Is love possible in the companion world?


by Maxime Durocher, August 10, 2011

Tough question. The problem doesn't lie so much in answering the question, but in the way a Patron will read it and interpret it. So I will kindly ask the ladies to be very careful while reading my answer.

Short answer: Yes, it's possible. (Please read on.)

Long answer: There are many pitfalls to such a thing.

1. Mistaken identity

The simplest one and most common one.

In our world, a lot of people think in black and white... friendship/love, hate/love, work/personal, client/friend... but truly black or white rarely exist in the wild. Everything is more like a shade of gray.

If you take Friendship and Love. They are on the Hate/Worship gradient where at one end you have Hate and the other Worship. As you slide from Hate to Worship you will encounter enmity, animosity, antagonism, distrust, indifference, amicable, friendship, love, blind love, adoration, and finally Worship. Between Friendship and Love, there's a world of different emotions that are more than Friendship and less than Love.

Any two people who know each other (let's call that a relationship, because it is) will fall on that scale somewhere. An in life very few things are static. For the duration of a relationship, we will continually move up or down that gradient as our relationship evolves and as we change ourselves. Some move slowly, some move fast, some jump from one place to an other, some move only in one direction, some are erratic, but mostly the speed of the change also evolves with our relationship and ourselves.

A Companion, depending on how he likes to setup things will try to engage with Patron somewhere on the positive side of the scale. Some, like me, will try to find Patrons with whom they will at least be friends. Of course, since things change overtime, the Companion and his Patron will probably move between amicable and love, which is a comfortable zone to be with for such relationship.

The mistaken identity? It happens when the Patron mistakes friendship or something close to love, but not love, for love. That can happen in 3 ways:

A) A combination of a Companion who is a good actor and a Patron who is clueless. In my view, there's no perfect actor and nobody is completely clueless, but a combination of both might lead to a case of mistaken identity. This situation is the one most feared by the Patron, that they are being tricked and played. There's no way around that, it's part of our world, but a Patron should trust her instinct, it's right more often than you think. Don't stress about it, have fun, if you can't see your Companion is acting, then enjoy! Personally, I don't act (and I chose my Patron so that I don't have to). If I would, I would barely get a passing grade.

B) For a moment, the Companion slid close enough to love as to make no difference and the Patron felt it. Take a deep breath. It might just be temporary. The trick is to see how often that happens in the course of an evening, a day, a weekend. That might clue you in. You don't have to be in the companion world to encounter this... it happens in "real" world too, and that's exactly how love is born. But, to think that because a Companion slides close to love for a moment is in love with you, is a case of mistaken identity.

C) The Patron is beyond love, right into blind love. At that time, she has a filter over her eyes and pushes askew the whole gradient putting her Companion's position right on love when in reality he is lower on the gradient. An other case of mistaken identity.

2. Surprises

What's outside the boundaries setup by the unspoken agreement between Companion and Patron never to cross them can be surprising. There are things he's not saying to you and there are things you're not saying to him. You don't know what's beyond and until you do, you can't call what you are feeling for the other love. Beware crossing those boundaries, and loosing what you have. That is the number one failure point in those relationships.

If you want to cross, do it slowly, and it must be a mutual decision. It should also be natural, because there's no turning back. You'll brake your relationship with your Companion if you're not careful. Do not take that step and expect reciprocity, you will get hurt and break what you have. Be ready to take a careful step back, with a smile and much respect and affection; that way, you might avoid loosing him. If you're already thinking about doing this, you might want to consider it carefully. Make sure that when you take that first step, you'll be able to calmly step back.

3. Unbalanced context

Your relationship with your Companion takes place in a very specific context, for limited time, and for specific reasons. Trying to mesh that in your ordinary life, might unbalance what made your time with your companion special. You should cross the unspoken boundaries before trying to mesh your Companion into your life, and then, take it even more slowly. Most Companion/Patron relationships are like "real world" weekend/summer/vacation flings, they have no future in your ordinary life.

4. Career

Even if you go beyond the boundaries and everything goes fine. Then you mesh your lives together in the "real" world without a hitch. There's a final hurdle... his career choice. Most companion have very good reasons to do what they do and they like it, asking him to abandon that might cause serious resentment in the long run... and if you fall for a Companion that prefers open relationships...

Conclusion

Bottom line (and allow me to be brutal), if you have the money, and you think the two of you have something special, why complicate things if you have a good relationship?

That's my opinion.
What do you think?