Page 28 - Advanced Romance

Advanced Romance* 25
you’re embroiled in this billion-year-old dance,
this evolutionary romance. It should increase your compassion and humor that you’re being led down this road by forces that may be beyond your control. As
Joni Mitchell observes: “Whenever love comes around, someone’s a dancing clown.”18 Have compassion for yourself and the other person with whom you’re dancing this profound and superficial dance.
However, there is a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode about a woman whose species is biologically required to bond with one person, but when they do so it’s for life and with a total mental and physical melding. There is much of that reality amongst humanity. When it comes to love we are, in great part, amoebas reacting to a pin prink, or Blue Whales migrating 10,000 miles to the breeding grounds.
Which brings to mind all the talk about objectifying women as sex objects. Yes, that’s a bad thing. However, you objectify your mate more—and less— than any other person. They are the closest available mammal
to whom evolution has driven you and now you’ve
put them into this fantastically elaborate objectifying spot: your life mate. Thousands of mental and physical assumptions flow with this designation. Yet you are also incredibly personal towards your mate as the two of you define your relationship as time goes by. Thus, mating can be the most personal thing possible, while also being as impersonal as evolution.