LOVING
WITHOUT EXPECTATIONS:
NON-COMPREHENSIVE RELATIONSHIPS
SYNOPSIS:
Most of us were born and raised in conventional
families:
Our first glimpse of adult relationships
was the relationship between our parents.
So when we began to project adult relationships for
ourselves,
we naturally assumed the patterns of love-and-marriage around us.
We might even have believed that love and marriage
were natural and inevitable for 'grown-ups'.
Before we began to think clearly for ourselves,
we unreflectively affirmed the marriage model:
a permanent, comprehensive,
all-purpose relationship
with one member of the other sex.
And our earliest adult relationships might have been
rehearsals
for enacting this love-script as we first learned it.
But as the sunlight of reality
gradually burns away
the fog of romantic illusions,
we begin to question our preconceptions about love
and slowly open ourselves to what is really happening
between us and the actual people we know.
Eventually we might utterly discard the old
model of love:
Instead of trying to force ourselves into
the fully-scripted roles of the all-purpose relationship,
we might begin to create our own new relationships
---ever more free of cultural patterns.
We might even go to the extreme of loving without expectations,
of letting special relationships emerge and develop
without preconceptions from
either side.
OUTLINE:
THE
OLD MODEL OF LOVE
A. LOVING WITH
EXPECTATIONS
1. Security and the Need to be Needed
2. Approval
3. Romance
4. Sex
5. Affection and Intimacy
6. Communication and Companionship
7. Relationship Structure
B. LOVING WITHOUT
EXPECTATIONS
1. Needing, Wanting, Appreciating
2. Emergent Values in my Relationship with Pat
3. Emergent Values in my Relationship with Sara
C. NON-COMPREHENSIVE RELATIONSHIPS
LOVING
WITHOUT EXPECTATIONS:
NON-COMPREHENSIVE
RELATIONSHIPS
by
James Leonard Park
THE OLD MODEL OF LOVE
When we first dreamed of love,
we imagined that all of our
interpersonal wishes
would be fulfilled in one
relationship.
Our culture infused us with the mythology of romantic love.
We built up very strong emotional expectations,
which sometimes clouded our view of the real people we met.
We evaluated new people based on our
preconceptions.
Perhaps our expectations were so explicit
that we could draw up a list
of the characteristics
we were looking for in a prospective spouse.
(Such pre-existing wishes make computer dating possible.)
But this dream-model of love and even our emotional
responses
originated in our cultural
programming.
For instance, when a man enjoys the conventional beauty of a woman,
he is not responding to her as whatever individual person she is.
But he is responding to his
internal program—"beautiful
woman".
He lights up inside because of conventional female signals
—rather
like birds responding to the plumage of their own species.
Likewise, when a woman experiences positive
vibrations about a man,
she is experiencing her
internalized
script—"wonderful
man".
Something about him triggers her emotional responses.
When we respond in such conventional ways,
we are not noticing the uniqueness
of others
or coming to appreciate some unexpected qualities.
Rather, we are paying attention to the sameness of others
---sizing them up to determine how well
they fit our pre-existing
emotional needs.
Does our romantic programming turn us into
emotional fly-paper?
When a potential love-object crosses our field of vision,
we mentally compare him/her with our built-in expectations
to see if this person might be a perfect match for us.
Our possessive urge makes us reach out to clutch someone.
And sometimes whomever we have selected
as our current heart-throb is only vaguely appropriate
as a realistic life-partner.
Television mate-selection
and dating
programs work this way:
The participants are expected to choose each other
on the basis of physical appearance and pleasing personalities.
Sex-appeal and romantic
responses are all that can happen
based on seeing each other and having brief, superficial conversations.
A. LOVING WITH
EXPECTATIONS
What
interpersonal needs do we expect to satisfy
in our all-embracing relationships?
If we were to write down what we are looking for,
each of us would create a different list.
Which of the following desires and wishes
are we seeking to fulfill?
1.
Security and the Need to be Needed.
We desire someone who will always be beside us,
who will give us a sense of permanence in an uncertain world.
A good relationship will make us happy and safe.
It will provide financial and emotional security.
The other side of the desire to be secure
is the desire to provide
security for someone else.
We want to 'count' in someone else's life,
to have someone depend on us.
