#15 Love levels all inequalities
Hi! We hope you are recharged enough during the weekend. At least you got to spend some time to do something you love, ignored those phone calls from work, and slept a lot.
On our last newsletter, Meiska invited her football enthusiast friends to write an open letter to Liverpool FC as they are crowned as PL Champion. While Elsa told her story to deal with the pandemic in Dublin, Ireland. In cased you missed it, click here.
On this episode of #SalMonday, Meiska invited her big sister Meutia to be the guest. Meutia is a Market Advisor in an oil company and it’s almost five years she lives in the Netherlands. She loves to travel and is interested in promoting equality in relationship and marriage. Hence her proposed theme today is,
What does equality (in a relationship) mean to you?
Meiska
Before I’m in a relationship with my boyfriend, I was single for six years. During that period of time, I grew up, spent time alone doing all activities —well sometimes with friends too— and watched a lot of movies and series in between. From there, I kind of got a lot of references of what kind of “equal” relationship I want to have. But when I met him, everything just clicked. I don’t care anymore whether all those things from him meet my expectations before, or not. Because everything just makes sense.
Since my boyfriend and I are the same age and mostly exposed to the same things (over the internet or real life), it makes us easily connected to each other. It’s not hard for us to understand each other’s surroundings or solve any problem together if there’s some issues happening. We always end up finding the best solution for each other. To be frank, I don’t have many references about equal relationship itself. So let me write what works so far in our relationship that is relevant with equal relationship;
Fairness
Both of us are always trying to be fair with one another. Simplest example, the term saying a guy should be the one responsible paying the bills doesn’t apply in our relationship. We split it fairly by taking turns on who pays the bills. When he pays for the dinner, I pay for the movie tickets, and so on and on. Honestly, it’s hard to relate to stories of couple who are proudly showing that their partner is the one paying their make ups, or a random guy asking a woman to choose him because he is well-paid and could buy anything she wants. That’s not how our relationship works and it doesn’t make sense at all haha. Beside financially, equal efforts of doing any acts of love is also important. We should be happy together, not prioritizing only one’s interest.
Support
Both of us are different individual and have different interests (yet we have many things in common of too course!). It’s important to support each other’s hobbies (even though I am sometimes angry when he plays games for too long and ignores me haha) and dreams/goals. We never belittle and underestimate anyone’s dreams. We promise to support and be there for each other, especially when we almost give up and experience overwhelming and bad, bad days. We’re adults after all, the kind of support we need should be relevant and not provoking, right? So that means, mature-equal support is necessary.
It’s actually a hard topic haha. But these two main points are so far that I could think of of what equal relationship means to me. Maybe I will write different things later after I get married because I believe there are more complex cases (especially financial and house chores haha) that can be discussed because it must be applied differently by married couple, regardless the “duties” and “rights” of husband and wife in my country that is quite conservative.
Elsa
Recently, I experienced moments that some of my friends were trying to get to know me ‘closer’. It had me rethink about having this stage again, “Am I ready to be in a relationship?”
I do not want to have a partner at least for now. Calling out all the single readers, have you ever felt a fear of losing independency due to a relationship? I am in a pleasure of having an ultimate task: to be a midwife of my own rebirthing.
I learn Tao from an ancient Chinese book written in early 6th century BCE by Lao Tzu. Tao means path. It is about a path to live in in harmony with all others, with the environment, and with one’s self. One of the core practices in Tao is about five different types of love (the first three are the contradiction to a harmony, the last two are healthy expressions of it):
Possessive love, loving an object because we are capable of (or believing to) possessing it.
Codependent love, rooted in the experience of powerlessness and expresses as an addiction to control or being controlled. It is a struggle for dependencies and it prevents self-growth, independence, and genuine fulfillment.
Romantic love, an unconscious escapist attempt to compensate for the absence of self-appreciation. It is an imagination of a perfect mate.
Subjective love, a state of lovingness with no ulterior motives, freely given and received.
Become love, a total humanity, complete self- and social actualization.
As I seek (at least) to reach the subjective love, I was afraid that I still cannot even move on from a codependent and romantic love. I seek for an equal relationship with one who balances me—a counterpart who is suitable and complementary for me. I define equal relationship as these:
Equal does not mean the same.
I don’t believe that chores splitting right down the middle are the meaning of being equal in a relationship. I do believe that what does work is that I and my partner can contribute in the areas where our strengths flourish. Equality means equality of access, the opportunity to do my best without being disqualified for irrelevant reasons. For example, I would be really happy to utilize my strength in highly logical thinking to plan, manage, and coordinate. I would be happy if my partner has strength in driving and leading so we can complement each other.
Equal means to focus on obligations and responsibilities over rights.
I learned from a reader’s letter on Time Magazine about the differences between the U.S. citizens and Australians to manage the pandemic. Too many U.S. citizens focus on rights (a right to bear arms; a right to travel and congregate), whereas Australians focus on obligations to isolate. Thanks to the quick cooperation of Australians on what freedoms needed to be temporarily curtailed, it has made the pandemic management worked with less hassle. I seek this efficient mindset also in my relationship. I want myself and my partner to head for the obligations over rights.
Hoping this single lad’s opinions ring a bell lol.
Tell us what equality in relationship means to you by leaving a comment below!
After all, equality liberates us individually to function through our full species potential right?
