The Secret Third Thing

Pillow-talk for wounds that aren't romantic.

Dear reader,

I’m tired of my relationships with good men precluding my friendships with them afterwards.

I’d do most anything to spend a day, or two, with each of my former romantic partners. But the more ex-boyfriends I acquire, the more I understand that what I’m longing for — sustained intimacy, sans romance — isn’t commonly done. It just isn’t customary. Perhaps it would be different if I lived in proximity to any of them; or, maybe if my breakups had been more amicable.

If I had my way, I’d watch Skippy read Harper’s while he took a bath, before making a late breakfast of bacon and eggs together. If I had my way, I’d take a walk to Nate’s house and listen to him play fiddle beside the woodstove, late into a long and frigid Vermont night. I’d go surfing with Calvin, and, with my fingers clasped around his ankle, cheat the long paddle out at San Onofre. Then he’d play the Wurlitzer in the corner of our living room, by the window, and I would bake us a loaf of bread.

If I had my way, I’d run errands in Manhattan with Mike on a Friday morning, or maybe we’d wait in line together at the Greenpoint farmer’s market. If I had my way, I’d wake up early on a Sunday and crawl into the truck with T. to hold hands while we pilfer through piles of other people’s things at the swap meet. 

It’s not the relationships that I miss. It isn’t the romantic partnership or compulsive monogamy that I crave. I just want my friends back.

When I moved to the ranch, I started living intimately with nine other people, half of them men. I was single at the time, and by my standards, I had been for a while. Soon thereafter, I started flirting with a man who lived outside of the ranch, but near enough, and after a brief period toeing one another’s waters we spent two years in a monogamous relationship.

I was pleased — and relieved — to meet someone so quickly, but diving into our dynamic meant that my availability, physically and emotionally, to my community at home, was limited from the get-go. I wish I could say otherwise, but after witnessing my landmates and I move in and out of partnerships throughout the seasons, I can say with confidence that the project of new romantic love often pulls us away from each other, from our homestead and our collective ambitions.

Personally, I love being pulled away for love. My life’s purpose has always felt oriented towards love, towards being a lover. I try not to shun this part of myself, but sometimes I wish my constitution was more balanced. It feels like the idea of being in love carries more weight for me than it does for other people. I know that love is important, if not vital for everybody. But is finding true love their end-all be-all — like it is for me?

Sometimes, when I’d get bent out of shape about our relationship, T. would ask if it was possible for me to take it less seriously. With compassion for my suffering, and likely for his own benefit too, he wondered if there was a way I could de-prioritize our relationship. Could I take it off of the pedestal and put it somewhere more equal to the other aspects of my being? No, I replied. I could not.

I’ve heard it before: A partnership won’t actually fulfill me the way I imagine it can. The equilibrium I seek prioritizes self-fulfillment and self-love, both of which feel uncomfortably foreign. It means being alone a lot more than I anticipated, which defies many aspects of my womanly conditioning. It also means feeling like an outlier in a small community where almost everybody my age is paired up. Attaching my sense of self to somebody else does seem easier...

Relationship-seeking and becoming partnered has been a time-honored compulsion of mine, for many reasons. As a child, I learned that striving for and maintaining a partnership with a man was the main prerogative of women, and that this emotional labor was the necessary precursor to securing stability for themselves and their offspring, and that without such stability we became worthless. Never did my mother work harder or give more of herself than when it was to please the man “loving” and supporting us. Whether she was preparing the perfect meal on the heels of his return from a business trip, or planning every aspect of his only vacation a year, my mother made herself crazy attempting to perfect the world around her boyfriend. Even Buffy, I noticed, was tortured most not by the vampires she fought every night after dark, but by the impossibility of a relationship with her eternally unavailable lover.

Outside of my childhood, being partnered has frequently solved the elusive problem of housing, in both rural and urban areas. Before I moved to the ranch, there was no better — or more appealing — alternative. It made sense for me to have a boyfriend because I saw that, at a certain point, un-partnered people eventually age out of living together. All of my friends already lived with their partners, so forming a nuclear unit of my own appeared as my best bet at securing a place to live somewhere I actually wanted to be.

