JULY | 2019 | LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

COMPLETUS

Alright, Beauxs, Summer is here and the boys and their toys are out. The weather, when combined with those cute #relationshipgoal hashtags has got many of you feeling like settling your single asses down to play house. There are certainly perks in being tied up in someone’s relationship (hopefully you’re tied up in your own relationship), but they’re not always the benchmarks of gay success that they’re made out to be. Having a partner makes the rent payments lighter, and if you and your Beaux are the same size and have the same taste in clothing your wardrobe literally doubles. But outside of that, why is it that so many find themselves so desperate to be involved?

Have you ever heard a one-of-two glorify their Beaux as their other half? How hard was it for you to unpeel your eyeballs from the top of their sockets, or keep your gag reflex in check after hearing this? Have you ever wondered why people feel as if they need someone else to complete them? Like, since when did people start being born as halves and not wholes?

Guys crave relationships because we, like most normal human beings, crave intimate connections. We want to “belong” to somebody, to be their fire and desire, and the apple of their eyes. With romantic relationships get the attachment, the opportunity to create shared moments and lasting memories, the confidence that comes with knowing that someone wants our lil ugly behind, and if everything works out it’ll lead to that marriage thing we’re always looking at on the television. But do we have to be so damn needy?

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Let’s start with the basics, which is that when two (or more, because y’all know we don’t judge) people come together, it's often because they want to learn, grow, heal, and share their time and companionship. They want to share their love and passion for one another, to be with someone who makes them feel special, safe and secure, and to be with someone who fills the emptiness within.

There’s not a soul among us who doesn’t deserve these things, especially when you consider that truly satisfying relationships are associated with better health, greater happiness and even longer lives. But as we spend this month’s Independence issue focusing on us being able to do things for and by ourselves, have we come to depend on relationships as a way to compensate for the things we’re missing within? Are we really looking for someone to love, to hold and to cherish, or are we searching for someone to serve as our missing puzzle piece?

Canadian- American singer, songwriter, record producer and actor Alanis Morissette gave us a word, or song, rather with Not The Doctor, a song which was featured on her 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill. Those of us who are of a certain age and possess an eclectic taste in music might recall hearing her mezzo-soprano vocals screech across the track as she, in so many lyrics, words, and verses, told whomever she was singing to that she was not their everything.  “I don’t want to be the filler if the void is solely yours. I don’t want to be your glass of single malt whisky hidden in the bottom drawer. I don’t want to be the bandage if the wound is not mine. Lend me some fresh air.” Yeah, that part. 

The best practices behind learning, growth, and healing, starts from within. Alexyss K Tyler Wilson told us long ago that if we wanted to earn our man, we’ve got to learn him, but we’ve got to learn ourselves first. What are the things we want in life? What are our limitations? Who are when we’re alone with no one watching? Do we sometimes forget to brush our teeth? Do we not wash our legs when we bathe? What? Before any of us become entangled in the life of someone else, we’ve got to detangle our own.

We’ve got to uncover who we are and why we do the things we do, to not only know our own story but to understand it as well. We’re more than our past experiences, we’re the sense we’ve made of our past experiences. If we haven’t taken the time to do so, then the last thing we need to do is to involve someone else into a life that we don’t understand. 

Insecure’s Natasha Rothwell became an overnight Twitter meme after she and the girls were having their discussion on the bisexual double standard between men and women. It had nothing to do with the context of the conversation, but everything to do with the way she physically emphasized her growth. Independent personal growth is super important when it comes to us as single men.

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Growth is taking a leap and making mistakes, its creating and resting comfortably in the stances we’ve made for ourselves, and constantly reflecting on who we are. Its when we take the good, we take the bad, we put them all together to construct the facts of our lives, as single men, as bachelors. Yes, there will be a ton a growth to be experiences once we become coupled, but we’ve gotta be real careful that we’re not presenting ourselves as a seedling to our future Beaux, because there are plenty of oak trees out there who’ve already done their growing, and he can easily choose one of them. 

The biggest piece to all of this is that, well, it's that we’re not pieces. A lot of us haven’t had any pu**y since we came out of one, but rest assured that when we came out, we did so as a whole. Such, this “he completes me” rhetoric will always say more about us than it will about him. It means we haven’t spent the time to do the work on us before we jumped into a relationship that more than likely won’t last because the fucking work hasn’t been done! There, for the most part, seems to be a lack of understanding behind this, as we don’t need someone to complete us as much as we want someone who will accept us completely. See how different that sounds? 

The only people capable of completing us is us, and placing that burden on the back of someone we claim to love is as silly as it is unfair. Relying on someone else to do our homework gives them the power and the right to say that they built you. And, since it’s almost Jackie Washington Day (July 15th) in the neighborhood, let's take a quote from the book of Diahann Carroll who, when confronted with the lie that she stole from Jackie Washington, firmly stated that “I built Diahann Carroll, from the ground up!” We’ve got to take the responsibility for building ourselves with the same vigor that Diahann did because depending on someone else to build or complete us is counterproductive. 

All relationships are centered around codependency, but the moment that one of the involved can’t function without the other, is the moment that shit starts to get funky.  Grey wolves and hyenas normally hunt alone, but scientists have recently discovered the two hunting alongside each other. Not only does this demonstrate that animal behavior is often more flexible than what we see on NatGeo, it illustrates most of what we’ve spent so much time talking about. The wolf, with its 14 percent kill rate does better when it hunts alongside the hyena and its 75 percent kill rate. While both are able to hunt independently of one another, but (in our best Captain Planet voice) by their powers combined, they increase their chances of eating good. If our relationships aren’t working like this, then chances are they won’t work out at all. 

We are not puzzles or pieces of furniture from Ikea. We are fully constructed self sufficient men who should work on shifting our focus from needing a Beaux to complete us to wanting a Beaux who will complement us. Finding this Beaux is going to take work, and one hundred percent of this work starts from within. Its learning who we are, and growing from our experiences. Its recognizing that we must be the glue to hold our pieces together, and that no matter how hard some of us may try to change the logic of math, one plus one is two. 

Relationships serve to provide us with sources of fulfillment, but that doesn’t mean we should arrive empty. “Nobody “completes” anybody. That’s not a real thing. If you’re lucky enough to find someone you can halfway tolerate, you should sink your nails in and don’t let go”. The idea of there being some mythical other half to match our halves is destructive, and we must always remember this. We shouldn’t need anyone to bear the responsibility for our fractured heart and its wounded beat, because we’re whole and such, shouldn’t feel the need to find someone to complete us.