Hi Friends,
Today I’m announcing the release of You Love The Hardest - a sweet love song with a dark tinge*
(*All will be revealed later as I tell the story of this album).
What I will reveal here is that I wrote You Love The Hardest while my partner Kati was simultaneously in a romantic relationship with me and another man. Read on to learn more.
A few weeks ago I told the story of Forever - a song I wrote half in Boulder and half in Bali.
The next three songs are prequels to Forever. They tell the story of the 12 months leading up to my decision to go on solo retreat to the other side of the world.
The first of these three prequels is You Love The Hardest. It’s a love song about the transformation I experienced (and continue to experience) under the (sometimes blinding) light of Kati’s love.
Here’s the story:
We met him at a party in 2015 and instantly became friends. Kati and him connected over art and became closer that spring. He was smart, funny, respectful and I liked that Kati had found a new friend.
We had been practicing ethical non-monogamy for a few years at that point, so while I didn’t expect it, I was open to their friendship developing into something more.
That winter I went away on a ski trip and got a text from Kati that her and her friend had gone to a party together and ended up hooking up.
As I usually felt when I (infrequently) got this type of text message, I experienced a mix of emotions: happiness and excitement for her (called compersion in the poly community) mixed with the usual worry, jealousy and insecurity.
I texted her back and thanked her for letting me know.
Little did I know that this was the start of a massive unfolding that would lead to profound internal transformation for us both...
Over the next few months, Kati and our friend “fell in love”.
(Note: I say “fell in love” knowing full well that this phrase needs serious unpacking in our culture.
The best book I’ve read on this is Getting The Love You Want - spoiler: “falling in love” is largely a chemical/hormonal process that generally lasts 6-18 months, and is followed by other stages of romance and partnership)
Anyway, this was intense for me and my heart. It wasn’t the first time Kati had connected with another man (there was another similar situation a few years earlier with a man who lived in a different city - but that only lasted a few months).
But this time was harder because the other guy was local, and the energy seemed more fiery and intense.
And this time we had done our homework: reading The Ethical Slut, Opening Up, and the absolutely beautiful (and highly recommended) More Than Two.
This time we had a model for what to do and how to make it work.
As a result I felt simultaneously happy for Kati (who seemed to be absolutely lit up by the abundance of love and male attention in her life) and threatened by her new connection.
I shared my insecurity with Kati and she did an amazing job of holding my feelings and reassuring me that she wasn’t going to leave me for this new guy, and that she wanted to stay married to me.
I remember those reassurances (which I asked for many times) being super important to me at the time. Over many months they were my lifeboat on my personal sea of insecurity and worry.
So with my reassurances in hand I did my best to embrace the situation. Ethical non-monogamy is something that made sense to me as a boy and still makes sense to me today. And this seemed to be my opportunity to experience what it was like to be in love with somebody, who is also in a relationship with somebody else.
I embraced my happiness for Kati and I also embraced the feelings that didn’t feel good: insecurity, jealousy, worry.
And I embraced the uncertainty of it all. After all, we didn’t know what was going to happen. Would Kati’s new feelings last for a few months or for the rest of our lives?
I looked at it like this: My beloved seemed happy and I had two options, I could get jealous and prioritize my insecurity over her happiness, or I could celebrate her happiness and process my insecurity.
I decided to prioritize her happiness and sit with my insecurity in the hopes that it would be a fruitful experience.
I remember needing to constantly remind myself that I could muster enough self-love and self reassurance to do this. That Kati seemingly falling in love with someone else didn’t mean anything about me. That she wasn’t going to leave me, that she still loved me, and that I still loved me.
It was exciting and unsettling. There was a feeling that we were playing with fire and I wanted to see if we were skilled enough to avoid getting burned.
When Kati and her friend would go on dates, go away for the weekend together, or chat over FaceTime, I felt a lot of feelings.
The main feeling I remember was a pain in my heart. Was it heartbreak? I’m not sure.
It actually felt like my heart was growing.
It was a bizarre sensation. It was as if my heart needed to be bigger for me to handle this situation, bigger than the space it already occupied in my chest.
I’d describe the sensation as a feeling of “opening”, “expanding”, “ripping”, “bulging” or “unfurling”. Like what the chrysalis must feel when something new starts to emerge.
It definitely didn’t feel good (more like there was a sword through my heart from the back), but it also wasn’t all bad. It felt like something was recombobulating or reformulating in a bigger stronger configuration.
Was it armoring? Was it opening? It felt more like the latter.
I’ll never forget that feeling. It was unexpected and profound. Stretched over a number of months, it was one of the most intense experiences of my life so far.
At some point I realized that my heart had to get bigger in order for me to handle the situation I was in. I needed more self love than I had at the time.
I had to love myself so hard through this process. I was forced to deal with the parts of my identity that relied on my relationship with Kati to feel good about myself. I was forced to deal with what felt like abandonment fears from early childhood.
It wasn’t easy but ultimately over a handful of months, out of sheer necessity, I found a new bedrock of self-love that I had never before been in contact with.
This experience forced me to forge a deeper relationship with myself. I had my own back in a new and deeper way.
I ultimately found that facing my fears and deepening into a new level of self love was the gift of this experience.
Maybe that’s why my heart felt like it was growing.
So back to this song:
That spring Kati and I attended a camp-out in the mountains with some friends. We had a beautiful night together. I felt deeply connected with her. We laughed and danced and stayed up all night. We made love sweetly in our tent as the sun rose, staring into each other eyes.
That night I felt Kati’s love fully focussed on me: supporting me, lifting me up, celebrating me.
From my perspective, she was in love with someone else, and she was clearly in love with me. That night, I felt her love calling me into a deeper level of love with myself, calling on me to grow so that we could grow.
A few hours later I climbed out of the tent in the early morning light. I clambered up on a rock overlooking the valley and wrote “You Love The Hardest”. It’s an ode to the power of love to transform us in unexpected ways.
I hope you like it.
P.S. In case you are wondering what happened next, it’s a long story that I’ll tell as I release the tracks from this album. Next one coming in a couple weeks.
