Actively seeking out your partner can be vulnerable.

It’s edgy to say, “Hey, world! I’m looking for my life teammate. For the person to live alongside and do life with; to cuddle with and share deep, dark secrets with; to work through hard things and celebrate good things with; and to have fantastic sex with.”

It’s strange, in a way. One way I make it less strange for myself is feeling into the kinds of adventures I want to go on with my man. It makes the whole thing feel appealing and exciting, enticing and loving (a great vibe for attracting a partner).

So without further ado, here are six adventures I’d love to take with my man:

1. Alaska

Alaska is untamed. No, I mean really untamed. There are all kinds of feral creatures there, including the human beings. There are wild animals, wild plants, wild mountains, wild caves, wild coves, wild icebergs, wild horses.

I want to go to Alaska with you. I want to marvel at the Northern lights with you. I want to have sex with you with a glacier next door, where we can be as loud as we want and only the bears and muskrats will be able to hear us.

I want to go on an epic road trip around Alaska, to sing at the top of our lungs in the Explorer we get to take us exploring. I want to mix it up between the highways and byways, and read to you in the car as you drive us around one of the most spectacular places in the world, let alone the country. 

2. Cohabitating and repair

I have yet to successfully live with a partner. In fact, I’ve never actually officially lived with a partner, though several times I’ve been in transition and thus stayed with a boyfriend for weeks at a time, at his place. This hasn’t worked out well for me. I’ve often felt off-balance, since it’s not officially my space. I haven’t really felt like I could relax or settle in.

I’ve also got it on good authority that if you’re going to move in with a significant other, the best thing to do is for both of you to move into an entirely new place that you settle into together.

I see cohabitation as a kind of adventure all unto itself, in no small part due to one of my greatest fears and greatest hopes when it comes to relationship: repair. I say “repair” instead of “conflict resolution” because I find it more inviting and also more descriptive—that damage was done (whether intentionally or unintentionally) and we are working together to repair it and come back into harmony.

Cohabitating inevitably brings sh*t up. You’re going to see me at my best and at my worst. You’re going to see me when I’m sleep-deprived and everything annoys me. You’re going to see me completely melt over adorable videos my friends send me, and you’re going to see my focused determination when I’m working.

I’m going to see you when you’re stressed and anxious, and I don’t know what that looks like for you. Some men retreat and withdraw. Some snap about little things and seek to wound. Some sulk or get depressed.

If we’re going to do healthy partnership, then we’re going to have to negotiate how we do repair, and what happens when one of us gets annoyed by or hurt by the other? Are we able to handle it skillfully in the moment? Probably not at first.

At first we’ll probably f*ck it up, then talk about it. We’ll build up our own internal methods of consoling and soothing ourselves, as well as learning each other, so we can soothe one another. I’m committed to us getting there in partnership, since I believe this is one of the most sacred parts of it: repair.

3. Sex

The grand adventure. The meaningful place filled with pleasure, loss, belonging, trust, uncertainty, vulnerability, and rage. So much hurt and possibility concentrated in one little act. The act that creates life. The act that defines it.

I want to do regular sex things with you, like spooning that turns into sex and cuddling up while watching a movie that leads to sex and us changing into our swimsuits to go to the beach that turns into sex.

And I want to do tantric things with you. The things I haven’t done with anyone yet, because we never got that close or he wasn’t interested in expanding into levels of energetic orgasm that are like layers on a cake, colors in a deep orgasmic rainbow.

I want to know what you like and learn your body and your rhythms. I want to be held by you as you learn mine. I want to skirt the edges of abandon with you, scale the walls of desire, and come crashing right back down again into your arms. I want to give myself over to you as the dove gives herself to the wind. I want us to come together and come apart all at the same time.

4. Couples retreats

I love that you are just as into personal growth as me. I love that you’re just as committed to being on the path and would be on it regardless of whether I was in the picture.

And I love that I am in the picture and that you want me there. I love that you want to do this thing full-out. That you’re committed—fully committed—to showing up fully for our partnership. For our bond. Even when it’s hard and that real deep dark attachment stuff is coming up; I love that you’re really there.

I don’t know quite what to expect. I don’t know if we’ll go to Essalen or John Wineland workshops or adrienne marie brown or David Deida ones, or all of the above. I do know that it’ll be an adventure. That doing the work in community is just as important and righteous and challenging as doing it just the two of us in our shared space.

5. Holidays

There’s something special about seeing a partner hanging out with your family. I don’t know what it is, but the sense of connection and belonging and warmth is irreplaceable, and I’ve found, rare.

I look forward to adventures with my family and my man, and with his family. I want to get to know the different personalities in his clan, and what each of the interconnections are. I want to see the micro-moments and have him there to hold me after tough-but-necessary conversations with mine.

I’m also excited to play board games and go sledding and bundle up for a snowshoe hike, or dress down for an informal dinner next to the fire.

6. Summer camp trauma healing

This is the biggest and edgiest one. This is the adventure I’m not sure someone would join me on—the ride I keep coming back to in my fantasies, where there are horses and cabins and dorms for troubled teens that are coming back to life and back to themselves.

I dream of converting a summer camp into a holistic trauma recovery center, where staff live on site and cabins are converted into homes. Where we grow food and catch water and provide somatic therapy and high-quality MDMA psychotherapy, and apply cutting-edge practices to help traumatized young people learn to soothe themselves and process their past in a loving and healthy environment. A place where if those teens then want to apprentice to become a trauma therapist or addiction counselor, they can. Once healed they are, after all, the best guides for those who come next.

I picture weekly breathwork sessions anyone on site can join, and campfire sing-alongs, and monthly or quarterly talent shows. I see a place with Hula-Hoops for playing and rage walls for facing your darkness, where you can safely throw dishes and cry and scream and mourn for the childhood moments stolen. Stolen when your uncle came into your room at night, or your mother withdrew into a shell of nothingness, or your father beat your mother while you tried to stop him at 10.

I see healing paths around the property and a pretty lake with stand-up paddleboards and a big dining hall with lively discussions and an ease of being, knowing that everyone on site is taken care of—staff and participants alike.

I want to create this or join it with my man, and know that we are building something magnificent together, something full of greenery and life.

I want to wear a bandana in my hair and have him tell me I looked adorable while I was helping with the “barn-raising” of one of the new micro-homes, and I want to tell him I swooned at the way he held space for the teenager who has obviously bonded with him since day one.

I want to help bring more wholeness into the world, alongside my man.

~

I wonder sometimes if, as a writer, my man will come to me through my art. My creativity. My little voice thrown out there into the void.

In case you are out there and these adventures align with you, come and get me!

I’m excited (and nervous) to meet you.

~