triangles

Three is such a powerful number magically. The most powerful number, except for maybe nine. which is three times three. Any witch I respect believes in the return of three, the knowledge that what you send out will return to you three times. Everything we do affects us three ways` -physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In Reclaiming Feri, we work on aligning our three souls; our fetch/vital body (or younger self), our human soul (or talking self), and our god self/soul. The tripod, the pyramid, are supposed to be forms involving three points that are strongly stabilizing, that have power. Witches worship a triple goddess, seeing the goddess as having three faces; maiden, mother, and crone. The power of three resonates throughout the Craft.

Why then, are they so problematic in relationships? Today this was on my mind, in my thoughts, percolating as I ruminated about several friends. One of my oldest friends has struggled with triangles all her life, growing up with a father who was constantly having affairs, and then being drawn to them herself. I saw her blow up her life over an ill-advised affair, a shattering that took over a decade to recover from. Now that she’s free of the compulsion to triangulate, she’s watching another family member play this drama out. She’s worried. Another friend, with a similar history, recently has fallen in love with a married man, a man I know and love. Their connection is intense, but potentially disastrous. Another close friend is actively engaged in forgiving the two points of a triangle that devastated her.

Nine years ago I watched a couple I was close to flail when one of them fell in love with someone else. The affair was curtailed, he loved his wife, too, but it’s been a ghost in their relationship ever since. Recently, she told him he could pursue it, he could act on it. It’s too late, our other friend has moved on, but there still between them a deep and mysterious bond. Thinking about this story, I wondered if it would have been better if the triangle had been physically played out, because this triangle has seemed to have the most incredible staying power of those I have known. Or maybe playing it out would have disastrous for all.

Swimming at the gym, gliding thru the water, it occurred to me that with these triangles all around me, it was time to look at the role of triangles in my own life, that triangles are obviously a shape I need to attend to, to look at. Images, memories, and thoughts washed over me with each stroke forward.

I have thought of myself as someone not drawn to triangles. I’ve never been excited by an illicit affair with someone in a committed relationship. I’ve slept with one married man, and his wife knew and gave her consent. I carried on no real affairs or intrigues during my twenty year marriage (although the magical act of sex with an old boyfriend gave me my child). Threes in relationship are associated primarily with the stability of my sisterhood. I have two sisters, and our relationship got me through our childhood. Having someone pick me over someone else is not sexy to me, doesn’t excite me or turn me on in anyway. It’s too reminiscent of childhood, of the way my mother would pick one of us to be special, trying to make the other two feel like shit. We caught on early, and none of us aim to be the special one. None of us have a pattern of triangulating.

Or do we? Or more accurately, do I? As I swam, I had to smile at my illusions. While not ever drawn to the erotic thrill of the triangle, I’ve certainly taken my place on the points. I do triangulate, but I just pick the points that don’t lead to orgasm. For over a year I felt the presence of someone else in my marriage, and was repeatedly told I was crazy. In my last relationship, both of our ex’s were factors in creating energetic triangles. This past year, in the breakup that never seems to end, I’ve apparently been a lively ghost in my ex’s new relationship, and it seems impossible for us to be relationship that doesn’t instantly morph into a triangle. Can there be a short end of the stick in a triangle? If so, that’s the point I tend to find myself on.

Moving from the pool and into the sauna, I thought of the time period in the seventies when I had two lovers, my time of non-monogamy, a time when I actually did three-somes. This was less painful; everything was out in the open, and it being my early twenties, a time of experimentation. Nobody got dreadfully hurt, but it certainly was not something I was able to sustain.

By the time I got to the shower, I began to think that this human tendency to triangulate is one of the great mysteries. Triangulating is somehow connected to the magical qualities of three, it throws us into the intense ability of humans to experience paradox. By triangulating we hit up against both the expansiveness of love and its mirror of contraction. Almost all of the people I love and respect have at one time or another found themselves a part in this configuration. Every point has a lesson in it, a teaching about what it means to be human, of how love can be both weapon and healer.

I’m thinking I’ve learned about everything I need to have from the point I’m most familiar with. I’m hoping that my empathic imagination will serve to understanding the other points, and that moving forward doesn't mean I'll end up falling in love with someone else's partner. And I’m wondering what will be flow thru me on my next visit to the pool. Water really does help me breathe.