Relationships; with self, your body, your hair, your mind, societies constructs, family, friends, other people. These are relationships that we all navigate and It’s important that we try to understand them.

Relationships are vital. Whether platonic or romantic, we are social beings and relating with other people is what keeps the world as we know it moving. Relations add sparkle, zest, lessons, love, joy, fun and excitement into our life experience. Most people are fixated with romantic relationships, how to acquire one, how to maintain one—they are treated as the holy grail of relationships.

But what if romantic relationships as we know them are set up for failure?

Statistics say that more and more people are struggling to be in monogamous relationships. Mainly as women are having higher standards and realising that they don’t have to put up with a lot of the abusive and draining things they were told to in the past, just for the sake of being in a relationship. Society’s current system of romantic relationships often expects the woman to do more and give more, compromise more of herself in some way.

Almost every single woman on this planet can attest to feeling heartbreak or pain at some point in her lifetime as a result of a romantic relationship, be it her first love, teenage years or even later in life, maybe even at the hands of their current partner.And the relationships trauma and scarring aren’t just limited to women. Men have their fair share of relationship scarring too and although it can be argued that the majority of it is as a result of their own expectations and bad behaviour—it’s important to acknowledge that they too can be in situations where they are being abused by their partner. And let’s not forget, they have also been socialised to oppress—any act of resistance to their oppression is triggering for them. They even oppress other men. They adore each other, yet struggle to say they love each other, they struggle to express that love, for fear of looking like someone who loves men.

It’s a thought process and pattern put in place by the patriarchy. For the patriarchy to work, men must be internally and externally disconnected from Source and from themselves. The internal battle of self-hatred they exhibit and project onto women would be non-existent if they were connected to Source and self, because then they would be operating at their highest self and their highest self cannot possibly partake in any form of patriarchal oppression against the Divine Feminine, against the Goddess within us all.

There are also women who say they are all about healing the Divine Feminine, but they regurgitate misogynistic ideologies steeped in patriarchy. Those who believe that the Divine Feminine is only soft, light, calm and ‘submissive’—that she is these things when ‘loved correctly’. And that exhibiting self-leadership, ambition and anger, is women displaying masculine traits meant for the male gender. Self-love is desired as a means to a partner. Using stereotypical patriarchal gender roles as identifiers of divinity. 

The Divine Feminine to me, is all encompassing—she is fierce as she is soft. She is feminine and masculine. They both come from her. They are both within her. They work side by side in harmony. Using both or whichever side she feels is needed at any given time. Whichever she feels most comfortable expressing.

The Divine Feminine does not reject or demonise her masculine energy. The Divine Masculine does not reject or demonise his feminine energy.

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A few years ago, I was musing on relationships and a thought flashed up in my mind—everyone is so pressed about coupling up, being in a relationship. It’s something we are taught as children to aspire to. Have a boyfriend, have a girlfriend then get married.

But what are the actual benefits of being in a romantic relationship with someone that cannot be attained by simply meeting and experiencing this person?

Why do we have to couple up in this way that often has rules and regulations around control, possession and ownership that everyone just accepts? For example, out of “respect” for your spouse, you change the way you interact with your friends, what you wear and how often you go out. Why should having a partner make you change the way you like to relate with your friends, the way you socialise or how you like to dress? Why must things you did and enjoyed when you were single change and become contingent on what another person outside of you, has to say about it, just because you decided to experience an aspect of life with them?

They don’t get to tell you how to live your life.

Romantic relationships, contrary to popular belief, aren’t the be all and end all of life. They are a small segment in all of life’s wonders. They are a cute sometimes earth-shaking experience, but they are not the main actors in life. You cannot make the attainment of one your most prized achievement or your most aspired to goal. Well I mean you can, but really life is so much more than that. The life in you is so much more than that. You have so much to delve into and unravel. So much to find out about who you are at the core. What you love. What you don’t. How phenomenal each layer of you truly is. All the things you could accomplish in this lifetime.

Could we still not have all the things we believe relationships give us without the actual relationship status and the rules that come with it?

I like to use the other animal species when talking about the natural order of society. All other animals manage themselves peacefully without our intervention, there’s no practice of monogamy, neither do they practice marriage or the demonisation of sex under the guise of “sacredness” in the same way we do.

I believe the human mind has a big part to play in our pain and suffering. We have distorted the way in which we were truly meant to interact.

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So, I called up my friend when I had this thought all those years ago and asked her quite simply: “What would you say were the benefits of being in a romantic relationship, and I’m talking about benefits that can ONLY be gotten by being in a relationship, not benefits that can be attained outside of a relationship as well.”

