All You Need

I was watching back episodes of “Bones” the other day, and a conversation came up between characters that intrigued me.

Bones recently had a baby, and she went back to work and had the baby in daycare at the lab.  She requested that the teacher send pictures to her phone every half hour, so she could see that the baby was happy and doing fine.   Angela also had a new baby, but she had been sneaking him into lab because she misses him and doesn’t want to be so far apart.   They talk about missing their babies.  Angela asks, “Don’t you miss Christine?”  Bones replies, “I’m at work, so I focus on work.  We have to compartmentalize our lives.” 

“And you can do that?”

“I have to.”

She receives a picture sent to her just then, and shows Angela, who says, “So is that all you need?”   Bones says, “I’ll see her soon enough.”  

Not that I’m comparing babies with adult love...The baby conversation simply sparked these thoughts in me, about what is enough to allay that feeling of missing someone you love when you are apart. 

For those of us who identify as poly, when our loves share time with others, we miss them when they’re gone.  We do.  There’s part of us that still misses their presence, even when we are quite happy being involved in some other activity or spending time with a friend or another love of our own (in other words, “compartmentalizing”).   When they are with their other love(s), it can be a comfort to get a phone call or a text or an email from them, just so we get to hear their voice or know what they are feeling.  Sometimes just that phone call is just enough to zip us along on our merry way.   It’s good to connect while apart, even if only briefly.   To hear that they love us, miss us and are thinking about us, too, is awesome, indeed.  Some days, though, we really do need to be with our loves, spending time with them in the same airspace.   And after we have some of that, much of the time, it’s truly allright that they go and spend time with their other love(s).  

The trick is...to be a whole person, independent of relationships.   To have interests and things going on outside of relationships that we enjoy while our loves are away.  Not just something to distract us (although there are surely days when we need that, too), but something that fulfills us, grabs hold of our passion and dances with it.   Something we’d be hell-bent on doing no matter who was in our life.   Something we get lost in.   These things make us happy little humans--we don’t have to look to our partners to complete us.  We can handle the separation, and even look forward to that time we have to ourselves as something kind of sweet.   Some days, it’s harder to do this than others, but losing ourselves in a passion can alleviate much of the emotional shakes.  

We’ll never be surrounded by people 100% of the time, so we need to be able to be comfortable being alone.    It’s harder for some than for others—some would claim, that’s why I’m in a relationship, so I won’t have to be alone.   But we need to grapple with that, because inevitably, we ARE alone SOME of the time.   Other people we date might cancel plans, or maybe no one else is available on those certain nights when our loves are with their other loves.   In the bigger picture, relationships end, and people die.   We’re not guaranteed that we’ll never be alone in our lives. 

I am one of those people who enjoys being alone (hormonal imbalances aside...).   I admit, it’s easier for me to deal when my love is not here, than it is for others.   I fill those days with making art, working on my business, seeing family and friends, taking care of the cats, organizing, filing, making phone calls, appointments, etc.   Just like I did before we lived together, before our relationship began.   I dig it.   But I also dig it when he is home with me and we live our little life, too.   On the days he’s gone, I like having that phone call with him and telling him what’s going on, hearing what’s going on with him, waxing philosophical, making each other laugh...That 30 minute conversation can really make me feel all warm and fuzzy, indeed.   Yes, most days, some kind of communication is all I need.   It remedies the missing him because we’ve connected.   I FEEL connected, like he’s right on my shoulder, despite the distance.  And it carries me through till we see one another again and have our sweet, sweet homecoming.