2.
Approval.
When we dream of the ideal partner,
do we yearn for unconditional approval?
Don't we want someone who will validate our existence,
give us positive strokes,
someone who will enjoy us and everything important to us?
3.
Romance.
Unless we have already outgrown our
romantic
illusions,
we might still yearn for a comprehensive relationship
that fulfills all of our dreams for perfect love.
We might fantasize holding someone in our arms
who will raise us to an emotional pinnacle
—and
perhaps even keep us there, suspended in eternal bliss.
And even if we now find some of these dreams
unrealistic,
we might still hope for an emotionally-fulfilling
relationship.
4.
Sex.
We might hunger for that special individual
who will satisfy all our sexual
fantasies
and make us feel wonderful about our own sexuality.
Are we brimming with sexual urges looking for partners?
5.
Affection and Intimacy.
Ever since we first heard about love,
we have probably associated it with hugging, kissing, & cuddling.
So these have naturally become part
of our vision of a good loving relationship.
What dreams of affection have shaped our expectations for love?
6.
Communication and Companionship.
Our wish for a total relationship includes
talking about everything that matters to us.
We hope to share every dimension of our lives.
And we dream of that perfect companion
with whom we will be completely comfortable and happy
—maybe
ever forming an ideal couple.
7. Relationship Structure.
Perhaps our strongest desire when we imagine love
is our wish to establish what society recognizes as a relationship.
Marriage, of course, is the most approved
of these socially-sanctioned relationships.
We might so strongly wish to be coupled with someone
that the particular person is secondary!
(Did we plan to
get married
long before we found a suitable spouse?)
Having a permanent love-partner gives us social
standing,
makes us feel that we 'have arrived'.
We can be proud of the person we have attracted.
And if we have children together,
we can take pride in our identity as parents.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These seven wishes for the perfect loving
relationship
are called pre-existing hopes, dreams, or expectations
because we can easily feel these yearnings within ourselves,
before any actual relationships emerge.
And there are many possible
partners
who could fulfill these abstract expectations.
When we specify our prerequisites for an ideal
love-partner,
we realize that no actual person in the real world
could fulfill all of
our requirements.
And, even if we did find Mr. Right or Ms. Right
—that
perfect mate of our dreams—
what would he or she want with us?
Thus, we might already have acknowledged to ourselves
that no one person can satisfy all our needs.
When we imagine all-purpose relationships,
we unrealistically expect to find everything we want in one
store.
All of our physical, emotional, intellectual, & spiritual needs and
desires
are supposed to be realized in one relationship.
To be more specific, not only are we hoping
to be perfectly fulfilled in bed together,
but we expect the same partnership
to be ideally suited for raising children!
(No one has ever explained this assumed connection
between sexual compatibility
and parenting skills.)
Even if we do discover the most
perfect mate for ourselves
—what
we believe to be the most wonderful person on Earth—
can any one person be better than the rest of humanity combined?
If we attach ourselves to one person
as the source of all human interaction,
are we not like the people who attach themselves to one book
as the source of all wisdom?
Is the all-or-nothing
relationship
a form of relationship
fundamentalism?
B.
LOVING WITHOUT
EXPECTATIONS
In contrast to this quest for someone
who fulfills all of our fantasies,
we can set aside our prior expectations and socially-approved
scripts
and open ourselves to the possibility of loving without preconditions.
Then we can discover and appreciate others for who they really are
rather than for how well
they fit our pre-existing plans and aspirations.
Because we are free human beings, we can change our
life-stories.
The more fully we acknowledge our pre-existing hungers and yearnings,
the more easily we can put them aside.
Instead of starting with a complete
script
and then looking for an actor to fill the supporting role,
we can improvise as
we go along,
cooperating to write joint
stories with the actual
persons we
love.
1.
Needing, Wanting, Appreciating.
To help us move beyond the old model
—love
as a permanent, comprehensive, all-purpose relationship—
we should examine our expectations more closely.
When we set out looking for someone to love,
we might be operating on a number of different levels.
The most basic of these are needing
and wanting.
When we experience ourselves as needing someone to love,
we feel no sense of choice
about these internal deficiencies or lacks.
Our drive toward love is just there,
deep in our personalities.
