He is The Sky

His presence is spacious enough that I remain completely myself within it.
I can move, change, explore, create, disappear into solitude and return.

My freedom does not frighten him, because he has a center of his own.

And somehow, within all that freedom, we keep choosing one another.

He is strong, but his strength does not require hardness.

He knows how to hold himself.

His feelings are welcome in our relationship, but they do not automatically become my responsibility.

He can experience fear without controlling me.

Jealousy without possessing me.

Desire without entitlement.

Disappointment without punishment.

Anger without intimidation.

When I say no, he hears me.

When I change my mind, he may have feelings about it, and still respects that my mind is mine to change.

When he makes a mistake, he can look at himself.

He does not need to already know everything about himself. I don’t need an evolved man who has somehow finished being human.

I want a man who remains curious about the human he is becoming.

A man who can ask:

What was mine in that?

What didn’t I see?

How did that affect you?

What can I do differently?

And I offer him that same humility.

He is capable in this world.

He handles his life.

There is something deeply grounding about him, not because I need rescuing, but because I no longer want to carry everything alone.

Sometimes he simply says:

I’ve got it.

And I believe him.

He plans the dinner.
Makes the reservation.
Carries the heavy thing.
Thinks ahead.
Creates beauty.
Protects what matters.
Builds something real.

He enjoys caring for me.

And I let him.

I don’t scramble internally looking for how to repay him.

I don’t quietly sign contracts because he has been generous.

I receive beautifully.

And he never uses what he gives to purchase access to me.

My body remains mine.
My time remains mine.
My future remains mine.

And because he honors that freedom, I find myself wanting to give him so much.

Not from obligation.

From overflow.

He doesn’t merely provide for me.

He reaches for me.

There is continuity between us.

We can spend the day apart without disappearing from one another.

A little message.

A hand reaching across the bed.

I thought about you.

I miss your face.

When can I see you?

Not constant contact.

Not surveillance.

Not possession.

Just the quiet reassurance that our connection remains alive even when we’re living separate parts of our lives.

He wants to know me.

Not interpret me.

Not solve me.

Not turn his perception of me into a reality I must live inside.

He remains curious.

And I am curious about him.

There are rooms inside him I will spend years discovering.

He lets me affect him.

That matters.

He isn’t so contained that nothing can enter.

His heart has doors.

I can move him.

Surprise him.

Challenge him.

Delight him.

Turn him on.

Make him laugh until something comes out of his nose.

And sometimes make him reconsider something he was absolutely certain about.

Strong enough to contain himself.
Open enough to be touched by me.

He can meet me in depth without requiring us to live there constantly.

We can talk about consciousness and mystery and Love and death and what the hell any of this means…

…and then order tacos and watch something stupid.

Life with him doesn’t become another self-development program.

We get to live.

We travel.

We make love.

We dance in the kitchen.

We disagree.

We repair.

We sit quietly.

We have friends and interests that don’t involve one another.

We make ordinary Tuesdays beautiful without requiring them to become sacred initiations.

Sometimes we’re astonishing.

Sometimes we’re boring.

Both are allowed.

And sexually…

my body trusts him.

I don’t have to override her.

I don’t have to persuade her.

I don’t use her to reassure him, heal him, repay him or keep him.

When she opens, she opens because she wants him.

And he knows that my no is part of what makes my yes so precious.

There is passion between us.

Play.

Tenderness.

Wildness.

Safety enough for surrender without surrendering myself.

He can hold me all night without imagining that holding me means owning me tomorrow.

And perhaps one of the most beautiful things:

I don’t have to mother him.

He can hurt without becoming helpless.

He can struggle without making me responsible for restoring him.

He can lay his head in my lap and tell me that life is fucking hard sometimes, and I don’t experience his vulnerability as weakness.

I don’t fix him.

I love him.

And he does the same for me.

I can have a difficult season without becoming a problem he needs to solve.

I can be brilliant and messy.

Certain and confused.

Sensual and completely uninterested in sex.

Social and solitary.

Wind and stillness.

He doesn’t only love the version of me that is easiest to love.

And neither of us requires perfection from the other.

We are simply two people who take responsibility for the conditions we create between us.

There is enough honesty for truth.

Enough humility for repair.

Enough separateness for freedom.

Enough closeness for belonging.

Enough laughter that neither of us takes our own spiritual bullshit too seriously.

And when life becomes difficult, neither person’s inner world colonizes the other’s.

There is still room for two.

Two centers.

Two mysteries.

Two whole human beings.

Choosing relationship.

And perhaps most importantly:

I like who I become around him.

I don’t become smaller.

I don’t become his therapist.

I don’t become hypervigilant.

I don’t spend my days decoding him.

I don’t have to fight to remain inside my own experience.

My shoulders come down.

My breath deepens.

My playfulness comes forward.

My sensuality comes alive.

My creativity has room.

My independence doesn’t have to defend itself.

And something in me that has carried herself for a very long time realizes:

I can put some things down here.

Not because he has become responsible for my life.

Because there are finally two capable people carrying the life between us.

And I bring something beautiful to him too.

My attention.

My curiosity.

My warmth.

My body.

My laughter.

My strange questions.

My affection.

My creativity.

My ability to see him without making him my project.

My willingness to challenge him and be challenged.

My delight in who he is.

My loving presence.

Not as payment.

As participation.

I don’t need him.

He doesn’t need me.

And still…

God, we want each other.

We build something neither of us could build alone.

And through all of it:

My man is the sky.
I am the breeze.
I move freely within his vastness,
and I never have to become still
to know that I belong.

He doesn’t stop the Wind.

He loves that she moves.

And I don’t ask the Sky to follow me everywhere I blow.

I trust that he is there.

The Sky holds the breeze.
The breeze makes the Sky dance.

And maybe when I meet this man, it won’t feel like someone has finally captured me.

Maybe it will feel surprisingly simple.

Like I can breathe.

Like I can move.

Like I can stay.

Like freedom and belonging were never opposites after all.

And until then, I don’t have to chase him.

I don’t have to turn the wrong man into him because I’m hungry to be loved.

I don’t have to accept pieces of what I desire and convince myself they’re the whole.

I can enjoy what Life brings me.

Learn.

Love.

Leave when something is complete.

Stay when staying is alive.

And let the vision remain open enough for Life to surprise me.

Because perhaps the man who is good for me won’t look exactly like anything I can imagine tonight.

I’ll know him less by how perfectly he matches my picture…

and more by who I am able to remain when I am loved by him.