Love's Pivotal Relationships: the Chum, First Love, Outlaw and the Intimate Partner

Tucked within this volume are heartlines, woven equally of two types of tough yet tender threads: tales and thoughts about loving and longing. The weave creates soul stories about pivotal relationships: one's chum, first love, outlaw, and the intimate partner. The blend of stories and ideas communicates what happens "on the ground" and in the time of daily life. What belongs together is bound together: experience-reflection, meaning-action, smiles and tears. These relationships concern us all. Within them, we experience life's most important, validating, and memorable "moments." The chum is one's first best friend. She or he calls me to become-- not just a child, a family member, or a follower of the gang-- but a unique person. We tame one another. Thus our friendship promotes us to become real, and affords us an abiding presence. Now I will never be alone, but always vulnerable to loneliness. Significantly, the chum bond is unencumbered with the issues of sexuality. My first love draws out the burgeoning man or woman in me. Within the orbit of our "harmonious us," we share a plethora of "firsts" and negotiate the full spectrum of absolutes: the One, the Good, the True, the Beautiful, the Magic, and the Tragic. The person of the person and not sex matters most. It is the outlaw who stirs my passion and rouses the broad and raw dimensions of my sexuality. He is the significant stranger who comes from a world different from my normal, habitual context. She introduces new ways of seeing and comprehending the social world." My outlaw challenges my meaning-system of values, morals and customary practices. With vows or promises, I commit to my intimate partner. He is my constant companion; she is the one I want to grow old with. These relationships index our growth beyond pure biological unfolding; they reveal that my most significant development happens because the "Other," by facing and appealing to me for my response, solicits and provokes growth. Fastened thus to life'