When I think about all the words I've used – in the last few blog entries, and elsewhere – to describe my experiences as a secondary, I have to admit that they're all a little... negative.
Want to know the first adjective I attached to my relationship with Scott, back in the days when our love was new and bright?
Doomed.
Here's what it boils down to: being a secondary means being in a precarious position.
It's an inbetween state, neither here nor there.
A primary relationship has a certain weight to it. Set off on a journey with a secondary, though, and you're on a ship without an anchor, at the mercy of the wind and waves.
Ultimately, of course, everything is impermanent. Unless you buy into the Mormon “families are forever” pyramid scheme, and I don't, there's always that 'til death do us part clause to remind you that being alive means being in a precarious position.
So I'd add that, in my experiences as a secondary, I have often felt very alive.
I'm curious... Did you ever feel like there was a ceiling to a secondary relationship? (And you may have inspired another blog post, my dear.)
ReplyDeleteYes to secondary ceilings -- the question in such relationships is always, "When are we going to bonk our heads?" It's hard to see the ceiling, sometimes, but you end up feeling it, and it's not always pleasant. Then, the question becomes, "Can we afford a major remodel?"
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of something Travis said recently. He was wondering whether there was room for our relationship to grow -- were we in the process of building something together, or was he just being used as "mortar" to fill the cracks in the "relationship house" I've built with Parker?
When I've dealt with this, the issue was never "Can we afford a remodel?" It was always "What the hell does that look like?"
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah -- the architects & builders who can handle THAT kind of remodel don't run cheap! They're gonna have to re-invent everything, from the ground up.
ReplyDelete