To me he seems to explain in terms that we in the West understand, some of the long held wisdom of the ages. Nothing he says is new, it’s all simply a rehash of what all the great spiritual teachers have been saying for ages and I don’t think that he is anything special other than at present he is the one who has captured the minds of people who are searching. After all it’s not the messenger but the message that is important. It’s just that he is using the modern, Western  systems of understanding to get the message out and he is using the modern Western mindset to explain the things that defy that very Western mindset. A very challenging task. That’s why it’s probably taken him 20 years before he published his first book, The Power of Now,  as he mentions that he didn’t understand what happened to him for a long time and as he realised it he was able to then explain it, in the terms of his culture, to the advantage of we, who also live in it.

His latest book A New Earth and some of his talks get a little deep and could be somewhat overwhelming in the first instance but recently I found these three CBC interviews which I feel are a great introduction into what he is about. I’ve also recorded the audio if you just want to listen to that, the links are below each embedded YouTube clip.

Here is the Audio from Eckhart Tolle Part One

[powerpress url=http://iankath.com/mp3/TolleEp1.mp3]

Here is Episode Two.

Here is the Audio from Eckhart Tolle Part Two

[powerpress url=http://iankath.com/mp3/TolleEp2.mp3]

And lastly here is Episode 3

Here is the Audio from Eckhart Tolle Part Three

[powerpress url=http://iankath.com/mp3/TolleEp3.mp3]

Back when I came up with the idea and started Your Story I commented on how the years were all the same and the disappointment that there wasn’t any real change from year to year, of my desire to shake that up. Now it’s now been nearly 3 years.

I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing when I started on this path those few years ago but I knew that I needed to start and see where it would go. The first 15 years of my adult life were wonderful years with a great marriage, adventure and achievements but after that it was particularly tough. Now I can say that of the last 15 years since my marriage went south these last 3 years have been the best, most rewarding and enlightening years.

When my daughter was little I used to say that I was running a one off, 18 year experiment in parenting and I’d get back with the results on whether I achieved anything when she is 18. Now that she is I think that experiment has been very successful but that is another story. Just the same as parenting, this last year I’ve been running another experiment in not planning, not goal setting but

Ian in Buenos AIres

simply going where the moment takes me. It started way back in May when I decided, just for one week to have a Societyfast. What could go wrong for one week of not buying into all the stuff of society?

As it turns out after that week I decided not to reconnect with the system and that’s the way it’s been all year since then. Now I’ve always done things somewhat my own way but this was really ramping it up. I have for the majority of the year slept, worked, danced and travelled as it’s seemed right in the moment. I’ve done my best not to project into the future and reminisce on the past. I have at times been far from perfect from achieving this and I have sometimes bought into fear and sentimentality but generally I’ve been able to reconnect after a time and just enjoy the moment. And what wonderful moments I’ve had.

In the last year I’ve only worked about 10 weeks which has caused me to live very lean but my life is wonderful and rich with friends old and new. I have a wonderful social life thanks to my dancing and all that Tango has given me. I’ve travelled yet again, this time to Buenos Aires. I’ve worked for a time with an artist and on Narnia – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where I made some wonderful things. The podcast is evolving and I’ve managed to meet and get a whole new level of guests to come onto the show. My skills have continued to improve both with audio and video while some people, though only a few, seem to like what I’m producing and keep coming back.

But most importantly I’ve discovered that if I take the time, to take no time, to just be in the moment and make decisions on what needs to be done now and follow that quiet feeling inside me that says that I should do … right now it all seems to work out. Leave my petty ego out of it and be content with whatever happens whether it’s others or my doing doesn’t matter. Instead of worrying I’m starting to have an attitude that something will happen, it’s just that I don’t know what it is. This is creating a new state of wonder, where I don’t know what is going to happen but like watching a film I’m curious and wonder what will evolve. Amazingly it’s working out different and much better than I could imagine.

Yes, what will come of the New Year. I wonder because I have no idea.

