Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Ménage À Trois:

A Declaration

Black Stallion, Napa Valley, California, USA

January 8, 2010



This essay, Ménage À Trois: A Declaration, is the companion piece to It's All Over For Laurence Platt.

It is also the prequel to Three Part Harmony.




I declare:

If you want to be in a relationship with me, and if I'm available to be in a relationship with you, you should be aware at the outset you're going to be in a threesome.

I've recontextualized all my relationships, past, present, and future, inside of my relationship with Life itself.

In the past, I've mismanaged my relationship with Life itself - that is to say, I've dithered in prioritizing  my relationship with Life itself. While I've always had my intention  on it, I haven't always had my attention  on it. My relationship with Life itself first showed up as the context for all my relationships. Then when my relationships got significant  (you could say when they became "hot and heavy"), I somehow lost the context. At that point, my relationship with Life itself became just another one of my relationships, rather than the context for all  my relationships.

Incorrectly prioritized that way, or should I say inauthentically  prioritized that way, they caused more trouble than they were worth. If I'm generous and I don't refer to them as "trouble", I'd say they were expensive learning experiences.

Then I recovered my relationship with Life itself as context, as source. Or rather, I renewed my stand for it. I stopped being flaky  about it. "I stopped being flaky about it" isn't exactly the most dignified expression of what shifted for me. But it actually says it best. And in this renewed context, in this renewed relationship with source, I have the space to be in carefully managed relationships again. Even the significant  ones ie even the "hot and heavy"  ones are carefully managed.

By managed  relationships, I don't mean manipulated  relationships. By managed relationships, I mean relationships in which I've taken responsibility for being related  in such a way that they don't supersede my relationship with Life itself. My primary relationship is forever with Life itself. As soon as other relationships supersede my relationship with Life itself, they steadily degrade  once my source is overshadowed  by them ie when I allow  my source to be overshadowed by them. That's when new relationships suffer. That's when they're adversely affected. They degrade simply because they overshadow the very quality which made them attractive in the first place.

I take responsibility for this. And I take responsibility for declaring it in a way that's authentic.

It's not easy to tell the truth about this without sounding arrogant. My best expression of it - so far - is "If you want to be in a relationship with me, and if I'm available to be in a relationship with you, you should know at the outset you're going to be in a threesome. And inside of this threesome, you're not going to occupy either position #1 or position #2.". That may sound arrogant, to be sure. It's also the god-damned  truth for me.

Only those who get it and are OK with it will ever make it with me.



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