What does non relationship mean?
Heart Mail. Writer Chiara Gamberale responds to your letters
Dear Clare, I don't know what to do with my life, it's like I'm always searching for something. For the past year I've been dating a guy whom I supported in his business last summer. The problem is that he makes me feel inadequate: he gets angry, raises his voice, has aggressive ways. Then, after each rant, he becomes affectionate. In sex there is understanding, but character differences are a huge obstacle. He is dynamic, active, I confused and jobless. When he points out my shortcomings, I wonder: why is he with me? In all this time he has never told me what I really am to him. When we don't see each other for a while, I am always the one looking for him. I suspect he is also interested in other women.... What about me, I do the grocery shopping, I cook for myself and for him, I bring him a few little gifts, yet I feel that I am not enough. I would like something more from this "nonrelationship," and I know that change has to start with me above all.
Dear friend, have you ever exposed your perplexities to him as limpidly as you did to me? Withheld uncertainties risk either magnifying or crippling, in short, doing everything but the one thing for which it makes sense for an uncertainty to arise: giving us the courage to seek answers. Allow yourself the intimate space you feel you deserve, but most importantly direct the focus of the lens on yourself. Forgive me for moving the question, but of your letter I was struck by the imagery with which you describe your life as "in service to" and not "seeking for." Don't you think that trying to understand yourself first and build yourself up later is the only way to chart a shared path, at least between you and you, in this "non-relationship relationship"?
