A square peg in a round hole

Notes on fitting where we belong

“If you have a pair of wings, you must fly, not run”, that’s how I closed the last session of 2024 with my therapist.

I talked about it with Alfredo, who reported a quote - we still do not know who said it but who cares - “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.

The discussion, with both the therapist and A, was about a complete different topic but it made me think how it can be equally applied to the roles played in a relationship, especially a romantic one, where intimacy, expectations, goals, fears are all stirred together.

Despite its obviousness, we often sin in showing us for who we are not, sometimes for the simple fact that we do not always know who we are or just because we terribly long for that relationship to work.

On the opposite, how many times did we mistakenly see someone only for who we wanted them to be?

We meet a person who clearly tells us what he/she wants, showing us what he/she is capable of, yet we fantasize it can be something different, something only we feel to be, maybe thinking that we could be the reason of the change, dreaming of a transformation, because we idealize who is in front of us (a tad presumptuous too).

When we idealize someone, we do basically exaggerate all the positive qualities, while minimizing what we do know are imperfections / sides that we are aware do not sync with us. We decide not to worry if the relationship will work or not, trying to protect us from conflicts that can emerge, maintaining the fantasy of perfection and, at the same time, we create tons of expectations, both in our head and in our partner’s.

At the beginning it may work out, both committed to make it last, butterflies, newness, but in the long term? When we see someone for who we want them to be, (and I say WE not as pluralis maiestatis but because I did it too) we automatically manifest the picture we have in our brain, actively acting to make that idea come true.

Iris (K. Winslet), could’t say it better, yes silly, yes huge fan of 00s rom coms.

This week I also went to see BIRD at the movies, the new film by A. Arnolds, where she unpacks the life of Bailey (N. Adams, splendid), a young British girl, who lives with her father Bug (B. Keoghan, brilliant) in the suburbs. And one day Bird (F. Rogowski, a soul breaker) magically drops into her world, softly showing himself with all his poetic and outside facets, not without fears but ehi, that’s who he is, no matter what. I find this honesty fascinating and disarming.

I thought that what we do is 1)imposing ourselves and our point of view in the couple 2)forcing the other person to be someone else, ultimately making the fish feel stupid. Because of the love, the care, the needs, etc, the other person would not always honestly admit not to be it, stretching themselves until they can. And when they cannot anymore? It is the end, we fall off the chair, we didn’t see it coming, we didn’t realize that we have another person in front of us. They start to behave for who they really are, maybe they get avoidant, we become even more demanding, resulting to make them building the Berlin Wall right in front of our face.

I saw couples around me (and I experienced myself too) that are the clear reflection of the want of something (either avoid loneliness, forget an ex, feeling desired, etc ), rather than being the image of honest need of love / belonging.

There is a big difference between needing vs wanting somebody / something. What we want won’t be necessary what we need (and we go back to the fish, you need to be in the water, no matter if you want a tree to climb). And when we also carry a big-deal package with us and we are not enough emotionally mature to recognize it or we are simply not ready to work on it, we might go more for what we want rather then what we need, ending up like the perfect case study couple:

1)narcissist type looking for a worshipping maid typically co-dependent with abandonment issues

2)person with anxious attachment in a relation with a partner with avoidant attachment

Not digging too deep into the psychological reasons behind all this, I believe the main point is that we do not often reflect (and self-reflect) on what is going on both within and outside our body, letting things happen without listening 1)to who we are 2)to what the person we are spending time with is telling us 3)to our gut. Yes, the gut, we feel something, it is telling us something, yet we decide to close our eyes. Ages ago I was in Liguria, laying down under the sun of my first week end away after covid detention, and I read The Hummingbird of Veronesi, and I arrived to this chapter. I had to stop, to read it multiple times, it made me fly back to several life episodes. I closed the book for a swim to cool my head down.

“It should be common knowledge - and yet it isn't - that the course of every new relationship is set from the start, once and for all, every time; and that in order to know in advance how things will end, you only have to look at how they began. At the start of any human connection, in fact, there is always a moment of clarity where you can see it grow, stretch through time, evolve as it will evolve and end as it will end - all at once.

It's easv to see because in fact the whole relationship is already captured in its own beginning, just as the shape of all things is already contained within their first mani-festation. But it is only a moment, and then that prophetic vision disappears, or is erased from memory - and it is only because of this lost knowledge that relationships then go on to generate surprise, cause harm, bring us unforeseen pleasure or pain. We see it - at the beginning we really do see it, for a fleet-ing, unclouded moment - but then for the rest of our life it's gone. “

When someone says “I do not want to talk about it”, “I prefer it that way”, “I like 80s furniture” “I am a dog person” and we do not listen to it, we are denying that person to be that way or we are devaluating ourselves accepting something we know is not good for us. I agree when they say we are living a crisis of desire, intended as owning the wanting, desire as expression of individuality, preferences, choices. We sometimes struggle to picture our desires because we are not really connected with oneself.

Have we ever tried to make a list? The famous list of pros and cons, what we find mandatory to make a relationship work, what we feel to be fundamental to be impersonated by the person sitting next to us, in order to make that time worthy?

On top of the new year list resolutions (equally valid, not arguing), why not putting down what we really envision us to be? I do believe it might be a tiny little step forward to allow us more clarity, awareness, and caution in choosing, dedicating, accepting and being, whether you are a fish, a bird or a cat.

Happy Sunday.

Love,

e.