The Existential Terror of Romance-with-Many

Last week, we talked about romance as high sensation and the willingness to be changed by another. We talked about it as something that can be accessed with way more people than we usually think.

Today, we’re talking more about the reasons why romance-with-many is scary.

But before we get there, a few pieces of exciting news:

Creative Encounters has a podcast now!! I’m so, so thrilled about this. I’ve been wanting to speak more loosely than I usually do in a newsletter, fought with the “not another podcast” voices for a few weeks, and here we are! The first episode is only 10 minutes long; you can give it a listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I’m still very much learning how to podcast and open to feedback and thoughts!

The next Office Hours will be Tuesday, June 11th, from 7:30-8:30pm EST. If you’re new, Office Hours is a free, open-to-all space where we can chat about love, how to build structures that can fit our unique connections, and whatever else happens to be on our minds. Here’s the Google Meets link to save: https://meet.google.com/zxn-ezqk-hgn

Now back to why romance-with-many may be scary:

As a reminder, by “romance-with-many” I don’t mean polyamory. Polyamory still keeps the story of what comes after a romantic encounter intact. I’m talking about the ability to experience a certain kind of deep sensation at brunch with a friend, at the bodega, in a meeting, and to build our lives around cultivating these kinds of encounters.

1) Romance-with-many is scary because of our stories of what comes next.

We imbue romance with so much depth, intensity, and meaning, and usually this meaning is directed towards a future—a romantic relationship, committed partnership. This big-ness can make us unwilling to open up to romance unless we’re sure there’s a future we want to pursue.

If someone has an unexpected romantic moment with their longtime friend on a roof at a party— their eyes meet, there’s an understanding, a depth of connection— they may spend the next few days searching for the meaning behind what happened. Are they in love with their friend? Do they want to date? Will this ruin the friendship? This future is one option for how the story can go, and it could be a beautiful one. But it’s not the only option. That moment on the roof could “just” be a beautiful moment, woven into the story of an already-existing friendship. It could be a push to deepen a friendship. It could be a push to move the friendship in a different direction.

Opening up to romance with more people means changing our expectations for the story of what comes next. It means making different meaning.

It’s also an opportunity, no matter what story gets made of it, to deepen our experience of our connection to someone.

Which leads us to the second reason why romance-with-many can be scary:

2) The high sensation that comes with romantic encounter is a lot to deal with, existentially.

Romance is a moment that can move us out of our habitual view of ourselves as stable beings with boundaries separating us from the rest of the world. It’s a moment in which you’re willing to be surprised, touched, and changed by another, and that requires letting down some of your separate-self walls and experiencing yourself as porous and entangled with the rest of the world. This is vulnerable and terrifying; who are we without our stable identities? It makes sense that we might only want to experience this with one person at a time, and then package it up into a neat story and a neat future.

But what if we let the meaning be messy, and let our sense of self remain scrambled? This kind of connection to other people can open us up to the ways that we are much more than rational self-contained beings. Part of the mythos of romance has always been an element of being swept away by something bigger, of being out of control. Whether you recognize this element as something divine, as part of your unconscious, or as just something larger and unknown, it’s still a scary proposition.

From my spiritual perspective, the high sensation of romance is a moment of recognizing in yourself and the other the truth of our strange same-ness. I do not mean this in a love-and-light way, I mean this in a slightly terrifying way. We are the same pulsing consciousness looking out at each other with different masks on. And this consciousness is the Divine Mystery that our little human ego brains cannot fully grasp. It’s fundamentally overwhelming. It reminds us that our little separate selves are an illusion, and our truth is the mystery and nothingness of the undifferentiated void.

Sexy. And terrifying.

For me, expanding what romance means is a spiritual project. It’s growing the ability to see everyone as interconnected, and therefore holding the same essential lovability. The person I hate is God wearing a different face than the face God wears as my closest friend. And we’re still on Earth to differentiate and have preferences, and to like some people more than others, but fundamentally, one person does not have more ability than another to remind me of the deep mystery of our mutual godliness.

This also feels different to me than “everyone is God so we should love everyone”. It’s not sanitized or pious; it’s messy, dirty, desirous, and occasionally hateful. I don’t really know what to do with it or how to hold it. Sometimes I react to it by shutting down or lashing out. But I find a lot of purpose and joy in trying to expand my capacity for how much of the strange-ness of interconnection I can tolerate.

This is a “meaning” that romance can hold, a “meaning” that doesn’t need to have anything to do with the future. It “means” that we recognize how deeply connected we are to everyone, how one person is not cosmically more special than another, even as we are paradoxically glimpsing this truth through seeing someone’s special-ness.

All of this comes, obviously, from my personal and spiritual orientation, and I don’t think it’s the only way to look at what romance means. I’d love to hear what your version is; send me a reply or come to Office Hours and chat about it!

This orientation changes the ethics that comes out of romance, like it changes the story that emerges. How do we treat everyone in our lives from this perspective of undifferentiation? More next time!