Is It a Date?

(Relationships Are for Relating)

I’ve been talking with a few friends this past week about dating, both the concept and the word.

It started when I mentioned I was meeting up with someone for a drink to get to know him.

“Is it a date?”

It’s a bid for connection, I said. Sure, it’s a date.

“Yeah, but is it a date that leads to dating? Is it a romantic date?”

It’s a date to connect with someone in the present moment. If it feels good, we’ll do it again. Will that be romantic? Who knows. Maybe it’s just friendship. The date is to be together and connect, regardless of the outcome.

What is a date? Is a friend date different than a romantic date? Is having a date different than going on a date, or dating? We can have a coffee date, but is that a friend date or a romantic date? We use all these adjectives to describe what I think is the same thing. Stick with me.

Love Is Love Is Love

This overlaps with a larger conversation I’ve been having for a while about love. What is love? How does what love is differ if we’re talking about romantic love, familial love, unconditional love?

To me, love is love is love. Dating is one more place where the adjectives divide it. In my work, I focus on the largest doorway, the largest pathway into our spiritual essence. It’s about inclusion, not separation.

Who the Labels Are For

For me, a date and coffee with a friend are the same. What my conversations have shown me is that the context, whether it’s a “coffee” date, a “romantic” date, or a “friend” date, is for other people. It’s there so that someone else doesn’t get the “wrong” idea.

It’s OK for two men to go out on a date if they’re romantic. It’s not OK for two men to go out on a date just to spend time together, for connection, without the qualifier: it’s not romantic, it’s just coffee, we’re just friends.

As a queer man, I didn’t inherit the default buckets of birth family, spouse, and friends. I built each one by paying attention to what the relating actually felt like, not what the role said it should be.

Gathering Power, Dispersing Power

Recently I heard a teacher talk about empowerment and disempowerment, integration and separation, concentrated energy and dispersed energy. Things (thoughts, concepts, patterns, actions) that integrate the whole, that concentrate the energy of a concept or value, result in empowerment. Things that separate or disperse energy result in disempowerment.

Our world structure seeks to continually break down information, concepts, patterns, and ways of being into smaller and smaller buckets. Romantic, familial, platonic. Partner, friend, coworker. Each new box separates the energy a little further.

And every label names a destination. My friends seem so focused on doing the thing, the date, for the outcome. The destination. The long-term partnership. They limit interaction with anyone who isn’t also looking for a long-term partnership. I find that approach limiting. It glosses over what arises in the present moment to keep our eyes on the prize.

I tend not to date someone who is looking for “the one.” Not because I don’t want a partner, but because relationships are reflections and growth. All relationships change over time. So the question becomes: are we present to how we are relating in this moment, or focused on wanting the partnership?

I believe that if we put our attention on the connection in the present moment, and we string many of those good connections together, we end up in a long-term partnership because it works, rather than because we drove for the goal or the end game. Life is about play in the present, experiencing the present. And our society is so driven, for a myriad of reasons, to believe that we’re not enough without it.

The invitation is to let the wanting relax, so we can see who’s actually here, now.

What the Boxes Cost

Men, in particular, separate relationships into friends and romantic. For many, nurturing touch is only available in a romantic relationship, not in a friendship. I’ve seen this in the gay community, and even more with my straight friends, who are craving more connection and still live inside the boxes, the qualifiers, the labels they place on different relationships. From where I sit, it looks like an epidemic of touch-deprived men, some of whom abuse sexual energy to get that basic human need met.

Many of my dearest friends are straight men who have allowed my love, my care, my attention, my nurturing presence, to soften their shell. They’ve opened up emotionally to me in ways they typically reserved for their “partner.”

I still have my own hang-ups about nurturing touch. I too don’t want someone to get the wrong impression. I navigate that with each individual by checking in and getting consent: to place my hand on their back or their shoulder, or to give them a “gourmet” hug and allow them to be held, closely, for at least three deep breaths. (Check out my post on gourmet hugs).

The emotional intimacy reserved for a “romantic partner” can spill out into friendships when we see all relationships as something of value in the present moment.

Relationships Are for Relating

Relationships aren’t about the destination. They’re about the journey. They’re about the experience of relating. They are about the present-moment connection, experiencing resonance or dissonance, and the choice to keep engaging or go on to something more resonant.

Resonance feels good: expansive, opening, in alignment, ease, flow. Dissonance feels “bad”: constrictive, closed-off, inhibitive, off-kilter, unbalancing, unstabilizing.

We add so much complexity to relationships. We stay for the sake of having them: the job, the partner, the family. We focus on the role someone is playing, the position they are filling, rather than what the relating in the relationship is actually like.

So enjoy who is here in front of you, for now, regardless of the label or context placed on the relationship. And for as long as now feels good, safe, supportive, nurturing.

And when the relating stops feeling good, you have options. You can walk away, or you can name the dissonance and begin to relate differently. If you’re sorting through that right now, reach out, or bring what you’re recalibrating to circle.

The Practice

I want to invite you to consider your relationships for just a moment. Whether that’s your relationship with a partner (romantic, life/domestic, or business), a friend, a family member, or a coworker.

This week, notice one qualifier you reach for. Just a friend. Just coffee.

Then ask:

• Who is this label for?

• Is it gathering power, for me and the person I’m with, or dispersing it?

• What would this moment be like without it?

Underneath all of it is the relationship with yourself, with this moment, with the unfolding of life. That’s where the real relating happens. More on that soon.

Mondays at 7pm ET, we gather. The circle is open.

With love,

Sherwood