Being in between
The old is no more – the new has not yet become…:
»You are in this time of the interim where everything seems withheld. The path you took to get here has washed out. The way forward is still concealed from you. The old is not old enough to have died away, the new is still too young to be born. You cannot lay claim to anything in this place of dusk. Your eyes are blurred and there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart and you can see nowhere to put your trust. You know you have to make your own way through. As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander this call which is loosening your roots in false ground, that you might become free of all you had outgrown.
What is being transfigured here is your mind and it is difficult and slow to become you. The more faithfully you can endure here, the more refined your heart will become for your arrival in the new dawn.«¹
This encouragement from the Irish philosopher, former priest and writer John O’Donohue is almost emblematic for a way of life in ethical multiple relationships – and not just in one but in several aspects.
After all, already by choosing our way of life we put ourselves “between two stools”, in a manner of speaking: We do not desire monogamy in its restrictive exclusivity and with its narrow focus on only one (permitted) lifelong partner. However, we nontheless want to prove that we are committed, dependable and trustworthy – which is why we choose a type of romantic relationship such as Oligo- or Polyamory. Because a purely erotic “open relationship” in itself – or perhaps “Free Love“, which is primarily aimed at unrestricted/non-patronized sexuality – does not offer us an inner home in which we would feel comfortable in the long term.
And then there we are – with this longing, after we have gradually brought it to the surface within ourselves… Because then we may face the challenging task of discovering other people who may feel the same way as we do.
Not an easy endeavor in a world where the majority of society primarily takes a conservative and normative approach to love and relationships…
And anyone who has ever ventured into the labyrinthine world of dating for such purposes – whether offline or online – can tell you a thing or two about how different all the other questing human beings out there can be compared to your own wishes and desires – and how many frogs you have to kiss in the hope of a fairytale outcome.
Many frogs will even pull away from us – because it is not without reason that multiple relationships have the tricky fascination of being “somehow queer“. And who has enough courage to take such a risk?
This is something that all those who have long been part of the queer spectrum, all the splendid lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and otherwise colourful beings can testify to – because they all know very well what it is like to be regularly “in-between” in the truest meaning of the phrase.
Unfortunately, in this way it can also happen that we too might get “stuck in between” for quite some time. Feeling trapped in a state where we have made a decision in favour of a specific relationship model and are no longer willing or able to follow the old “washed-out path”. But the “new” takes its time and cannot be realized by force – how could it, if it is to become love – but confidence is one of those things in such phases of apparent standstill – which our Irish priest probably knew very well and therefore used the soothing words “as far as you can”: Because enduring uncertainty is one of the greatest quandaries our hearts and souls can find themselves in.
Maybe that’s why O’Donohue alluded to the “call” (of the inner voice), which shouldn’t be squandered or allowed to fade away. Applied to our situation, I would specify: Don’t back down, don’t give up on your dream and don’t blame the relationship philosophy. Instead, benevolently allow yourself this time for (even more) change.
And what if we are “lucky”? If we don’t have to date at all – and rather suddenly find ourselves in a multiple relationship situation simply because it happens, or rather comes upon us?
If we fall in love with people who are already in love or partnered elsewhere – or, oh bliss, several other people who are already in love or partnered elsewhere fall in love with US?
Then, believe me, we need John O’Donohue’s blessing above all the more. Because even if you think you’ve cleared up everything inside yourself, even if you’ve consumed all the available books, podcasts, online videos etc. on the subject of Polyamory to prepare yourself well in theory – in the end, it still won’t get you ready for reality.
No, all too often it is precisely then that we are surprisedly overtaken by doubts that lie dormant deep within us. And instead of the desired moment of arrival and the “inner home”, feelings come crashing down on us that rather resemble a “draughty inner railroad platform” – or as the Irish philosopher called it, a “place of dusk”.
In this uncomfortable place, we question many things: Have the others perhaps really lost sight of our hearts? Are we just a kind of “life’s souvenir” for them, a convenient “feature” of their relationship and love life, convenient in everyday life and enjoyable between the sheets? Do all the others involved always secure themselves the bigger pieces of the shared cake by being cheekier or louder than us – thereby enforcing their claims more recklessly?
So, have we even made a realistic commitment to the right relationship model for us? Shouldn’t we perhaps have stuck with good old monogamy after all – with just one romantic partner, all to ourselves – that would probably have been enough effort, turbulence and flickering heart, but then only just that one time – and not, as now, on several occasions…
Because sometimes we literally get “in between” when there are several loved ones (and, ok, that doesn’t happen in monogamy – but it does occur in almost every family or other form of community): When it comes to arguments, conflicts of loyalty – or when we feel pressured into taking sides of any kind, even though we actually want nothing more at such a time than a return to agreement and understanding on all parts.
