If you leased out a portion of your life, what would the terms and conditions be?

You own an apartment building with an almost infinite number of apartments, but, once someone moves in, you can never evict them, and they can never leave. You can move them from one apartment to the other.

There’s only a single penthouse suite and a few luxury suites. Most are ordinary, efficiency studios. There are a huge, but unknown, number of basement apartments. You’d like to pretend those tenants weren’t even there. However, many of the occupants of the basement apartments are chronically disgruntled, so that they often play their music loud and let roaches, bedbugs, and other undesirables inside.

The penthouse is a splendid apartment. You live in it, as is your right as landlord, and have been sharing it with a roommate. Things have started to get tense between you and you thought of kicking him out, however, you don’t want him to feel ill used. He would just make your life miserable if you stuck him in a basement apartment. Besides, the two of you might just get along if you got a few things straight.

The name of this apartment building is, you might have guessed, Your Life. The tenants are all the people you’ve let into Your Life. Most of the people in Your Life are associates occupying the efficiency apartments. Close friends have the luxury suites. The tenants in the basement apartments are your exes, your might’ve-beens, and those bullies in middle school that still rent space in your head. Oh, I forgot, there are a few rent controlled apartments that have been occupied by your family members since before you bought the building, but that’s beside the point. The person you share the penthouse with is the love of your life and you’re trying to figure out how you can evict him.

As I said, you can never get anyone out of the apartment building altogether, but you can move your partner from the penthouse to the luxury suites, meaning you would still be friends, the efficiencies, or in the basement. If it’s got to be done, it’s in your interest to do so kindly and with fairness, if only because, to some extent, you still have to live with him or her.

So, what can you do to make your expectations clear, your promises credible, and your exit strategy explicit? You can do what landlords have always done. You can create and, together, sign a lease.

Far too many people drift into relationships without ever making the momentous decision to be together. You decide to leave a toothbrush, provide an underwear drawer, share rent without ever deciding the terms and conditions of the relationship. Since it’s hard to talk about relationships, you let it go without saying what you expect and can be expected in return. Is it any wonder that you get confused? Are you really surprised when you wake up one day and find yourself caught up in much more than you ever intended and are not sure of how you can get out?

In traditional relationships there are occasions when the couple might talk about their terms and conditions. That’s what wedding vows are for, after all. Many clergy insist that, as a condition of their officiating at the wedding, you go through pre-marital counseling in which you consider uncomfortable issues such as how to raise children and celebrate holidays. Many lawyers insist on pre-marital agreements that deal with prickly matters such as finances and the dissolution of the marriage.

Unfortunately, when it comes to wedding vows, poetry and sentiment often prevail over practicality. No one planning a wedding really wants to tackle the tough issues and declare in the front of a church, before parents, grandparents, and everyone, just how you want your partner to relate to his ex, what sexual positions you loathe, how big a check your partner can write without clearing it with you, and the myriad of other issues that can sink a marriage.

Far too often, people get deep into relationships without ever talking about these things. Sort of as if you moved into an apartment, or had someone move in, without ever signing a lease, or even talking about rent and security deposit.

The other problem with wedding vows is, when you are planning a wedding, you may not know what you really want in a marriage. You think what you want is what you think everyone else has. You expect what you saw on some TV show, what your parents had, or the relationship you wish your parents had. That’s a little like signing a lease without reading it first, or like a landlord downloading a template of a lease without considering what’s in it.

So, if you are running into problems in your relationship, this is the perfect time to consider how to fix the problems and discuss with your partner whether he or she would agree to a new, or amended, contract.

What would the terms and conditions be?

When you were a baby and became uncomfortable, you didn’t know what you wanted. You could scream, but you had no words to describe what was going on with you or what would change it. Your parents didn’t either. They would try one thing and then another; give you food, change your diaper, burp you, maybe just hold you and sing. When you stopped crying, they figured they had it. That must have been what you wanted.