Usually without fully understanding what we are
attempting to do,
we search for people to fill our
personal gaps.
As children, we needed our parents to take
care of us.
Without their care, we would have died.
But later, we learn to satisfy our own physical and
emotional needs.
We take responsibility for ourselves in many practical ways.
But we might still need love
is the blind way we did as children.
The level above needing someone to love
is wanting to enter
into a fulfilling loving relationship.
When we say that we want
a relationship
that satisfies such-and-such desires and aspirations,
we accept responsibility
for the lacks and deficiencies
we feel within ourselves.
We can articulate our wishes
and recognize choice
as the basis of our wants.
Do we need
someone to love?
Or do we want to have
a loving relationship?
However, it makes no difference whether we need or want security,
sex, companionship, communication, relationship structure, etc.
because in either case these wishes are contained entirely within us
as we try to establish some variation
of the all-purpose, comprehensive, total relationship.
Since we have these needs or wants within ourselves,
we are likely to find ourselves using whatever people we
encounter
by attempting to fit them into our gaps and hollows.
We might rebel at the
thought of using people
we want to love,
but this might be the inevitable result
whenever we search for love
with defined or implicit expectations.
"How could it be otherwise?" most of us ask.
We find these drives, wishes, & longings deep within our beings.
And they necessarily affect the ways we pursue love.
Needing
or wanting someone to
love
works both ways.
Other needy people extend their
desires and
expectations.
Sometimes both people are looking for all-purpose relationships.
But if we ourselves have grown beyond need-based loving,
we might rightly fear the
jaws of other people's hungers.
Once the pre-existing needs and wants
that govern the old ways of loving are brought into the open,
we might notice other 'sizing us up'
to see if we might fulfill their pre-existing needs and wants.
If we meet others who are looking for
all-or-nothing relationships
—considering
us as potential partners—
we might be wise to step around the trap of needy 'love'.
We are all familiar with love based on
pre-existing needs, wants, dreams, hopes, aspirations, etc.
Can we imagine love happening for any other
reasons?
We must strain our eyes to see the opposite end
of the spectrum
from the all-purpose, all-or-nothing relationship
—namely
the no-purpose, no-expectations, or open relationship.
Is is really possible to love in free,
non-possessive ways?
Perhaps we can open ourselves
to loving without expectations, desires, plans, etc.
if we (1) satisfy our needs within ourselves,
(2) transcend them in the process of becoming more mature,
or (3) we already have good relationships
in which all possible wishes are amply satisfied.
We are more familiar with relationships based on needs and wants.
But love can also occur on another level entirely—appreciation.
We cannot plan
relationships based on mutual appreciation.
Such emergent
relationships develop only when we meet actual persons
and begin to appreciate them in their specialness.
Frequently we find that we appreciate wonderful
things
that we never imagined
beforehand.
And even if we opened ourselves without expectations,
we might discover that we value some new person very
deeply.
Since emergent
relationships cannot be described in the abstract,
I must become autobiographical
and recount some discoveries in two of my own loving relationships.
I hope these stories inspire you to review your own
love life
with an eye to discovering the special human qualities
you have appreciated in particular loving relationships,
unexpected wonders
that emerged from the two of
you together.
2. Emergent Values in my Relationship with Pat
When I first met 'Pat' in one of
my Free University classes,
I did not think of her in terms of some needs she might
satisfy.
For months we just saw each other once a week across a room.
But as we began to understand each other
and to relate more deeply and personally,
seeing each other outside of the group,
I began to enjoy her because
of the person she was (and was becoming).
As far as I can I can honestly tell,
I had no free-floating, pre-existing longings or desires
waiting inside me for someone to latch onto.
I simply began to experience valuable and deep communication with Pat,
which neither of us could have predicted
even when we first began to
know each other.
In fact, we were both quite closed persons when we first met.
This was especially true of Pat:
Only a few people had
communicated deeply with her;
no one has really understood her.
Up until this time, she had always kept her 'loves' outside of herself,
under her guidance and control—using
her men.
Thus (altho I did not know it at the time),
there was no reason to expect a deep loving relationship between
us.
Neither of us could have predicted it on the basis of past
experience.
But a good relationship nevertheless began to
emerge.
