and skills necessary for them to make their own ship and sail it. It seems that it is best to sail solo at all times, stopping only to assist others in the building and repair of their own ships, and occasionally docking our own ship to take a break and mingle with those who are captains or landlubbers, but nonetheless on shore at the moment, taking stock of each other and planning the next voyage. These breaks on the shore should be brief, to prevent falling asleep and forgetting how to sail, or even forgetting that you have your own ship. However, if you never stop and dock your ship, you may not be able to see what the shipless are going though, and therefore may not be able to help and encourage them to set sail, which, of course, is our purpose as humans- to help one another sail!
So, when it comes to relationships, I am wondering, do we sail side by side, or do we build a new ship together? Or… just maybe… when we meet our soul mate for this life, are our ships already identical or the exact opposites of each other so that when we see each other across the universal waters, our ships simply collide into one- though we are both still captains of our own ships, perhaps we now have a third entity that is our combined ships?
It isn’t hard to sail beside those we love. Oftentimes, we find each other because we are sailing next to each other on a similar course to begin with. Though we may momentarily part ways to explore this way and that, we still return to each other on these cosmic waters because the course is the same. Or, we meet on shore as we are mingling and greeting fellow travelers, and discover each other both divulging the secrets of the high seas, and the way to traverse her most effectively. Then, when we climb back on board our ships, we naturally decide to go on a few expeditions together, to see what we can find, but each in our own ships.
When we find ourselves sailing beside those who are very different from us, or very challenging to us, we see that we are entwined in a chance meeting from which both of us will learn important lessons, though they may be difficult. Whether harmful or beneficial, other ship captains will send you flowers and supplies or bullets and bombs, but we have to continue on, shaking off these gifts/wounds from others and staying our own course. Otherwise, whether overloaded with gifts or ripped to shreds by bombs, still, surely we will sink.
So, as I asked before, in a relationship, do we sail side by side for a time, do we make a new ship, or do we somehow become captains of a second ship, our own and the one that belongs to the relationship we have newly created, making three ships involved in our voyage? If the latter, when a group of close friends finally meet and form their own new tribe or family, do they also create a group ship on which to sail together, putting them in charge of their own ship plus the group ship? Don’t they call our planet “spaceship earth” in our middle school science classes? Do we all have as many ships as families/tribes and selves we are a part of? And does this mean we have to consciously sail all of these vessels at once?
Seems like a lot of travelling and a lot of work! But it also sounds like a lot of fun. Being polyamorous, I am hesitant to ever build a new ship with any other one person. That would mean my own ship would be abandoned and I would be stuck on our new ship for life, with both of us vying for control as captain. However, I love those whom I love very, very deeply, and don’t want to have to communicate from my own ship to theirs across the galactic waters as we sail parallel to each other. So, I definitely lean towards the concept that as we meet people, another ship is created between us which constitutes our “relationship.” We each keep our own ships which we sail where we desire, but we are now also involved with co-captaining another vessel which may have from 2 to 6 billion co-captains. Most likely, we will end up co-captaining many different sized ships. I have my own ship, my relation-ship that I co-captain with my current boyfriend, my work-ship I share with those I work with, several friend-ships that seem to gradually be combining into one another as I do my primary purpose in life which is connecting groups of people to one another, my net-ship comprised of the people I meet in online communities such as Evolver and Facebook, my state-ships that represent the states I have lived in and everyone in them, my country-ship which contains every person in the USA, and my world-ship that I share with every other person on the planet. From my own ship up to the world-ship, there are infinite other ships that I co-captain as I sail along the waters, relating to and loving those on board- each of them to different degrees depending on how well we have gotten acquainted over the time we’ve had together.