Throughout my twenties I tolerated living with roommates off and on, but only as interludes to what would become my “real life” later, when I’d find my life partner, my true love, and we’d build a home together. It seemed unconscionable to imagine having roommates into my 40s and 50s. And though I’ve loved living alone, at certain moments, that reality in perpetuity seemed sad, like an indication of my failure as a woman. Whether I was living off-grid in Vermont, or in a Mexican jungle, my periods of domestic solitude have always raised the same question: Who’s going to find me here? 

I had fears of becoming a “spinster” but I knew they were a byproduct of the patriarchy. I understood the term as a concept that herds women into relationships — ones they may not even want — and scares them away from considering possibilities more radical than paired-off domesticity and motherhood. I even wondered if being a spinster, with or without children, was the more secure choice. Rather than pedestaling a relationship with one person, it leaves room for community building. 

Despite my trepidations, I’ve sought partnership anyway. It has seemed a safe haven, and the only one available to me, as a woman. Navigating life in a disconnected society where the definition of “community” is a question mark, my partners were my only true companions. It was nice to “have” somebody when I was working two jobs, going to school full time, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. This was especially true in the years after leaving home, at seventeen, because despite how dysfunctional and tragic my home life was, it was the only one I knew. I was ruthlessly pushed by my mother to go off and start my own life, but where? And with who?

Consciously or not, I hoped that moving through these partnerships would fill the god-sized hole in my heart, left from the gaps in my care as a child. It’s a tall order. Most of my relationships have ended after recognizing the impossibility of my ask. I allow the void to swallow me whole, leaving my lover behind. 

These days, I arrive home at sunset to the buzzing of my landmates. Friendship is all around me, and yet, sometimes I wonder if living in community will be enough. I get ahead of myself; I default to black and white patterns of thinking. Maybe it works right now, but what if we can’t sustain it? What if everybody else pairs off and leaves?

I get lonely, too. The main house might be full at the end of the day, but what about nightfall, when I usually crawl up to my room and close the door behind me? What replaces pillow-talk?

Last Wednesday, I woke up anxious. Nerves rattled inside me; I could feel my heart tick in its chamber. On the drive home from my studio, I wished there was someone waiting at home to hold me, a man who really loves me. Around every turn, I sank deeper into a fantasy about co-regulating with him, this imaginary love of my life. 

I pulled up to the ranch expecting to feed myself unceremoniously and go to bed, but instead I found my family stirring. Marsha rolled out fresh pasta with one eye on the Bechamel sauce cooking on the stove. Nico sliced a loaf of “everything bread” to share, while Brian tuned his guitar. On the patio, Farmer made a fire. 

Still feeling sorry for myself, I wanted to retreat after we had cleared our plates. My default is to hide my heart when it hurts. But instead, something told me to stay. And so I followed the men outside. With bellies full, we gathered in a circle under the night sky and took turns bearing our souls to one another in song. I felt called to hum and howl during Brian’s cover of “I Know No Pardon” by Vetiver, and soon Nico and Farmer were humming too. Vibrating as one, we harmonized our breath into the fire. My heart settled down. I felt my skin holding me all together. Inside I heard a quiet whisper: This, not that. 

If someone asked me to describe my ideal Sad Girl Wednesday Night, none of this would have made the list. When I’m down on relationships, if I can’t lose myself in a man’s arms, I often isolate myself further. I’ve spent my life assuming narrow dreams, thinking they were not only vast, but what I wanted and needed. I have bounced between the binary, figuring my options were to live alone or live with a man. I didn’t realize there was a secret, third thing: living with others. 

I still miss my ex-boyfriends, but I am opening myself more to the friendships in front of me now. And with a deeper vulnerability than I would reveal were I still in a partnership, I’m realizing that the closeness and regulation I seek isn’t exclusive to being in one. 

What’s more, I’m sensing for the first time that healing the pain I carry can happen, just probably not inside of a partnership. My wounds aren’t romantic. But in the safety of a family, albeit a chosen one, I can address, and better understand the family I had before it. It turns out I don’t need another boyfriend, not yet; I just need my brothers. 

Love, 

Anna