In the first phase, we talked about her marriage.
I think she could be open with me about her marital disappointments
because I did not have any need
for her.
I was a contented and peaceful person.
I did not have any pre-existing desires with which to burden her.
This early sharing deepened into caring.
We begin to look forward to our times together
because we enjoyed being in each other's company.
A beautiful, unexpected relationship was beginning to emerge.
As we began to know and appreciate each other more
deeply,
we gradually became committed to each other.
Once we had begun to love,
we knew we wanted to continue.
We had not expected this relationship beforehand;
we simply created it one phase at a time
in the course of our being-together.
We surprised ourselves by the depth of possibilities in this love.
Our relationship emerged without any prior expectations,
depending only on the unique and irreplaceable persons we were.
The most surprising and unpredictable aspect of our
relationship
was the emergence of Pat's interest in Existential Freedom.
When we first met, she did not seem to be any more inward
or aware of our Existential Predicament than most people.
But after she dissolved her marriage
(a process that took up most of her energy for several months),
she turned her attention to her existential purposelessness,
despair, anxiety, & boredom—our
Existential Predicament.
Altho she did not initially seem to be especially inward,
she was intensely subjective and sensitive to her inner
dynamics.
Originally, as our love was developing,
I was content to relate with her in other dimensions
—talking
with her about her marriage,
relating with her emotionally and physically,
really enjoying being with her as a warm, sensitive, loving person.
But I was amazed to discover
that besides being able to relate on all
these levels,
she was also able to share my deep existential concerns.
The love that blossomed between us produced a unique
flower,
but our wonderful relationship did not turn into possessiveness.
I did not 'need' Pat in the sense that I demanded her presence
when she wanted to be alone or with other people.
I respected and valued her spirit and independence.
During most of its life-span (several years),
our love was free and open,
fresh every time we got together,
because we were not using each other to satisfy
general, free-floating desires.
We imposed no obligations on each other;
and our relationship was not colored by expectations.
Our love grew out of our experience of us together.
And when we began to move in different directions,
the values that had been the essence of our love disappeared
and our relationship was not renewed.
But because our love was a luxury rather than a
necessity,
its ending was not unduly painful.
Nothing can cancel the rich experiences we shared
during those days in both of our lives.
3. Emergent Values in my Relationship with Sara
When 'Sara' (not her real name) and I first met,
we did not expect love to emerge between us.
She was happy in her marriage, which many people regarded as ideal.
Nevertheless, as we came to know each other better in classes
and later in working on manuscripts, a good relationship
developed.
We enjoyed being present
with each other and sharing our deep interests.
I appreciated Sara as a very sensitive, passionate,
& caring person.
And because she had first-hand experience with
marriage, child-rearing, & changing relationships,
whenever we appeared together in classes or lectures,
people usually found it easier to identify with her than with me.
Participants in our Authentic Love classes often appreciated
seeing two contrasting personalities deal with the same issues.
A good relationship also emerged between me and her
son,
who was in the elementary grades during this time.
We liked reading together, building things, going swimming in the
summer,
and having "question time", in which he asked me any questions he
liked.
I deeply appreciated this role as uncle or honorary parent.
Sara and I created our loving relationship in
freedom.
We did things together when we both
wanted to.
When our interests did not match, we spent more time apart.
Because we never lived together,
we could be as close or separate as seemed good that week.
We both grew and changed during the four years of
our relationship.
Our life-purposes were refocused and redefined.
Sara moved into and out of other relationships.
We had made no promises for the future.
In every now of our
ever-renewed relationship,
we re-committed ourselves.
As our self-definitions diverged more and more radically,
we discovered that we no longer had much in common
and we gradually went our separate ways.
During our best years, we understood, respected,
& supported each other.
I have no regrets about sharing those wonderful years of my life with
Sara.
Even if the best of loves must ultimately come to an end,
during the years of our closeness, we deeply appreciated each
other.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These are just two stories of relationships now
completed.
Take a few moments to review your own loving relationships.
Do you notice that you most appreciated the dimensions
that you could not have
expected when the relationship began?
Were your best relationships based on pre-existing needs
either of you brought to the relationship?
Or did your love grow organically and unexpectedly
out of your experience
of each other?
C.