Lets find out…

While I was in Buenos Aires in July I was able to have several group lessons with Pablo and Valeria and found them to be amongst the best teachers of the now approximately eight different teachers that I’ve had lessons with. Tango is a specific skill in itself but so is teaching and like many skilled practitioners it’s a rare person who can both perform and teach. This is their greatest strength in that they have the teaching skill to benefit from their technical excellence as tango performers. The single most impressive thing that I saw them both do was to explain the good and poor technique while the partner would act out what was being explained without having to be told what was coming next. It was as though they were reading each others minds. I suppose when you live and breath tango with a person you can’t help but know how each of you think.

And to show you how they can relate to each in the dance, here is the performance of the three dances they did at the Friends of Tango, Pequeno Nino Bien, Milonga on 21 November 2009 in Brisbane.

Book Stands for the Movie

this crazy life of mine and how it flies in the face of the Western method of work, whether it’s valid or irresponsible of me, if I’m burning my bridges for my future or if maybe I may actually have something here.

When I finished I knew I had to do the whole readjust again back into the mental head-space of just hanging out doing my thing again. It’s very easy to plug into work, as once I’m on a Job there is a first morning where I get up and head off to another first day and from then on it’s routine. The longer I work in that one place the more ingrained the routine becomes and the more comfortable it all is. That is until the routine becomes boredom. Then another type of stress starts where I question my existence and waste of life in that environment and yet again I have to leave to find myself.

That is very much the way it is for most of the permanent work that I’ve done and the great advantage of working contract is that normally I can stick it out long enough until the project is complete which hopefully isn’t too long and then I get the change that I need. So film work often suits me well in this regard.

Finishing and readjusting to no work is not as easy as compared to starting as I don’t have the distractions that work gives me from what I call the “Void” or “Nothing”. However there are two ways to approach this.

1. Get another Job is what everyone asks and expects. In a lot of ways that is the easiest option. But for me after all these years of doing the variations on this lifestyle I know that it will go the way that I’ve outlined above. Normally six months and I’m a spent force, bored and ready to move on. It even tends to manifest in physical disturbances in my body brought on by the low but permanent levels of stress.
2. Embrace the Void. Now it’s not exactly Nothing. It’s not as though I wake up sit down and do nothing until I go back to sleep that night as I have my personal projects and day to day order to keep functioning so there is a whole range of activities and a constant supply of new and interesting opportunities turning up daily to keep me active. However compared to the 40 hour week, 48 week year work model it appears to be a void that requires filling.

The challenges with embracing the Void is that there is no order projected onto the future, no planning and no surety. It’s very much living in the moment and taking the opportunities as they arrive on a moment by moment time frame. That flies in the face of the Western model of how to get things done. I’m supposed to have lists, goals, plans for what I want to achieve and a step by step approach to achieving them. I’ve read the books on goal setting and that’s the way they say to achieve what your after. Sure that’s the model and if you have a specific goal that is what you do to achieve it, I get that.

But what if you haven’t the goal at the moment?

For the last couple of years my podcast Your Story has been a goal, a huge goal, to get the knowledge and have a production model in place but I never knew what I was going to do with it beyond getting it up and running and hoping that some opportunities may come of it. So I’ve been working at learning everything I needed to get it going but now that’s been achieved it’s bubbling along and I don’t have the next step.

Welcome to the Void, Ian.

The easy fix as mentioned above and the one recommended by all is to go get a job and for two reasons.

Money and activity.

The number of people who say it must be good to have this free lifestyle or it must be good to have money, as they say they would like to not have to work but they need to, as they need the income, they need the money to maintain the lifestyle.

• Let’s look at the obvious side of this first – Money.

Are we addicted to the money and income from our work?

