We Don’t Lose Anyone Because No One Owns Anyone

Having has become an obsession that stems from capitalism. This is due to the fact that we have configured an imaginary according to which the essence of what we are depends on what we have.

We speak of “having” health, not of being in good health. We speak of “having” a spouse, not of being in a relationship with someone. We speak of “having” a job, not of being a worker. However, no one owns anything and no one.

“To have” took over “to be”, so that often we fall into the logic of trying to define ourselves through what we will acquire.

We even have identity difficulties when we lose what we’ve had for a while.

In terms of material goods, we can say that almost everything we own is temporary.

That is, we have the fruit and usufruct of it only for a while because it ends, gets damaged or deteriorates and we have to get rid of this object.

In other words, we do not have complete possession of the objects around us. There are people who ignore this truth and claim to own other people as well.

This presents itself with special intensity in couple relationships which in most cases turn out to be a relationship of reciprocal exclusivity.

Nobody owns nobody

According to several researches, monogamy is not one of the hallmarks of the nature of the human race.

Evolution shows that at the beginning of history, polygamy prevailed and that the exclusive relationship between two people was the result of a long and complex cultural process.

The human being realized that polygamy could be quite problematic for such a complex society as the one he has built throughout history.

However, for much of humanity, the rule of one and only spouse from the beginning to the end of one’s life is something rare. In the West today, this is almost absurd.

Although in principle we all know that things work this way, in almost every relationship we want to go beyond reason.

It would seem that there is an ideal that should not be given up: to meet someone who is “ours” forever. 

A lot of the words and promises made in a relationship point in this direction. “I will be yours forever”, “Our history is eternal” etc.

Sometimes the relationship simply evolves and the couple learns to establish a balance between individual spaces and shared spaces. Other times, we do not give up the ideal of “having” the other or believing that we have it.

Since the couple relationship involves an exclusive pact between the two parties, some act in this direction and expect or require the other to behave as if they possessed each other.

That is, the person believes they have their spouse. We lose the border that separates the mutual correspondence of feelings and the instrumentalization of the other person.

We don’t lose what we never had

Establishing a romantic relationship with another person does not mean that one possesses the other.

Thus, it cannot be said that one person “loses” another when the relationship ends. Literally, what we experience as being a love “loss” is rather an evolution within a process.

Feelings are not fixed things in human beings. On the contrary, whether it is our emotions, our feelings, our needs, our expectations and everything that forms our inner world, everything is in constant motion.

We have a temper and character that is more or less insistent, but our perception of the objects of affection and desire is relatively unstable.

Even in the most lasting and intense loves, it happens. We don’t love the same person, in the same way at all times of our life.

Sometimes we love more, sometimes less. Sometimes we don’t love and suddenly love appears for the same person.

We cannot even say that we own ourselves completely. So how can we think that we own another person?

If we do this it is because we are caught in the fantasy of our own ego and it prevents us from differentiating what is proper to us from what is foreign to us. We end up believing that they are the same things.

This is why in the face of a breakup, we feel that we have “lost” something, as if we no longer had something that belonged to us before.

We forget that what has changed are feelings and motivations, which used to generate intimacy and which now demand distance.

The only void that a human being leaves in the life of another is the illusion that he will be there forever.

What one really loses is maintaining that illusion, but not the other person, because no one owns anyone.

Hence the fact that, faced with these situations of rupture, instead of living as a being who has lost a part of himself, we should think of the moment as a process of inner healing.