A Letter To A Lover (On Romance & Commitment)

I was basically just gonna say I realise you can be in a relationship and just secretly still be attracted to and interested in other people, but by doing it secretly, I feel like it just makes it worse if it turns out your feelings for another person are actually serious. Like, if it were just understood by the people in the relationship that it’s normal to still be attracted to and interested in other people, you could just be more honest and feel less guilt and hopefully there would be less animosity. So for example, if I were with a girl for a while and she mentioned one day that she’s been hanging out with a guy and she thinks she might have feelings for him (and he might have feelings for her), I’d naturally be a bit jealous and sad, but then I would ask, “Does this mean you don’t feel anything for me anymore?” And if she said yes, she’s lost her feelings for me -- sad day, and the relationship is over. But the honesty also leaves open the possibility that she says, “No, I just wanted to be honest.” And she might ask me if I want her to stop hanging around with him because of her feelings, but if I were being personally consistent with my beliefs, I’d hope I would say, no, she should be allowed to hang out with him and explore her feelings and I’m glad she was honest, and hopefully we could still be as together as we were before, while she navigates that area of her feelings. Then maybe it turns out she’s more into him after all and decides she wants something more serious with him, and we part ways sadly on my part but amicably. Or maybe she decides she still loves me and those feelings with that guy were just distraction. Like in my head this is the image of a healthy way young people should be in relationships, open to the possibility of others. But I sometimes feel like society at large views relationships as pre-marriages where to consider anything outside of it is breaking a sacrosanct vow you made. It’s a problem, because I want relationships and closeness and things that quantifiably make my life happier -- but I also know, being this young, I can’t comfortably view relationships as pre-marriages. To get into one with an implicit vow that I’m not going to think about anyone else would be a burden, unless I was so passionately in love that I was blinded to the existence of potential others. Which I guess is the romantic notion we’re fed on TV and in films and in literature, so we expect it to be that way. But I know it doesn’t have to be that way, because it wasn’t that way in the beginning with us, but I still ended up loving you in a deep and serious way. I just think you should be able to work at a relationship and not have to be blindly committed. Obviously commitment to just the one person should come in at some point, though, right, regardless of other people you might be interested in -- you need to make a leap of romantic faith at some point -- and the question becomes: when is that point? And I’m too young to know when that point is, but I imagine it’s when you’ve spent enough time together that you decide you want to start properly intertwining your lives (your bank accounts, your household); when the intertwining of your lives would make considering other people too destructive to a good thing, that’s when you should commit for good. Incidentally, that’s what I think the value of marriage is. It symbolises that, I reckon. Also, the older I get, the more willing I’d be to intertwine my life with somebody else like that, because I think when you’re older you generally become less interested in potential opportunities, and more interested in building on what you have -- not least because you’re aware of the time that is running out. Anyway, that’s my view on what I would conceive of a healthy young relationship dynamic to be, and how I think it differs from what society at large expects of me. Unfortunately I can quite easily predict the problem I’m going to have. Either I meet someone and they agree with what I’ve said, and we have that kind of honest relationship regarding potential others, or I meet somebody I am so mad for that it makes me blind to all others (like in the movies), or (the most likely one) I probably just won’t seriously get with anyone until I’m older and am less concerned with potential others and I commit more readily. The last one is a bit sad because it means I probably won’t have something that would make me quantitatively happier for about a decade longer lol. The middle option isn’t really likely because I feel like I’ve grown more restricted with my ability for wild love since being really hurt w/ A**** -- it’s not anybody’s fault; it’s just a defence mechanism that I find it hard to shake off. The first option would be great, but outside of you, I rarely find people so reasonable to accept such things as I’ve described here. They usually submit to their sentiments in matters like these, and refuse such descriptions, even if it were better for all parties involved. And to be honest, it’s fine; at the end of the day, we’re all slaves to our passions lol. But, it just makes the first option less likely.  I basically need a loving relationship to be a much happier man, but my mind is too young and reasonable lol. Well, I guess all I can say is, one day it will be old. Until then: hello, misery.