I think most people would agree that the answers is yes. Most don’t realise that the addiction is based on having an income to support a lifestyle that is far in excess of what is necessary. They scream that they want the “stuff”. You know the “stuff”… It’s all that consumer stuff that we surround ourselves with, from the house and car to the holidays and widgets. It includes everything beyond our base needs. Everything that the advertisers throw at us but more insidiously it’s the subtle daily reminders that to be a person of respect in our society (and just look at the business and social pages in the paper to understand this) you need to have a style and attitude the requires all the “stuff”. These are the things that identify you to the rest of society and you need to surround yourself with them at any cost and the cost is debt and/or work very hard to generate the income.

This is not to say live in a cave with only the basics to have a good life but do you really need all of that “stuff”? Do you constantly have to upgrade as soon as the next version of it comes out? If the answers is yes then you need to fund the never ending need for those consumables and there is always more “stuff” coming on the market to necessitate the increase in your income – consume, consume, consume. It never ends.

I know that many would say that they are only just getting by on the minimum of what they can afford with no luxuries and that is valid. They are trapped by this system of the things that they must have or are expected to have. The biggest of these for the average family but far from not the only, is the cost of housing. Once a mortgage is activated you are indentured to the system to work as a wage slave for the duration of this debt with rent being no different. However by todays standards we need far more than in the minimum. Our grand parents were happy with far less.

A few years ago I went against the grain and didn’t get myself into huge debt to purchase another property as I realised that I would have to flog myself just to maintain the mortgage by being in this exact situation. Instead I still live in my humble two bedroom unit and I have a small investment unit in the same block. When I say humble I mean very humble, these units are 49 square metres but in the wonderful suburb of West End in Brisbane. I have an old car that is cheap to maintain and run but with most things local I use it minimally. I have a simple frugal life with little that I need additional to my current situation. I have a small income from the investment unit that pays for itself and a little left over towards my other bills so in effect I need just a few hundred dollars a week to live my life. With a cash injection as I’ve just had from the film work I can often survive for several weeks before I start to run lean on funds.

The stuff that I have in my life above the basics of life are by the standards of our society few. I don’t need a large income to maintain it. This enables me to have this life where I’m not always chasing the almighty dollar and can spend time on more important things instead of work, like Life.

• This brings me to the second of the two reasons for having work – Activity.

Everyone complains about work and how good it would be to not have to do it but

Go for a Walk

the reality is that once you do unplug from the workforce there is a desire, almost a need to stay active. Sure sitting on a beach for a few weeks may sound fine but once you’ve done that it starts getting boring. If you have been spending half of you waking life working, with the rest doing the functional support things, once work is removed there is a huge void that requires filling. In not too many weeks most people find the desire to return to work in order to have activity. Work here I include as self employment, study as well as working for others but also hobbies and recreations that keep a person active. Also our society demands that we are working to play our part to support the system, if we’re not we’re said to be sponging off the system.

What Do You Do?

The number one question asked when people meet and start a conversation is “What do you do?”

This is where work is your identifier. It could be a way of pegging you in someones memory when they meet you but then the question could just as easily be “Where did you go for your last holiday?”

The reason the work question is so good is it places you in the pecking order of society, where your value as a member of it. Work defines you by what you do and how you do it not to mention how much money/stuff you have and if you wish to be a valued member of that society you’ll feel the need to play the game according to the rules as laid out above. Notoriety, affluence and stuff. We use the work standard for as a quick measure of that and we feel the pressure to strive towards meeting those requirements.

Nothing.

What about if you have nothing to do for a period of time. You have enough basics to keep going for a time, there are no goals to achieve and there are no desires for stuff. What then?

What about the idea of doing nothing unless something, i.e. desires or needs, comes along? Just wait until then.

Our society says that we can’t do that, we can’t do nothing, we have to do something… anything!

After all we have all these things to worry about in the future that we have to prepare for/against. So even if you don’t want to, go and do anything, it’s necessary to stash away more “stuff” for the future. Actually, while your at it get a bigger, better, faster “thing”and before long you trapped into the cycle where you have to work to keep the cycle going.

