A New Concept of Fidelity

This paper sets out a new concept of faithfulness in love which has developed out of my own ongoing experience with love. In order to provide the framework for the ideas I will first describe that experience in the context of my own love life.

I love three women.

I am in a long-term relationship with one of these women which has been going on now for 11 years. The other two women have been in my life now for four and two years, respectively. Because I am committed to keeping my love life transparent and very open, all three know each other, and know how I feel about each one. I have been working and continue to work to deepen and sustain these relationships through contact and shared activities. It happens that I am able to meet all of these women in a deep way. Each friendship has evolved into a significant and meaninful intimate sexual relationship. At some point in that process it became my highest priority to see if I could sustain stable love relationships with all three of these women.This consumed a great deal of time, energy and work, but I felt that it was worth it for me personally and also important for research in liberated love. In the end I gave this personal project first priority in my life, subordinating my participation in the community, my contact with other women, and sometimes even my own spiritual practice to it.

Love Does Not Know Any Limits

I found and still find this time important. I believe that the so called multiple relationship is a natural path from the intimate love into the community. The thought of fidelity and commitment has already been correct only the vessel was too small. You can not have only a little bit of free love. Because love does not know any limits. On a journey to Thailand in spring I have thought about the following question: How do I lead a spiritual life? How do I submit my ego to guidance from the Source? If I question this seriously I can not leave out the topic about love. Here I realised: The way I have been organising my lovelife so far there has been far too much management and calculation, and not enough life which flows on its own. There is for example the thought of sharing myself equally in the love to more than one person, as if there was a certain linearity and the same amount of energy would flow at all times to all places. This would only correspond to scientific logic but not to the logic of love and Eros.

There are times - like the one when I met my second girlfriend four years ago - when a lot of energy flows into the love with a new arriving person and this, of course is a critical situation. In this situation the old lover has to be well centred within herself for not to start comparing, and additionally my second lover was about 13 years younger than my first one. Another topic is that a man likes to keep everything under control. It is difficult enough to control one woman. And if you have three at the same time this can turn into a full time occupation which keeps you away from everything else.

It is about an active opening of the heart

During the development of these thoughts I understood that a change was necessary. It is about a new direction which I call active opening of the heart. The passive heart opening for the women and for love I have studied and learned well in my life. My heart opens for them and I let it happen. The active heart opening on the other hand contains a conscious decision not only to receive but to create, which means to build spaces outside and within myself where trust and intimacy can happen, where love can develop. This is for me directly connected to the love community. Since the beginning I have said that the attempt to create a love relationship between only two people is very difficult and mostly fails. The natural extension of intimate space in a couple and also in a multiple relationship is, in my opinion, a love community.

This is an organism where no more fear pulsates between people and the love between two is protected and cared for through the mirror and support of others. And so the relationship of a couple can be lifted onto a higher level. Some things are extremely difficult to talk about between the two, for example if you want to tell your partner: You are not my main source for sexuality at the moment. Or: You are intellectually not interesting for me at the moment. I need other people now to inspire me. Just try to talk about things like that between two people on their own.

What does fidelity mean here?

Now to the basic thoughts. I will start with the old concept of fidelity. In a socialist dictionary it sounds somehow like this:
"FIDELITY: attachment, reliability, the devotion to a person (fidelity in marriage) or to a topic (fidelity to a company) or in intellectual sense (to the principles of proletarian internationalism)."
Or more modern in O'Neills "The open marriage" :
"Fidelity in marriage is a measurement of limited love, lowered growth and not enough trust. It destroys it own purpose because it creates the roots of mistrust and limits the growth and also the love of both partners."

If the heart is added to fidelity as in the word "treuherzig" ('of a faithful heart' - ingenuous) the cultural view on this topic is shown clearly: naive, not knowing, childish, guileless, foolish. All in all we could say people are touched by the soppy story of everlasting fidelity but nobody takes it really serious.

Here the attempt of a new definition: Fidelity is basically a natural state of a human being. Those who love each other and are attracted to another will circle round each other in orbits of different distances, sometimes forever. Love between people is in itself permanent, if its magnetism is not destroyed by inner stagnation, stowed conflicts and active heart locking. Some people still think it happens to them, they had somehow fallen out of love, love had slipped away from them. And then they react differently: The more emotional ones for example say: "It's enough! I can't stand it any longer!" Others do it very slowly, they withdraw energy from their love so it bleeds out like a wrongly cut beetroot, until nothing is left. This is an active locking. If you can not remember consciously how you locked your heart you have to spend a lot of money on psychotherapy, partner connection rituals and sweat lodges.