But what I am really trying to get at here is this: What is a relationship!? You see, though I am polyamorous and always have been (though I have tried monogamy without success several times) I have recently found myself in a relationship in which I somehow no longer desire sexual interaction with anyone else. I know this may be a phase, as this is a relatively new relationship, but at the moment, I am extremely puzzled by this feeling and emotion. I don’t feel like I have ever known this person before as I often feel about others I meet… there are about 10 people in my life right now that I just KNOW I have known in a “past life” or encountered somehow before… my mother, one of my brothers, my current boss, my step-sister, and a handful of close male friends. Other than my mother and my step-sister, I have not yet met in this life any other females that I feel this resonance with, but I know I will as I grow older, as us girls seem to have a harder time finding and appreciating each other… haha. There are still others that I resonate strongly with, knowing that we have had various interactions to various degrees in several other realities/planes/lives, but not as many and not as strongly as the soul mates I mentioned before. However, I do not feel this same feeling around the guy I am currently with. Rather, I just KNOW we have been the SAME THING in every other life we have experienced. Knowing I have been a male entity in all my previous experiences and am a female entity now adds to the stew of knowing and emotions currently going through me.
Until I met him, I pondered whether a soul mate (see my soul mate blog) was someone whose spirit qualities met my own in another plane/life or if it was someone who actually was a part of my own spirit qualities in another plane or life. Before meeting him, it was easy to ponder this, as the only people I had met gave me the feeling that our separate entities had known each other before, but I didn’t quite understand how. After meeting him, I very much feel a peculiar sameness that has made me feel that these others were just that, others, and he and I were most definitely of the same spiritual energies, separated for the first time on this plane, in this life. And, of course, I recognize that we were/are ALL the same at some level at some point in time, but what I am talking about is what has come after that… throughout all the breaking and merging of spirit matter throughout time and space to date, I feel this is the first time my and his energies have been split into complete separate entities.
Ok, ok, so we were one in the other planes/lives we’ve lived, and other soul mates I meet are entities that I have encountered in some other plane/life… but how does that come into play with all this talk of relationships? Well… for one, it is as hard/easy to get along with him as it is to get along with myself! As we all know, this is much easier said than done! It is hard to forgive one’s own faults and to not get big headed over one’s own skills and talents, and it is very easy to blame oneself and feel guilty about a myriad of things. With people I do not feel the soul mate connection with, I can easily sail in the other direction when I tire of our parallel course. With those I do feel the soul mate connection with, once we meet again on the waters of this lifetime, it is easy for us to sail side by side and on our relation-ships because we can always find our way back to each other and the sailing is smooth because we have already forgiven each other for any transgression that may occur. But when it comes to this guy, our relation-ship requires as watchful of an eye as my own and his own ship requires of us each! Interesting….
So, for now I am enjoying my monogamous relationship as it sails along with my own ship and his. I have absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that he and I will both express our love sexually with other people at some point in time, but the time is not today, or tomorrow. When it does occur, it will occur because our relationship has sailed into new waters, the polyamorous waters, and when we arrive and meet others sailing those waters, it will be up to us to communicate what we see from our individual ships and from our relation-ship.
Honest communication is the only way to co-captain our ships, whether the ship with the one we love, or this ship we call planet Earth. Sex in only one way that we humans communicate our love for each other, and though it can be the most honest form of communication, it can also be the most deceiving. Sex is beautiful and it is revolting, it is joy and it is anger, it is pleasure and it is pain, and it is never just one thing, it is always many emotions at once. It has been and always will be my duty as a human that has chosen to sail these particular waters I am sailing to show others the deeper truths of sexual interaction. This requires me to maintain my ship at the highest standards, and to teach others how to do the same. This requires me to be a helping co-captain on the many other ships I choose to sail and to always lend a hand when it comes to our sexual expressions. So what if I don’t actually want to have intercourse with anyone else at the moment… doesn’t mean we aren’t doing it in our dreams, or when we look at each other, or when we think of each other for that matter. I was put on Earth to bring happier orgasms to everyone, and just because I can’t be the one naked beside you physically right now, doesn’t mean that I am not naked beside you… right now! KISSES TO YOU ALL!