What about winding the cycle in the opposite direction. As you acquire the things you need to support the basics of life wind back the effort that you need to get anything that isn’t necessary. Sure get the house, but one that is adequate, no more than is required and once you have it, there is less of a need to work as much creating space in you life. Have a modest vehicle. Go on good value holidays but the whole time only as much as you need. Eventually there is a point reached where there is no  need to be working as much with more time available and there is nothing to do. You have it all, no need to buy more and it’s time to stop.

A lot of the activity that we do is like the things we buy, it’s “stuff”. It’s just the noise that we generate so that we have something to do. Could there be an alternative? How about doing Nothing… Yes actually doing Nothing as an activity. What I mean here is if there is nothing to do, not creating noise by creating an activity of stuff but just being quiet and doing Nothing! Sit, stand or lie and wait in the void doing No Thing.

Nothing

Doing nothing to such an extent that there is not even a desire to do anything just to create some noise, to not do Any-Thing but to do No-Thing. Just simply being in the moment allowing the constant stream of time to wash over.

Then at some stage there is an urge to do something, not out of a reason to create a distraction from the void but additional to the void, so do it. It could be anything as simple as changing physical position to starting a project that lasts a life time.

The difference to the Western model of work is that it is not out of a need to generate the income to get the stuff and it’s not in order to create a busy mind through activity. It’s the thing that needs to be done now, because it feels like the correct thing to do. So it’s done now.

Relationships, we want them but how do we do them?

In a previous post about how relationships collapse I suggest that we move onto new relationships in a way that is serial monogamy. I suggest that it’s necessary to realise that all relationships end and it’s the disappointment of that, based on the expectations that they last for ever, that causes the suffering.

My suggestion is to come to terms with the fact that it ends, enjoy it while it lasts, grieve when it ends, heal and then move on.

Another aspect is that within the Western view of marriage we expect our partner to be all things in every way for us. It’s natural, especially as when we connect and in the serotonin haze that is created in the first flush of meeting someone, we think they are perfect, the one, our soulmate. Then they change don’t they?

Maybe we change the way we view them!Either-way we find that they aren’t everything to us in all situations. So we become dissatisfied try to change them or compromise ourselves but we’re not satisfied.

Who said that the person you marry has to be your everything, especially in the intimate personal aspects of a relationship?

Oh sorry!

The system said that!

Well guess what the system is wrong. We all get things that are important to us from other people and places, physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual. We have friends that give us things that we don’t get from our partners and within a marriage it’s accepted that we can have these relationships to fulfill us and round us out as humans. Pragmatically we allow our partner to do things that we may not quite approve of because it’s seen as good for the relationship and based on power and survival needs of the family. As the dependence on the other changes through the constant change of the relationship then the barely tolerated behavior becomes a relationship threatening behavior and the slow slide to separation commences.

The conflict is not so much in the behavior itself but in the non acceptance of your partner needing to be this way as their form of human existence. To relate to someone you must accept them as they are. If you have an issue it is fine for you to communicate it to them, even to ask for them to change but it is 100% up to them to change and to do it happily with no compromise to themselves. If they can’t or won’t change you must accept it as it is, happily with no compromise to yourself. If this can’t be done there will be conflict. Either way it’s about acceptance either a new or the old dynamic. So now everyone is happy with each others behavior and all can live in bliss.

But what if I can’t resolve a behaviour by my partner?Simple, dissatisfaction unhappiness arguments all the usual stuff until it moves to separation or stagnation either way not much joy and fun. So get with it, acceptance is the only way to get it.

This isn’t my stuff you’ll find it scattered around many of the spiritual teachings especially Buddhism and within human relationship counselling.

What if I can’t personally give what they need from me? Accept it! If not then that means either conflict and ultimately separation or let them find it elsewhere and accept that new situation. Either way we’re back to acceptance.

In all relationships we get things from outside of the relationship so lets celebrate that and let our partners go forth and have those other fulfilling relationships in the knowledge that this is what is vital to them and that if we can be content with that there is contentment with both parties.

Back in May I was listening to Cameron Reillys’ G’Day World podcast which introduced to me the concept of Polyamore through the conversation he had with a couple travelling through the US.

