This is part one of my three-part series on love and relationships available on my publication Art of Love. In Kiss on the Beloved’s Wrist, which is based on one of my published poems, we explore the need of trust, surrender, and holding a safe, loving space for our partner.
Kiss on the wrist
There is a certain level of vulnerability in this sensitive gesture that portrays the deep trust and intimacy between two lovers. And it, like love, is about holding a safe loving space.
A kiss on the wrist is a deeply meaningful and beautiful, intimate act. It assumes a shared trust and surrender. It is trusting, that they will not misuse the power they hold over us when we’ve opened to them in our entirety when love has kneeled us before them. It is trusting that even in our most vulnerable and fragile moments when they have us by the wrist so to speak, they will not harm us nor take advantage of us. A trust that in our weakest moments of life, they will hold us, raise us, and lift us.
A kiss on the wrist is an offering of ourselves, and an honoring for them. Of course, it’s deeply sensual and sexual as well, as sex becomes making love a celebration of our deep love and true intimacy shared.
When we kiss someone’s wrist, our lips touch the thinnest of their skin, and we can hear their heartbeat. Even in the darkest rooms when it seems like we can’t see anything at all clearly anymore. Through all misunderstandings and struggles, in this tenderness of skin, on the inside of our forearm, is where our hearts meet, and can trace ourselves back to the time when we fell in trust, and in love. We can remain tender with our partner and remember that despite it all, there is a love, a gentleness bared of ourselves that we can touch and reconnect to.
An important aspect of love is that we need to share our life with a partner who can hold a safe space for us so that we can be our true selves freely. This also increases emotional intimacy, as well as sexual arousal. A woman can come into her full sexuality when she feels she has the space to do so. In that space also, we need a partner who will hold a positive vision for us in the times when we’ve lost sight. This is really important because in these moments we are at our most vulnerable and fragile. There will always be challenges and hardships, whether faced by both of us, or each of us individually, and we need someone who will have the loving eyes to see what is missing, and yet never give up showing what is still there, what could be there, and what is still beautiful. This gives us hope, trust, and faith. It heals us. It shows us the way, the light. This is how both partners support each other truly on their soul’s paths in life also. And there is peace felt when we are in our beloved’s presence, and there is harmony, and there is understanding. This is what true love is.
Physical with the emotional
Like we explored in Sacred Relationships and How to Build Them, physical attraction is important, of course, and undoubtedly, but it must also be supported by an emotional connection, a sense of being in our authenticity, and having shared values and vision. You can ask yourself:
Am I a better person with my partner; and am I a better person being in this relationship?
Do I like who I am with them and who I am becoming?
Do I feel emotionally connected and supported?
Do I feel seen? Do I feel safe?
Do they help me be more trusting and devoted, and to have more trust and confidence in myself?
Do I feel a sense of peace in their presence?
Do I feel more motivated to be, and to become my best self and to express my best self?
The inside of the forearm always remains tender despite age and circumstance. Life changes us, our bodies begin wearing burdens whether seen or unseen and sometimes we harden up. Sometimes, we lose vision of what matters, and of the gentle things needed to sustain our intimacy and our love. Sometimes, we get tangled up in old things, messy things, many things.
Surrender and trust
In moments of weakness, doubt, fragility, and loss of sight, we need someone into whose arms we can fall safely, knowing they will not harm us nor disempower us, knowing they will hold us, raise us, lift us. The beloved’s wrist is a space on the inside of the forearm, where we can remember tenderness, trust, and love; we can remember them forever that we hold in our hearts despite changes, despite age, despite hardships; and we can remember that these gentle fragile parts are parts of our whole body. And part of love itself. Part of the world, and the temple, that the two of us in love share, and have built together by the bridge of trust and faith. And in the times when we need to rebuild, using little pieces and even debris, we will do it, with tenderness, compassion, and empathy.
We’ll dance ourselves back, we’ll dance our parts and skins back together in gentle moonlight. We’ll sing the old clothes off our bodies and then lay in bed, hand in hand, skin against skin, holding on holding strong, until the morning, when we’ll wake up tangled, but tangled in a new way now, in a good and lasting way.
Find a lover to whom you can surrender your wrist. Someone you can trust with your life.
Love is a knowing, and of being known, a seeing, and of being seen, not by the flesh, but through the flesh. Because soul-sized is the land of our heart.
So when you find that right partner for you, and when he asks to know you, open for him like a flower, and tell him. Tell him your all. Tell him not because, but because his soul asked you to.
And then fall into his arms, and love him.
Love him and be loved, not partly, only wholebodily and wholeheartedly.
Love him not because, but because your soul asked you to.