She paused for a minute and then said, ” Well I mean companionship, someone to travel with, sex, going on dates and financial stability.“

All of these things she mentioned can be attained by meeting someone and choosing to just enjoy your time and experience with them. Without the label. Why must I be in a relationship with you to form companionship and friendship? Why must I be in a relationship with you to show that I like you and would like to have sex with you? Why must I be in a relationship with someone to go on dates with them? Why must I be in a relationship with someone to feel financially stable? One: a label doesn’t guarantee security. And two: stability can still be built outside of the relationship system. 

I could see her mulling things over in her mind struggling to come up with more benefits and after a while she accepted that they truly weren’t needed.

I believe that the point of relationships now, is deeply rooted in our insecurity and our need to possess and control, and our need to feel possessed to feel like we are loved. In my opinion, that is literally the only reason people get into relationships in the way in which they do now. You’ll often hear people say, “I’m not sharing,” or “that’s MY man/woman” with pride. It gives us a comfort, an air of superiority to believe that we have our own person, that we have locked someone down that belongs to us, and us alone. 

But why is our self-esteem and self-worth boosted by this? Why must we infringe upon another person’s freedom to experience them or show love? Why do we feel loved when we have one person that ‘belongs’ to us?

It’s a deep need to control and possess to feel loved and I do not believe it is natural or a true reflection of love. It is not the way in which we were supposed to interact with each other. We were not supposed to infringe on another person’s freedom and life experience. You often see people in this said ‘relationship’ speaking of compromise and being the other person’s be all and end all. The other person’s ‘rock’. When I hear people speak like that it makes me see just how deep rooted their attachment issues are. Both of their minds are in captivity, a prison.

The “rock” is burdened with all the pressures that come with being somebody’s balancer and grounder. The emotional toil, the constant trauma dumping and advice seeking. The pressure that you’ll give advice that goes wrong, and this person will blame you. The other partner is unable to think on their own, has become so reliant and dependent on the “rock” that they would struggle to maintain their life at the same level if the rock left. We also like to over depend on people because we feel like it’s our job to show them that they’re needed or an integral part of our lives.

But why do we feel like to show love or to be in a relationship means to relinquish all or parts of ourselves to another? To make ourselves helpless to another in order to highlight their importance in our lives?

It makes no sense to me anymore.

All you’re showing them is that you are unstable on your own and can be easily manipulated because you’ve exaggerated their “needability” in your life and shown that their wants take precedence over yours. One person was not supposed to be your be all and end all. Contrary to popular belief, God did not create this person solely for you. They are a free autonomous human being, here to have their own life experience. To argue that another person’s sole existence is for you is bizarre to me. 

You meet a person, and you think they are absolutely amazing, and you love them. You now decide that you want to box up their love and no one else is allowed to have this love. This is the basis of monogamous relationships, and we all nod and go ahead with it as if it is not absolute insanity.

Why do you feel so jealous and possessive over another person’s light?

The same way you see them and think, ‘wow they are amazing’, is the very same way someone else can see them and think that light is amazing too. Why do you get so upset and repulsed by the idea of this person sharing their light with other people?

Aka what we call cheating.

Why is it cheating? What are they cheating you out of? Your right to control, and possess their love and sex? Why do we feel that this person must be for us and us alone? You do not have that right over another person’s life and how they get to share their light.

Me being a loyal Capricorn would always pride myself in how loyal and committed I was and would always expect the same in return. But then I realised, I have no right to want to box and hold a person’s love all to myself. It seems normal but it is not. God did not create this person for me to hoard their light and love all to myself. And why did I even want to do that? Why do I laser focus all my attention on this one person? What was I truly trying to achieve by blocking myself off?

Contrary to popular belief, the same love and attraction you have for this person, someone else most likely has it and they have the right to share it with as many people as they deem fit.

Let people be free. Let them share their amazing light with other people.

The need to be in a romantic relationship doesn’t come from wanting someone to have sex with or travel with or go on dates with or make financial decisions together. Because ultimately these things can be achieved without being in society’s current relationship formula when you really think about it.

Society just made up these relationship rules to sugar coat the underlying purpose of relationships as we know them, which is to possess and control.

Love is not possessive or controlling. Love is freedom. 

There is nothing that stops us from meeting people we like or even love and just experiencing them as is. Without the need for possessive ownership. We can go on dates, have sex, travel the world and even go into business with each other without this veil of a relationship to validate it or make it morally decent. 

The general consciousness of humanity is rising and thus, we are rejecting these old washed-up notions of what love and relationships are supposed to be and look like.

And honestly, I love that for us.