As I heard about this term of Polyamore I realised that it seemed to be another expression of the serial monogamy but with the twist that there isn’t a requirement for the relationship to breakdown and that it can continue and any requirements that are need to be added to the relationship can be found outside to satisfy while staying in the relationship. Or that it is possible to have multiple relationships concurrently so as to ensure that all are satisfied and whole. The most important aspect is openness of desires and honesty with all parties.

Now this is not just about sex. We do have very deep intimate non sexual relationships with others that satisfy us and within a relationship we allow that and all is fine. The challenge is when we move it up to include all aspects of human behaviour including sex. That’s when it’s challenging for a lot of people as it’s fine to do somethings just not All Things, especially sex. But why not?

As seen before if we’re not satisfied there will be conflict within the relationship or within oneself.In what I’m saying here I admit that I’m making a generalisation and yes there are exceptions to what I’m saying but the vast majority of cases are closer to what I’m suggesting than to the Western Ideal that everyone aspires to.

In all of human history we haven’t been monogamous and we will go there anyway one day or be miserable, inside or outside of the relationship, why not face up to the certainty and happily allow our partner to satisfy that aspect of their humanity that is unfulfilled? Because it threatens us, that’s called jealousy, that’s why!

Ok, I accept that a lot of people can’t or won’t be able to do a Polyamourous relationship but to my way of thinking most of us are already doing it with other important aspects of our human relationships, we just have this sex, guilt, ownership control thing with our partners that has been perpetrated by church and state as a way of keeping us in some sort of control for reasons I don’t understand.

It’s all right if you disagree with me. You may be totally besotted by your partner and they with you and you see no need to entertain what I’m suggesting here. However if…?

Do you care for your partner so much that if they needed to have a relationship…A relationship to round them out as a person….Do they adore you and share with you and are you secure enough in yourself and your relationship to allow them to go and have the experience…Could you be happy for them knowing that they will always want you?

Or does that threaten you?

I so get this stuff! Once I found it had a name and I thought about my life and the way I’d interacted with people I realised that I have always been doing a variation on this. I’ve always been comfortable with the thought of my partner having relationships if that is important to her. That is why I always say I never do jealousy it just never threatens me if she wants to go and play.

The way I’ve been doing Poly has been more within monogamy and platonic(love without letting it move to sex, but if things were different??).

More to the point I love many people in my life, if they are male it is platonic, if they are female it’s platonic if either of us are in a relationship and that relationship isn’t poly. However if we are both single or poly then it’s on and with some of the wonderful women in my world I’m inclined to be sexual with them.

But this is where I like the difference between Polyamory and swinging as this isn’t just recreational sex this is about building real relationships based around affection, respect, honesty and love.

I see that as more honest to both my partner and myself. And the little bit that I’ve experienced I’ve found that the sex is outstanding as so many of the conditional attachments and assumptions of a monogamous relationship aren’t there so the loving is more genuine as we understand that we are whole people with others in our life and that if we genuinely love each other we will stay connected and if we don’t we will move on so we cherish the moments we have.

If you wish to understand more about true relationships the challenges and the joys as well as the concept of Polyamore listen to a great podcast at Polyamory Weekly.

To reiterate. This is not about sex but about loving human relationships that we all have all the time. It’s about open honest human communication with the people we care about. It’s about allowing and being allowed to live the true life that fullfills us and to share that life with the people that mean the most to us.

The difference is that it doesn’t exclude sex, that’s all!

Humans are funny animals aren’t we. Lets look at relationships.

We all want to connect, to be with someone, someone in our life at whatever a relationship means to the individual. Some only want someone for the occasional hang out or friendship or maybe just a sex partner. Others want someone for everything to share hobbies, holidays, work, sex, family/friends, everything! But I think it is a very rare individual that is truly happy to be always alone and to live in isolation as is shown by the fact that the ultimate form of punishment is solitary confinement. I feel that people who genuinely enjoy their own company and aren’t retreating from some pain or suffering still enjoy friendships and the interaction of society. There may be exceptions but I have yet to meet one and if they are out there I’m sure they are extremely rare.

