Mind and matter, two words with a number of meanings. I’m going to be talking about mind as objecting to something. Those conservatives really mind that some same sex couples want to get married. The matter I will be talking about is making something be of importance of have significance. It doesn’t matter to me that those conservatives mind that same sex couples love each other.
A blog I follow on Tumblr happened to reblog a post from another blog. It caught my attention, I don’t know why as I usually am attracted to those blogs of mature people, or non-traditional relationships. This was a 22 year old woman showing off her body, and a few others she had come across. There was one post that jumped out at me as it was the included graphic. Maybe because one of the first books I checked out of the city library as a kid was by Dr. Seuss.
This message, in many forms has been what I’ve been saying to a number of people on social media lately. Things like, don’t worry about friends leaving you when you leave your church, don’t worry what other swingers think of you when you tell them your rules, don’t worry what friends think when you come out to them as gay, or bi, or whatever else. Why not worry? Because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
Every relationship needs to be defined by the two people in the relationship. My wife and I lived a stag and vixen form of the hotwife lifestyle for a while. We didn’t know that was the label for it. I’ve just learned that label in the last few months. We were just living what we wanted. We defined our relationship, our boundaries, and our rules. My wife then had to define the relationship between her and each of her guys. I haven’t found a word for the outside guy who comes into a stag and vixen pairing. I also had to define my relationship with each guy.
We weren’t really fitting the definition of any relationships we were aware of. We were defining our own.
This is the ideal. Of course in real life there are times you might not be able to do this, for example I couldn’t tell my boss he was an idiot no matter how much I wanted to. In terms of my happiness, he didn’t matter. In terms of my ability to provide for myself and my family, that job mattered and the job made him and his opinion have significance.
I’m sure there are things we would like to share with others, especially those we care about the most. I have heard so many stories of pain leading up to and immediately after people being who they are for the first time with someone they care about. I have a nephew who listened to his religious leaders and tried to suppress being gay. He married but eventually told his wife. They divorced but he now has a male partner and they seem to be doing great. So even as important as he felt his wife was, in the long term what she minded didn’t matter. To someone facing a similar choice I would say follow the graphic and be who you are.
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