belief systems

It occurred to me today that my doubt about the sustainability of long term romantic relationships feels a lot like when I first started seriously questioning and breaking away from my religious belief.  It had nothing to do with no longer wanting to believe.  It had nothing to do with rebellion.  It just no longer made sense.

I went through so much internal conflict in the beginning.  I begged for signs.  I tried to accept the lack of evidence.  I took the burden on myself, thinking that I just hadn't read enough or tried hard enough to make faith work.  But given that the questions I became brave enough to ask only lead to more unanswered questions, faith broke down entirely and rapidly when I refused to divorce it from my intellect.

I feel that way now on a lot of levels.  For most of my life, I have never questioned the plausibility of commitment or marriage as an end.  In many ways, I think I'm built for partnered life... for a shared life.  But the last year has moved me toward a general skepticism of the very nature of it.  If anything, a committed relationship makes sense to me as a sort of sober joining of small worlds for some pragmatic purpose- like taxes or living situations or companionship or the desire for kids.  In the same way, religion "makes sense" in providing a packaged world view and offering a sense of community and purpose.

But both of those "uses" for commitment break down so easily under the slightest scrutiny... or can be fulfilled in other ways less coated in confusion.

They're really both some weird fantastical risks we take in the name of some greater purpose or belonging.  But on the other sides of both are fallible, sometimes ridiculous realities that at the end of the day may be based entirely on myth.

I am no good at trusting blindly.  Not anymore.

I heard a snippet of a TED Talk by Christopher Ryan that questions the inherent flaws in societal expectations of monogamy.  The ideas just all swarm together to create some knot of conflict.  I suppose we're driven toward religion because of some buried fear of our own mortality and insignificance.  We're driven toward sex by the deeply rooted instinct to reproduce- stemming from the same encoded awareness of our own eventual end.  We're driven toward relationships for the same reason, I guess... to make sense of a purposeless world.  At first it feels like we're less alone in the confusion, and eventually it seems, our partners become the scapegoats for the confusion and feeling of isolation.  The drive and the desire seem so related to me- and the breakdown does too.

So does the loss.

If I had my way, long term committed relationships would make sense.  Trusting the integrity of another enough to share a life would not have to entail a divorce from reason.  But it seems as though we may not be wired toward the long haul.  Pragmatic partnership, maybe.  And that might not have to be entirely divorced from romance and love at times.  I can still sing Jesus songs at work and accept the weird nostalgic comfort I get from it- but I know now that the comfort comes from me, not from the outside.  I can still feel deeply connected to the world- full of compassion or the longing to serve- but that no longer comes from anything to do with a religious faith.  I guess I can still imagine a shared life that makes sense, it is just stripped bare of all of the things we are raised to believe are the bedrock of committed relationships.  And... I don't know.  I don't know what it would even take for that to seem like a better choice than the life I have on my own- just me trying to know me and love me and be a decent human being for the world.

If jesus christ wasn't able to convince me that he made sense for me, I certainly don't expect another human to.

Eventually a world without a god was a world that made sense to me too.  It doesn't feel like a loss, just a different sort of living.  And I think someday I can get there with these thoughts too.

Eventually.