Considering how much we yearn to form community and want to be with others, the amount of effort we put into finding someone special, a soulmate it’s interesting how poorly we do it. Our communities breakdown into tribal conflict and our personal relationships breakdown after a time despite our expectations that they are to remain forever. We want it, we crave it, we have the drive and the systems, biologically and intellectually to connect but we don’t seem to have the mechanism to make it work forever. There seems to be some conflict between expectations and outcome!

Now I must come clean… Yes, I’m also talking about myself. I’ve done the euphoria, the first flush of relationships, I’ve been well and truly beaten with the smitten stick a few times and it feels great. I’ve moved into the relationship with the expectation that it will last forever, to be two elderly people holding hands in the street going through life together. I’ve also had the disappointment pain and hurt as the relationships have ended and dealt with being divorced and a single parent. So I know what it is like and I still want to connect with others.

The problem I feel isn’t that we want relationships, that’s fine. The problem isn’t that relationships end either. The problem stems from the conflict that we feel that relationships should form and not end. Why shouldn’t they end? Maybe having a relationship end is a good thing, an opportunity for something new.

I can hear you… “NOOOO….”

Why do we form relationships? We have a yearning for companionship, sure. We have a biological urge to procreate, sure. We want to form an alliance for strength and power, sometimes that occurs also.

Here in the West we have a divorce rate of between 40% and 60% and I often notice of the remainder the vast majority of relationships are challenging and definitely not what they would call ideal so the percentage of relationships that are as the individuals had hoped for is probably in the single figures. Cast your mind over all of the relationships that you know and consider how many are wonderful and fully functional, even then are you sure, as we have all seen the perfect couple separate.

If you were about to get on a plane or boat and you knew that your chance of surviving unscathed was five or ten percent would you board? These are our odds as we go blindly into marriage wishing that we will be different. Remember research shows that the stress of divorce is similar to that of someone close dying.

So my thought is to take from the old saying “it better to love and lose than never to love at all”.

Considering the odds we would be better off assuming that relationships will end and to enjoy the ride on the way, embracing every moment, as we can’t assume that things will last as ultimately they won’t. After all it will change and it will end, it’s either separation or death we just don’t want to think about it. So get over it and get on with it, unless you want to be by yourself and miserable.

But this isn’t the way we are told it’s supposed to be. Find your soulmate, fall in love, marriage, kids, house and they live happily ever after. Right! Sorry, maybe for the rare few but generally it doesn’t seem to work like that.

Lets go back a few hundred thousand years or so when the human animal is walking around the savanna of ancient Africa. We are living in a small tribe of ten to fifty individuals. Many of us are interrelated, occasionally someone new joins to add to the mix. One day two people look across the camp fire and something stirs in them. Attraction is there, the primal urge says to each that this would make a good combination for children and after some negotiation it’s on and we have a new member of the tribe. The mother along with the rest of the tribe raises the child and the father is there as support doing the provider thing for the tribe and offspring but able to drift about. The mother is basically bound to the child from conception till about four when it is independent enough to support itself somewhat. Sometime during this due to the pressures of the practical life attention moves away from the partner and others are noticed, attraction kicks in again and a new coupling is formed and the cycle starts again. One woman has mixed her genes with a few men and one man has mixed his with multiple women but they are still within the one tribe so they are still around all raising the children providing for the group and living within one large multiple person marriage called a Tribe.

Now if this situation is correct it lasted for a long time and would have been successful or else some thing like monogamy would have come along. But monogamy has come along! No, looking at the mix of human genetics it’s been stated that one in ten people send a fathers day card to the wrong person and that is the way it has been for all of human history! Monogamy is a myth and we’re not designed for it. In the Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins lays out his argument that it is not even about creating new people but about replicating genes and that it’s all about gene mixing, so one partner is not as efficient as multiple partners for gene mixing.