In time, you began to associate all the various things they did for you when you cried with this experience of wanting. The food, the diaper, the burping, the singing: they called them your desires and you learned to call them that, too; but they weren’t your desires, they were only the symbols of your desires. For instance, just because you stopped crying when they gave you food, does not mean that it was food you needed. Maybe you just needed someone to pay attention to you. Maybe you needed love.

Babies who are not loved will sicken, weaken, and may die. Grown adults who are not loved will not do so well, either. But there’s a problem with love, you can’t ask for it. You can only ask for its symbols.

You can ask your husband to bring you flowers, but, if he does, you will know you had to ask for them and they won’t count for as much. You can ask your wife to be more sexy and wanton, but, deep down, you know that’s not who she is. You can’t compel affection, command spontaneity, arrange for grace. True love cannot be bought and sold, ordered and filled. The government cannot provide it after filling out a four part form; you can’t even get it from Amazon.

The symbols of desire can be insistent and dictatorial. You may believe that if you do not obey them: buy those shoes, have sex with this person, drink that beer, go on this vacation, marry that person, get a divorce; you will be destitute and unfulfilled. But, all those things are just the symbols of the nameless, inchoate desire. They are a paper tiger, a powerless tyrant, a blustering, threatening Saddam Hussein with no weapons of mass destruction.

Your ultimate experience of love and the true object of your desires was encountered before you ever had a language. Things that you experienced during this period are beyond the reach of language and reason. They are like the foundation of your house: buried deep and inaccessible. They, nonetheless, support everything and determine the shape of the structure.

So, that’s the problem with talking about love. We know what we are talking about, but can’t find adequate words to describe it.

In my next post, I will talk about love in a totally inadequate manner. I will treat it as a business contract. We shall see if that reveals the foundation.

What do you mean when you say I love you? The word love can be used to cover a multitude of sentiments. There is tremendous variety among those who march under the banner of love, from the most selfless angels to the most hate-filled devils.

When you say love do you mean?

· I want what’s best for you, even if it doesn’t involve me. If you mean this, then you are talking about Agape, the highest form of love. If you mean this then you are prepared to sacrifice, you want your beloved to become strong and independent, the best that he or she can be, even if it means that you must withdraw from his or her life. This is the kind of love that is demanded of parents who must give up nearly everything for their children and then let them go to live their own lives. It’s also demanded of life partners even though it may not be necessary.

· You turn me on, sexually. This is what the ancient Greeks call Eros, erotic love. It’s often where people start when they meet someone and are attracted to them.

· I have a lot of fun with you. This is Ludus, a form of love that is mostly playful. Ludic love loves variety and adventure, trying new things, new positions, new activities, and unexpected combinations. It sees seriousness as deadly and commitment as a trap. It just wants to have a good time.

I am yours and you are mine. This is Philos, from which we get to word affiliation. The connection you have with the other is meaningful. You are friends.

· Together we can build something important. Here we have Pragma. You guessed it, a pragmatic, practical coalition that’s all about achieving a common goal.

· You’re my best friend. You are just like me and, even when you are not, you understand and support me better than anyone ever has before. This kind of love is called Storge. Seriously, it’s called Storge.

· I need you. This is Manic love, love that views the object as a possession that the lover needs to feel complete. Below the surface, the Manic lover is really saying, I don’t think anyone can love me. Prove me wrong. You seem to be offering love, but on a deeper level you’re really searching for it. You might extend yourself to your beloved with affection, gifts, services, and many other things, but will be disappointed by the responses you receive. Until you learn to properly love yourself, none of the responses you get, however loving, will make you feel loved.

Having one kind of love does not preclude having another in equal or greater amounts. One kind can grow out of another. If you have them all, then I guess you hit the jackpot.

However, some of these types of love are more sustainable than others, some are more satisfying, some are a good or a bad match to you.

What kind of love do you and your partner have, if any at all?

Once you are in a relationship with someone, you will always be in a relationship with that person. It’s like the Hotel California, you can never leave. I don’t care if you never speak to her again, if you move to the other side of the world, put up a dartboard with her face on it, refer to her only as, The Bitch; you will always be in relationship. There will always be a corner of your brain, I dare say, a corner of your heart, that has her name on it.

