20 October, 2018

Relationship as Ownership

With popular culture singing about "my girl" and "my best friends' girl", is it any wonder? When "you should have put a ring on it" and "I need you to need me". From Pretty Woman to An Officer and a Gentleman to "I want to know what love is". There isn't any rationality to it, and because there is not supposed to be, people assume or play along that everything is the way it ought to be.

These pop-culture consumables are not meant to be models, at least not overtly, yet they end up being-in so many ways-just that. Without healthy models in their own lives, so many children end up needing something to base their ideals of relationship on. They can turn to the ubiquitous presence of music and visual media to learn. An understandable mistake, although a crippling one.

I will propose that it is not to own or be owned; that much is certain. However, the fear of being committed should not keep one from relationship. It is not about belonging in the sense of ownership, if we say "they belong together". It is the kind of belonging like birds belong in the air and fish belong in water; it is that right-ness of being that every moment else was not wrong but can never be right in the same way again.