If, as is currently the case (this is the December Entry after all), we are also surrounded in many places by frenzied glitter, harmony-demanding sounds and the annual gift-giving rush aimed at mutual attention, then these questions can sometimes come crashing down over our heads and the “call“ and our inner voice, which – in whatever way – have brought us onto the path of multiple relationships, become so muted that they seem almost silenced…
Long before we developed first an industrial and then a service society with its thousands of mundane products and liabilities, our ancestors must once have been more conscious of the fact that we humans cannot press an “inner button” and then immediately appear 100% ready for the market as a finished product.
In their legends, however, mysterious, powerful mythical figures played a role who ruled over our lifetimes, by which I mean, for example, the Norns, eerie sisters who were said to spin, measure and cut off the thread of our lives.
The Germanic tribes gave them strange names, which sound gloomy and odd to us today: Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. But their names were simply part of the whole – marketing, we would say at this point.
With a little imagination, you can still recognize today’s German word “gewo(u)rden” in the word “Urd” – the Norn “Urd”, “that which has become”, therefore stood for the past.
With the middle sister “Verdandi” it is a little more complicated – but not so much if we replace her “V” with a “W” and, thanks to Urd, already know that it is about the German word “werden”. For this Norn carries its present participle in her name – and present is now: “Verdandi” is therefore “that which is just becoming”: NOW – that what is happening.
Last but not least dear Skuld, who had her name shortened, probably because the grammatical forms of “werden/become” were already strained enough by her other siblings. “Skuld” (you can recognize the modern English word “should”) meant “‘ought/might'” – meaning “what is yet to happen”, in other words: the future.
That is why these Norns had excellent and powerful names that we can still pay attention to today: For we can no longer change what “has become”; it is what is becoming now that matters, that’s where we can do something – because what the future should be…, what is yet to come… – is still by no means to be regarded as certain or unchangeable.
Hundreds of years ago, those very Norns had special power particularly at the end of the year, because our ancestors cultivated another custom along with the mystery of time, which concerned the so-called “Twelfthtide or Rauhnächte” – also known as the “Twelve (magical) Nights of Christmas“.
Before exact calendars and clocks were developed, the sun and moon were used to measure time, but this posed the somewhat impractical problem that a solar year has 365 days and a lunar year only 354 (28×12) of them. This meant that 11 days were lost “in between”.
Resourcefully, our ancestors designated these 11 days as “sacred interim”, added a further initial holi-day – and so, from the winter solstice until the New Year, they slipped “between the times” – a period that they dedicated to celebration and inner contemplation by freeing themselves from toil and labour (incidentally, this is also the reason why we to this day sometimes refer to the period after Christmas as “between the years”…).
So while today we often feel torn or doubtful at the edge of our “inner railroad platform”, back then “being in between” was something special, something healing and something cosmically good.
This is exactly what the priest O’Donohue wants to assure us with his Celtic blessing: to endure this “in-between-time”, even more precisely: to listen to ourselves and realise that there is a change in us in the becoming (Verdandi!), which prepares us for what should still come (Skuld!).
But we should also take our doubts seriously and accept them as part of this transitional period. Have our favourite people possibly lost sight of our hearts?
Has their interest in us waned – or have they even lost it because we are changing?
These questions are as good as they are important, because – in accordance with my topic today – “interest” is also our keyword here:
The word, which (according to Wiktionary) roughly means “great attention / intellectual curiosity”, is made up of the two original Latin words “inter” (= between) and “esse” (= to be). So it’s all about “being in between” again! The Romans also used “inter esse” in the sense of “Condition or quality of exciting concern or being of importance” (…of course, if you want to know more…) – which gives us our answer straight away, if you like: Yes, we are important.
However, “Those who get in the centre of things quickly get in everyone else’s way” is also an English proverb – and thus draws attention to the ambivalence and challenge that “being in between” entails. As our queer allies I mentioned at the beginning can confirm: “being in between” is far from comfortable.
In the midst of our loved ones, we are all allowed to deal with such existential questions time and again. Without appeasement such as “It’s not that bad” or dismissiveness such as “Others are much worse off…” or even patronising “Don’t fuzz, I was never bothered by something like that…”.
Above a home for disabled people in one of my previous places of residence was a sign crafted by the inhabitants themselves with a pinch of self-irony, bearing the inscription “Nobody knows how heavy the burden is that someone else is carrying” – it has become a guiding principle for me that I now think about regularly – especially when things get rough in interpersonal relationships and I’m tempted to resort to the above platitudes.
We are in our relationships with each other – but each and every one of us is also on our very own path and in our very own way in the process of becoming our very own “I” or “self”. We can’t relieve each other of these task – but we can support each other. And sometimes that just means being there for one another above all else – regardless of whether we’re in between or already at the centre of things.
I would therefore like to close the last Entry of 2024 with another quote from John O’Donohue, who wrote in such an incredibly humane way:
»Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.
To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise.«²
¹ from “Benedictus, A Book of Blessings” by John O’Donohue, Bantam Press, 2007
² from “To Bless the Space Between Us“ by John O’Donohue, Convergent Books, 2008
Thanks to Magne on Unsplash for the photo!