This is doubly true if you are in photos in Facebook together. This is triply true if she met your parents. It’s quadruply true if you were married. It’s doubly, triply, quadruply true if you have kids together. You are hitched.

Love may not be eternal, but relationship is. The legal end of a marriage is not the end of a relationship.

Relationship, at its minimal level, means that your partner rents space in your head. You think of him sometimes, happily or unhappily, with fondness or regret. He’s part of your story and you are part of his. You have to account for him if you’re honest. You’ll be flooded with memories, good or bad, after the most trivial cues. He will affect the way you relate to anyone else. He will be an item to compare and contrast.

Former relationships rarely exist at this minimal level. Usually there are more feelings. Many more. They may be negative feelings. You might hate her, but there will still be feelings. At some point, time and time again, for the rest of your life, after the right buttons are pushed, you will be transported by your passions.

You’ve seen this in others. You’ve had beers with the man who, at the mere mention of his ex, goes on a ten minute tirade about the shrew. You’ve drained a bottle of wine with a friend who combs over every detail of her ex’s pervasive perfidy. These are people still in relationship even though their divorces are final.

By the way, love and hate are not that far apart. They are both intense. They are both very, very far away from indifference. You’ll never be indifferent about a former partner, no matter how hard you try to fake it.

If you agree that you will always be in relationship, then the question is: what kind of relationship will it be?

Should you be in this relationship to begin with?

Related questions are: Is it worth it to work so hard to save a relationship? Aren’t some beyond help? Might it be better to scrap it and start over somewhere else? What if you sacrifice everything to save your relationship, admit your faults, learn to listen, start therapy, quit all your bad habits and change into the person your partner wants you to be, and he doesn’t make his own changes? Will it be worth it or would you have become a better person for nothing?

Yes, it would be worth it, but let’s go on.

You say all your friends are telling you to leave. He’s a loser. There’re plenty of fish in the sea. Your parents claim they never liked him anyway. You regret ever getting involved with him. Wouldn’t it be easier to give up on relationships entirely and live out your life single and celibate?

Then, in the next breath, you say something I’ve heard time and time again, even in the most dysfunctional situations. You say it,

“But I still love him.”

I ask, but you are not sure what you mean.

What should you do? Can your marriage be saved?

I believe it can, in a manner of speaking. Any marriage can be saved, depending on what you mean by marriage.

The boundaries of the legal institution of marriage do not correspond directly to the concerns of the heart. There are plenty of people deeply in love who are not married and plenty of people married who are not and never have been in love. Furthermore, the language of the heart does not even correspond directly with the feelings of the heart.

The institution of marriage has changed greatly through history. In our own time, in much of the United States, we’ve seen it expand to include gay marriage. In the last two generations, women have risen to have equal rights within marriage. There is more cohabitating; more marriages between members of different races, ethnic groups, and religions; more divorces freely given; and more remarriages and shuffling and re-shuffling of child custody. Wives are almost as likely to earn as much as their husbands as the other way around. Guys are taking care of children and doing the laundry, although, perhaps not as much as they should to be equitable.

You would have had to have been living under a rock not to have noticed the revolution. The pace of this social change is probably accelerated, but the changes have gone on for centuries. Go back a couple hundred years and arranged marriage was the norm, as it often is in some countries today. Go back a couple thousand years and many men had more than one wife. Clearly, the human institution of marriage has many, many manifestations. Give us some more time, I think we will think of many more.

So, on one hand, you have the legal institution of marriage, codified and circumscribed by family, tradition, and religious authorities, like property lines in the middle of the sea. Then, on the other hand, you have the spiritual, or if you prefer, emotional, side. One is the map, the other is the territory. The one is in constant need of revision, it’s always out of date; the other is eternal, inviolable, and holy.

Spiritual people have, forever, testified to the sacred bonds of marriage. I don’t think they were referring to the forms of marriage that civil authorities legislate, or even the proclamations that lovers make. I think they’re talking about this other side, the part that is beyond words and defies explanation.

Stay tuned to the next post as I try to explain it.