NON-COMPREHENSIVE RELATIONSHIPS
If we simply open ourselves to loving others,
without pre-existing purposes in mind,
we are more likely to keep our relationships
free of clinging dependencies from either side.
If we abandon the quest for a perfect, all-purpose relationship,
we can become open to no-purpose
relationships.
Then
we will impose no preconceived patterns
but simply appreciate each other
in whatever dimensions emerge between us
as we get to know each other better.
This non-possessive attitude allows us to appreciate
good things
in a wide variety of
people of all ages and both sexes.
We need not reject meaningful interaction with others
when a conventional coupled relationship
would not be possible.
And, as illustrated by Pat and Sara,
openness to non-comprehensive loving makes it possible
to have more than one
committed loving relationship at a time.
Loving freely and creatively
enables us to abandon impossible expectations.
When we still sought all-or-nothing relationships,
we were constantly checking to see: Is this Mr. Right?
Does this person perfectly fits my pre-existing criteria for an ideal
mate?
But open-ended loving enables us to accept others as they really
are.
We can be fully who we choose to be
instead of trying to squeeze ourselves into other people's expectations.
We can grow and change in our own ways, at our own pace,
according to our own internal rhythms,
without worrying that growth will upset other people's
expectations.
Non-comprehensive, open-ended loving
enables us to be satisfied with less than perfection.
We easily accept limitations in ourselves,
so why not in others?
If we become open to a wide variety of experiences,
we can accept others as they really are
rather than trying to force them into boxes (or beds)
we have prepared for them in advance.
As unique loving relationships begin to emerge,
we can allow them to grow in freedom and flexibility.
Without any advance script,
we can invent our relationships as we go along,
each of us responding to new disclosures from the other.
We might feel sad to consider the possibility that
no one person
will ever completely understand us,
especially if we are complex persons.
One woman I know might always be disappointed
if she continues to look for a comprehensive relationship.
She is just too-many-people-rolled-into-one
for any other person to understand her completely.
I can share a small part of her life.
And other people can appreciate her in other dimensions.
But she is such a complex and fast-changing person
that no one will comprehend her fully.
Likewise, I have never had a relationship
that embraced every dimension of my being.
But I have deeply appreciated the good sharing
that emerged in each relationship.
And I have not tried to force others
to share dimensions of my life in which they have no interest.
Instead of needing
and wanting others to
fit into our life-plans,
we can open ourselves to appreciating
others for who they are
without any preconceived
purposes in mind.
And then, perhaps some free, flexible, no-purpose,
open-ended, non-comprehensive loving relationships might emerge.
Non-comprehensive loving need not emerge in one
sudden leap.
We can slowly move away from the narrow confines
of the all-purpose model of loving
toward loving others as they really are.
We can gradually free ourselves from
culturally-given patterns and expectations
—and
invent our own unique loving relationships.
Created
February 8, 2014; Revised 2-12-2014; 2-13-2014; 4-7-2014; 8-24-2014;
8-28-2014;
1-28-2015; 12-7-2017; 4-11-2019; 11-1-2020;
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent, original philosopher
with a deep interest in the dynamics
of love.
The third chapter of his most popular
book
—New Ways
of Loving: How Authenticity Transforms Relationships—
is called "Loving
in Freedom:
Choice
and Flexibility instead of
Security and Obligation".
Some parts of the essay above were adapted from this chapter
and from the philosophy explored in other parts of New
Ways of Loving.
The essay above was originally published as a tall
book in 1988, called:
"A New Way of Loving: Non-Comprehensive Relationships".
The full range of James Park's thought is available
on his website:
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library.
Full
information about the sixth edition of
New
Ways of Loving
will appear on your screen
if you click this title:
New
Ways of Loving: How Authenticity Transforms Relationships
Here are a few other essays challenging the old ways of loving:
Romantic
Love
is a Hoax!
Emotional Programming to 'Fall in Love'
Romantic
Jealousy:
Cause & Prevention
Separating
Lust
and Love
The
Future of
Love and Marriage
These
essays plus a few others
have now been gathered into a new book:
Heartbreak
Prevention: Loving Beyond
Romance, Sex, & Marriage.
Loving without expectations leads to fresh ways of doing relationships.