So why don’t we just go at it like rabbits with everyone and spread our genes wider than we do. Why do we want to form relationships and communities as we do?

Power and survival is why. A group is stronger than an individual and resources can be shared more efficiently. No one person has to do everything as there are others to do for them through the group as they also do. Within a partnership a stronger bond is formed to aid coupling, child bearing and rearing but after a few years the partner bond is less important as the tribe takes over the role as the child integrates into the tribe then the individuals move their attraction to someone new.

In our traditional Western Society we see this. They meet, hook up, fall in love and marry. That takes a year or two. A child is conceived and raised to about four. Then things get rocky start to break down and the couple separates. About seven years give or take a few. Ever heard of the seven year itch? Maybe philandering is more natural than we think.

A lot of people don’t separate, or play up, sure but are they still completely in the relationship like they were in those wonderfully heady early years? Mostly no.

So why stay together? For the same reasons as before Power and Survival because we don’t have the tribe to support us now. A couple no matter how dysfunctional the relationship is, has some strengths of support and assistance that an individual doesn’t have in the raising of the child and maintaining the survival of the genes.

People have known this for a long time. Until the mid 1700′s only the nobles in Europe were married and it wasn’t the necessary thing for the lower classes to do. Even then it wasn’t about love it was about power and prestige. Couples weren’t married, families were Wed. Couples/Families wed together to consolidate estates, form alliances and build power bases. Once a couple of children had been produced and the linage of the power secured the couple went their own way with matters of the heart and had affairs, lovers, concubines and all matter of flings. This still happens today. Look at the British Royals for a case in point.

Many cultures have arranged marriages and many of them last a long time as they know the rules, that it isn’t about love but about the big picture of survival of the group. Where arranged marriages are frowned on as in the West, where we have the utopian picture of love based marriage it still happens, just more subtle as often people are introduced within ethnic, family or social groups and it is only the illusion of freedom to find love but the restriction is to find it within the specific grouping. So the power remains local.

So the 50′s dream of the nuclear family was always doomed but we expect it to survive only because we have such a short life-span and limited history that comes with it. If only we were to look at the longer human history instead of just a couple of generations as we have seen things are different. We have been sold the story to such an extent that we believe it. I’m not sure why we were spun this story but I’m sure it’s something to do with keeping us working and consuming for the system as we know it to work. I’ll get back to you about that one.

So marriage doesn’t work, not even monogamy, what then? Lets look at what we are already doing.

We find, love, connect, separate… then we find, love, connect, separate… then we find, love, connect, separate. Well this is called serial monogamy. One committed relationship until completion then move onto another. That’s what most people have done, not just with multiple marriages but the relationships before settling into the supposed permanent relationship.

It starts with dating in the teen years where it’s seen as ok to cruise through a few relationships, not too many, then to settle on The One. Fancy that, we expect to have half a dozen immature relationships then miraculously find our soulmate and be content with that for the next sixty years. Not really surprising that it’s rarely achieved. However maybe the way in which we date is the practice for the way that we are supposed to do it. The way we start in our youth is the way of the human relationship dynamic, to hook up and then move. We practice with dating then we mature to more substantial relationships but ultimately there is a use by date and we move on. So lets just admit it, that’s what we all do!

It’s the belief that it is wrong to relate like this and the hope that the latest relationship is the one that will last, despite the evidence, that keeps us behaving like this. I think serial monogamy is completely functional if both parties accept that it is like this and accept that things will change and then when it does it will be time to move on to a new relationship. By going in with your eyes open the devastation of the separation won’t eventuate as it’s always expected and the appreciation of spending what time you have together is increased as you are aware that the end is inevitable.

With a mature attitude this news is only good and the relationship is enjoyed fully in the moment and the suffering of the separation is diminished and maybe in parting a permanent long term new form of relationship is formed. With this completed and all accepting the situation all move on and if all stay connected harmoniously the tribe is supported and the circle of participants grow. Giving support and power to the group, for the good of all.