Impetus
a relational concept
Like many autistic people, I’ve historically felt hyperaware of the power dynamics in any given relationship or encounter. Recently I've begun to recognise the significance of impetus as well.
Impetus is pulse or prana, the breath that gives any relational encounter momentum. Impetus sets a tone and a pace, and helps to form the parameters that contain an interaction. Impetus is the energy which poses or frames the questions that an encounter might attempt to answer. Impetus enlivens the shared inhabitation of space into a cocreative act.
Offering impetus means bringing this kinetic energy into relation — asking questions, suggesting ideas, making decisions, proposing actions, making requests. Receiving impetus is to respond to these propositions, or at an extreme to abdicate responsiveness and offer pure acceptance of outcome.
Impetus is needed in order to create relational time. What food are we eating tonight? Where are we going after this? Who reaches out after harm is sustained? Who offers the first hug in the morning? Who suggests the next call? What kink are we exploring today? It might not just be about asking questions though: taking a high impetus role can be about consensually guiding the relationship through the answering of these questions too.
In any encounter impetus can be shared evenly or there can be a division, up to the point where one person is offering nearly all of the impetus and the other is receiving or witnessing. Some people have a tendency towards high impetus relating, and others a tendency towards low impetus.
An encounter without impetus can be delicious, a soft space where things meander along without drive — an encounter without intent beyond shared presence, from which purpose may or may not emerge. A whole plateful of impetus can be an equally tasty meal: a purposeful and directed encounter, where a mutually desirable outcome is pursued.
Impetus is ephemeral and fluid, and can therefore be explicitly negotiated. The landscape of impetus in one encounter need not dictate the impetus of the next. My capacity and desire to be high or low impetus varies over time. I value a flexibility of impetus within a relationship. I like to share, give, and receive impetus at varying moments, in varying situations.
It is sometimes impossible for me to make decisions. When my blood sugar begins to drop, my capacity to make choices about food diminishes significantly, and someone else caringly offering impetus to resolve that situation becomes an act of deep love. Sometimes I just want to lie back and let the other take the lead. Fuck me how you like.
At other times, especially when I'm well resourced, I can relish making decisions and offering impetus. Let's go on an adventure! I'll pick a place for us to explore each other in.
Impetus is adjacent to power. A low-impetus partner does not necessarily have less power than a high-impetus partner though. Receiving impetus can be a position of relaxed power, whilst a high-impetus position can be one of service. Maintaining a high-impetus role can be a position of power too though, especially if sustained over time. Each member of a relationship should have agency in shaping its form with impetus.
Impetus is also adjacent to concepts of passive and active. A high-impetus role does not always mean activity though, just as a low-impetus role does not always mean inaction. Someone may be physically passive while still generating the relational drive that frames the encounter. A “pillow princess,” for example, may lie back and receive, but the overarching impetus of the moment — the desire to be pampered, adored, pleasured — is theirs. The partner who serves the princess may then take impetus at the micro-scale: choosing which gestures, touches, or acts of devotion to perform within the dynamic that has already been set in motion.
Evidently impetus operates at multiple scales: the macro scale of the relationship as a whole; the meso scale of any given encounter within the relationship; and the micro scale of the interactions that take place nested within the relationship's unfolding encounters.
Any single encounter has the potential to contain layers of impetus whereby people occupy different impetus-roles simultaneously, and positions of high and low impetus can shift back and forth rapidly, either following a natural and improvised flow or a more negotiated and scripted role-play.
I value the improvised flow as well as the negotiated exchange of impetus within a relationship very highly. I do not want to be locked in a state of high or low impetus: this is unsustainable and unpleasurable for me at both extremes. I like to request that you take all the impetus in some encounters. I would like you to offer impetus to me too on occasion. Like power, it's a component of relationships that benefits when the light of awareness is shone upon it.
I'm interested in how impetus is exchanged and sustained in the formation and maintenance of relationship, and how it influences the form that each relation takes. Looking back at my most intimate relations, in each case there was a delicate and implicit exchange of impetus at the early stages. An offer to go on a date. A postcard offered generally, and accepted specifically. A desire to meet, expressed, and then enacted. A first touch offered, and accepted. One kiss requested, leading to many. In each case, a response received or offered that nurtured a newly shared impetus, amplified it, and offered momentum to the shared exploration of relational depths. In some moments I offered more impetus: in others, my dyadic counterpart did. For these intimate relations, the balance of impetus was evidently amenable to both that the relationships deepened over time.
There is no correct way to stoke or sustain impetus in a relationship, or any reason to necessitate this prolonged deepening. Together we find an appropriate rhythm, pace, and intensity. How does our impetus move back and forth? What depths do we reach? There's no rush. There's no need to delay either, to play things cool, if the energy is there.
I LOVE YOU offers impetus for you to catch hold of, should you wish. It is that 'would you like to go on a date with me?' question answered in advance: YES. Would you like to encounter? YES. Would you like to confess truths and be real together? YES. Would you like to explore intimacy? YES.
From these YESes, the implicit exchange of impetus can become more explicit and bespoke to our relationship. It's through this continuous exchange of impetus that relationship is enlivened and deepened, and through which its form takes shape.
I love you,
Laurie