Love Letter to the other "significant others" - or Happy Birthday to Rod

When I moved to the West Coast almost 8 years ago, I had no idea that a kind and sensitive man would be gifted to me in the woods, on a mountaintop on Salt Spring Island. The night we met we watched an array of falling stars overhead from his hot tub and talked about our mutual dream of country living and community. I think we both knew something special had happened with our meeting. Our shared interest in Jungian analysis, queer spirituality and all things “introspective” drew us closer to each other and a friendship wove its web between us. 

When I showed up on his doorstep that night, I was in many ways, very lost. I wish I could say I was instantly “found” but these things take time, however a sense of “home” washed over me in our meeting, literally and metaphorically. 

Rod and I challenged each other from the beginning, we bickered (and still do) like “an old married couple” from the moment we met, he drove me crazy with his “ways” and I was no walk in the park myself, but when you meet a soul mate, someone who has been with you in many many lifetimes often you just cut to the good stuff and boy did we ever. 

While we challenged each other relentlessly, Rod also made me feel safe, he offered his home and his attention to me and our friendship. He supported my dozens of ideas and whims, moved me and my caravan of thrifted goods from city to city, and listened to me ramble on about boys and work, and dreams. I know I offered a similar sort of value and attention. It wasn’t one-sided, just different.

When I felt unheard, he listened to me, when I was scrambling for answers he nudged me toward my intuition, offering kernels of wisdom from his own life experience, that truthfully, I resisted, because “what does he know?” And I had yet to understand my inner rebel and the need to challenge, and the now thankfully dissipated idea from my past that I knew everything and more than anyone else.

I’ve lived most of my life feeling like a lone wolf like I’d forged ahead alone and survived because I only trusted myself and my own capabilities, I didn’t depend on anyone else and didn't need anyone else, and even though I had dear friends and even close romantic relationships from time to time, ultimately, I believed, I had to to it all by myself and I couldn’t trust or rely on anyone else. I can’t speak for Rod, but I feel we are similar in that way, we both loved the people closest to us, but always felt a bit on the outside looking in. 

Rod’s generosity of spirit and home was a difficult gift to accept, and I resisted. Sometimes, I still struggle with feelings of unworthiness and I think I subconsciously push people away as a form of self-preservation, fearing they all just want something from me I can’t spare. what I used to refer to as taking water from an empty well. And so I left Salt Spring Island, and Rod, many times, and I think those times were good for both of us, we are indeed solitary characters, who need their private time and space, but as the years progressed, my desire to be away from him and the home we shared thinned, and the magnet of our relationship and the dreams we had for the home have steadily brought us back together. Both of us have been doing so much inner work and growing on our own over the years, but simultaneously we have been doing it together, which is the mysterious key that has revealed itself to me over the last year or so. 

Rod and I struggled to define our relationship for years, and are still working on an elevator pitch version of what it is. Friends and family are inquisitive, often looking at us with a puzzled side-eye look, “But are you, you know, together ?”

I know for myself, it was one of the stresses I felt often in the early years because neither of us had romantic or sexual feelings toward each other in the strictest sense, but we care for one another in a unique way which goes beyond “best friends”, words that have always felt a bit juvenile to me. I felt the pressure to define it and wondered if maybe I wasn’t facing reality, and Rod was my boyfriend. But it wasn’t true. Not for me and not for him. Sadly that nagging feeling got the better of me and I think it made me angry and I felt the need to distance myself from him, mostly out of fear of not being able to explain it to other people, what a load of rubbish. 

I love him so deeply and profoundly, he’s the most important person in my life, and yet, by society's standards, shouldn’t that suggest that we would be married, and in love? And, yes, I am in love with him, daily, his weird habits around the house, his unyielding willingness to sit with the tough stuff, the way he loves his animals, his feeding the hummingbirds, and the way he smiles when we talk about Lord of The Rings, these are just a few of the reasons why his presence in my life makes everything better, but what is being in “love” when it comes to your friends? I feel this love for other friends to varying degrees, and those relationships sustain me deeply as well, but for years I’ve been led to believe that this couldn’t possibly be “enough”, could it? Surely you want to be in a romantic partnership? And yes I do, it’s a lovely thing, but it’s not something I am desperately searching for any longer. My relationship with Rod and my other friends feeds my soul in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined, and while I was busy looking and hoping for romantic love “out there”, I was turning away from the wellspring of absolutely rich, committed, powerful and reliable love that was all around me.

Romantic love is, for most of us, seen as the pinnacle of relationships, but what about the “other significant others” which is the title of the book by Rhainna Cohen, where she explores reimagining our lives with friendship at the centre. In that book, she describes the many different forms of relationship that have been and are now even more publicly and predominately taking place, where two women raise their children together but aren’t “partners”, where two families buy a home and live together because of rising housing costs and the benefits of raising children in a community and where a celibate gay Christian lives with his childhood best straight friend and his Girlfriend, because of the bonds the two men refuse to break. 

It's hard not to think about ‘The Golden Girls’ or ‘Grace and Frankie’ here, and while we aren’t 70-year-old women, we share a bond and closeness that is outside of the traditional. We share a similar vision for the future, our values align, we share interests and we learn and grow together through our conflicts, and perhaps most importantly, we are committed to each other. Committed to friendship, to the joy of sharing one's life with someone else, even if it's not infused with romance in the most traditional sense of the word.

And let’s face it, as thrilling as romantic love can be, it’s finite, eventually it’s changes and we are to meet the reality of relationship building and all of its messy stuff, romantic love doesn’t need to be so conditional, I love to be romantic with my friends. I have a magnet on my fridge that says “Treat your lovers like friends and your friends like lovers” and that message has always guided my attitude and actions in my relationships, giving gifts to my friends, giving back rubs, or cuddles, physical affection doesn’t need to lead to or involve sexuality, affection and care don’t need to be reserved for that “one special person” in our lives. 

Rod Browne truly saved my life from self-implosion, and I don’t know where I’d be right now if it weren’t for his friendship and our companionship. Because of him, I have learned how to love again, how to trust, how to believe that I can rely on someone truly, I can trust they will be there for me, and while we are still working on that elevator pitch definition of what our relationship is, in many ways it’s not even necessary, at least not for us, we know what we are to each other, family, friend, life partners in an ever-expanding vision of what that means, because in this life, we are fortunate enough to have many partners, buddies, lovers, friends and companions on the journey.

Rod and I have helped each other heal our hearts enough to be open to see that love all around us and to create a home together, where that expanding vision can become reality, where all of our life “partners” might come together to support and lift each other most profoundly and positively, and for that, I’m so grateful for him on this day, his birthday. Happy Birthday Love.