A new form of fidelity is the fidelity to the higher person of the other. It is no longer the agreement based on fears, which we think saves us from conflicts. We can see this higher person and full potential clearly when we first fall in love with each other. During this time we can see and anticipate the potential of a human being. Afterwards it is about the active state of fidelity. This means even after the state of first love to continue to trust into the seen and anticipated. Therefore a clear and level-headed way of falling in love is necessary so that at a later time - when we are not in this fire anymore - we still know what we love about the other person and where the journey leads to. This is a lot more consistent for me than the short time of romantically being in love. It is the beginning of a change from a more emotional love - where everything roars up, all feelings and longings become ebullient - to a recognising love, where everything is accompanied by the intellect and still gives space for the feelings. This is the art.

The perspective of possible eternity replaces the desire for short-term fulfilment

Fidelity is selfless. It does not question if the other stays at my side but supports their development - even if it is against the own desire for short-term fulfilment. Because the perspective of a possible permanent friendship replaces the wish for immediate fulfilment. Fidelity also means to love the erotic being of the other in his/her deepest lust and fulfilment, which attracts him/her to others just as much as the sexual connection together. It means, not only to tolerate and to ignore, but to love.

This is for me an intersection for peace between man and woman. Am I able to meet my partner open-hearted and sensual if she/he just comes from somebody else, maybe even still with the glance of happiness in the eyes and maybe even with a sensual longing for me? Can I meet her/him in this moment without competition or a rest of contempt.

Fidelity means to dig out the "dead bodies" of relationships and put them into the light. This putting-into-light also contains inner clearing and changing work with the experienced or caused pain in the own biography. It is often a key issue: Has the pain locked me or have I understood to open through the pain? If I keep my heart closed to people I have loved in the past I will draw the veil again into my new, actual love because you can not lock your heat partially. And this means, as long as you have an unresolved past always something sticks to your soul. It is an illusion to believe that you can separate and win energy through this because the pain is gone. On long term you have to invest a lot more energy to be able to get back into a state of being able to love, to not fall into the locking.

This concept of fidelity leads into a spiritual dimension because it also means to recognise the intellectual and spiritual connection with the partner. Every thought of envy, hatred or jealousy that I nurture and identify myself with creates an injury in the spiritual net of our connection. If for example you are really identified with a malicious thought this can cause a telepathic line into the dreams of your partner, enter the dream of the other. This means for me to take very serious that thoughts create reality. Especially in connection to people who we love. Also a part of fidelity is to be able to disappoint your partner to stay true to yourself or to confront him/her if he/she has become unattractive by inner stagnation, to be able to love him/her permanently. It means not to break up the contact and leave the other where he/she is but to support him/her according to your love so he/she can change and this often involves to see your own anger and be able to work with it. Do you know the delight in the face of a friend if you have managed to communicate your own legitimate anger? This creates opening not fear. If it is not already poisoned. I know it, the delight in the face of my girlfriend if I express in the right moment with the right energy what makes me angry.

Fidelity means to question your own position over and over again and to be able to react to the mistakes of the other with clarity and generosity.

True-hearted (treuherzig) in the newer sense is who does not use their friend to fill their inner emptiness but uses him/her to find back to themselves.

You have to create the world that can be embrace

This is close to the context of the next thought:

Do not try to find in a person what you have lost in the world.

Your lover can only be a key to the world. Somehow every deep loving contact with her/him, whether a wonderful deep sexual contact or a intimate conversation where you open up your soul, is a spring-board into the world. You want to embrace the world! But we have to create the world that can be embraced. Elemental love experiences as described above carry within the germ of a change of life towards a fearless contact with the world. To be faithful also means to understand that we are historical beings imprinted by a wrong directed cultural history of love. Michael Wiesmann said last week in his speech, he believes that 75% of the men are really 'mummy´s-boys'. I would correct the number upwards, to 95%. The fact that many women still secretly look for the strong man who redeems them sexually and intellectually means for 95% of the men not to react with retreat and fight any longer but with the insight that he has to leave his state of mummy's-boy because the woman needs a partner not a son. This is a culture-historical duty of a man. And for the women it means to go against their infidelity which consists in having forgotten their power and female knowledge, they make themselves small in front of a man by holding him responsible for their opening.

I want to end with a very simple thought which keeps animating me: We only bother with this so much because we are born into it. But in the future it will look quite different. I imagine that a culture of new love connections will develop. In a culture where love will be accompanied by knowledge from childhood on it would be very normal not to leave your beloved anymore.

I reconnect again to the thought of the beginning that love is in itself eternal. I believe that we can leave love only in a prenatal st ate, which means on the level of projection and human reduction. After this birth love and sexuality are communication of the souls and eternal in their deepest way.

ZEGG