Epiphany

I've been wondering -- not for the first time -- why people have a hard time understanding my motivations, and vice-versa. I've just figured it out. It's emotions.

There is a connection between emotion and relationships, certainly. Emotions are indicators and initiators of relationships. If they are too painful, they can be a reason for ending a relationship. Emotions are at the core of our humanity, and they re best shared within the context of a relationship. But they are not the essence of a relationship.

I now think that people no idea how little my relationships are governed by emotion. Happiness, infatuation, sadness, anger and desire are all emotions. Love and friendship are not emotions; they are ways of relating to people.

After the end of my marriage, I was in emotional pain for all of three days, including the first day, which I spent mostly numb. Over the next two days it was on-and-off. Over these few days, my infatuation with my ex-wife died. That was an emotion which defined the context of my love for her; my love, however, did not die; freed of the constraints of miscategorization, it blossomed into its perfected for, deep friendship and profound spiritual connection that it should always have been. I then moved on to emotional confusion -- I had to reorient my relationships, my entire lifestyle -- but that's not the same thing.

Yet for months people kept asking me if I was sure I was alright, and reacted with confusion or disbelief when I informed them that I was the most happy and at peace I had been in years -- maybe ever. And they couldn't grasp that my ex and I were not merely on speaking terms, but best friends.

Why should we be anything else? I wondered. I knew it was the norm that exes should dislike one another, but why? Now I get it. Because the pain should have poisoned out relationship. Because love, to most people, is a feeling, and my pain should have become anger, which should have trumped my love. It helped, I suppose, that I found nothing for which to blame her, no betrayal of any kind, but I cannot help but think that my view of our relationship as more basic than emotion was in large part responsible for this.

This is why I could ever understand infidelity -- it was never a temptation for me; attraction, infatuation, these were emotions, easily ignored. They could no more have been tempted to act on them that anger could have been tempted me to hit her, or my children. Now I understand it. Many people confuse infatuation with love, as they do camaraderie with friendship.

On some level I've always known this. But I never realized the implications. I'm starting to see why people expect me to react to with jealousy, possessiveness and betrayal where I feel none. I'm not sure how this realization is going to change things for me, but it's nice to know I'm not just some kind of social mutant.