Hotel Bliss Guest Blog

Lover and Beloved

Hello everyone, sorry for the long silence. I have been incredibly busy. <3 Evokateur

Lover and Beloved 

Do movies inform our opinions on how life should be, or do they reflect what we think life should be like? Maybe it’s both.

I ask, because I have been thinking about romantic movies lately. Can you remember the last one you saw? Boy wants girl, boy chases girl, boy messes up but eventually repairs things. Boy chases girl. And for many women, this is how it should be. This reflects how we are raised and what we expect out of romance. A man is supposed to ask a woman out.

Now think about the last movie you saw where a woman has an obvious interest in a man. She will do one of three things. The more common one is that she is a part of the movie from the previous paragraph and will blush and stammer demurely and wait for her Prince Charming to make a move. Then there’s the smoldering temptress who is almost alarmingly forthright and is trying to take the guy’s pants off as soon as look at him. But face it, how many women are actually like that and not the byproduct of fantasy?

Then the most insulting option of all, the girl who tries too hard. She’s the girl who offers to help him whenever he needs it and throws herself out there to show him she’s into him. This is almost always portrayed as negative, clingy, needy, and desperate. This just reinforces the idea that the girl who gets the guy is the one who sits around and waits for him.

Now, as a bi-girl I want you to think about the implications of this for your love life with other women. You are both raised with the expectation that you will be pursued.

This brings me to the important, rather poetic duality of relationships: the lover and the beloved.

Usually women expect to be the beloved. The beloved is the object of adoration, the person being chased, the subject of poetry and love letters. Some of the most beautiful art has been created for and about the beloved. The lover is the troubadour, the seeker of love, the creator of beautiful things, admirer of the beloved. They are the one that chase. I doubt you could be a poet without having some of the lover in you. As an aside, my sociology of love professor mentioned that loving someone was far more important an experience than being loved.

Now, while you can be both lover and beloved in one relationship, it is rather unlikely for two people expecting to be the beloved to start a relationship. You both are expecting the other to make the first move. The lovely woman you’re admiring from afar may be doing the same thing to you, waiting for you while you’re waiting for her.

Don’t you hate feeling so passive? In the past, I have felt almost like men are cheated because the female body has so many wonderful things to adore about it. Most men will not let you explore and enjoy the majority of their body. So, women become the receivers, the beloved, in sex as well as in relationships in general. When two women get together they have to overcome this expectation and routine that their partner will do most of the work.

And yet I say a resounding no to this vision of the way it is supposed to be. I am not just going to sit there and wait. There is nothing wrong with being pursued and being loved. But loving and pursuing the object of your desire in an active, not passive, way… It has its place and its moments in your life.

Wanting and pursuing someone does not make you desperate. It does not make you sad. You are richly sensual with powerful desires. You are an Amazon, hunting out your quarry. You are a troubadour, for some of the troubadours were women disguised as men, searching always for your lady love.

Sometimes it’s not enough to be beautiful and be loved; sometimes you have to worship the beauty in others.

So… go be a tiger and chase down that lovely deer.