Twitterpated
I've lately been taking notes and making observations about your dating habits.
Spent a lot of today thinking about relationships. Vera and I watched West Wing together yesterday evening, during which her relationship was a topic of conversation. My roommate has a shiny new boy. I spent a lot of the afternoon watching parents (mostly mothers) interact with their children in the park, and this evening I rehearsed and then watched Firefly with Rob and his girlfriend. And when I stop to think about it, a greater number of the people I interact with regularly are in serious, monogamous relationships than were a few months ago.
I don't typically do relationships easily or well. I simultaneously want regular, frequent contact and regular, frequent solitude. I can be needy or standoffish depending on my mood, and I have been bad at articulating this. My brother needs a relationship. Ben without girlfriend is miserable; Ben with girlfriend is happy and can live his life normally. It's a good thing he's a nice, attractive person who does relationships well. I look at him and I am in awe, as I am with my friends who are capable of having the kind of not-living-together-but-not-spending-nights-apart relationships that so many of my friends have.
Living with another person, or being married to (and living with) another person -- that I get. There's a lot of freedom there and a lot of convenience. Everyone's stuff is in the same space and you don't have to negotiate where you're going to sleep that night or how you're going to meet up. I guess the difference is this: people who live together make a one-time decision to have their significant others share huge portions of their lives. When you're spending each night with a person, but not living with them, every night is a decision. Staying out until 3 a.m. with buddies becomes different when you also have to negotiate where you're sleeping.
I'm just surmising. I've never had either kind of relationship, although there have been periods of my life when I made a conscious choice to see a certain person every day. My point is this: I greatly enjoy the freedom I have in my current state. I sleep at home most nights. I've been social every night this week but one, with different people. And I guess I'm a late bloomer, but I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever want the kind of relationship that my friends have. I certainly want a partner, someone to make a life and children with someday, someone to come home to after a hard day's cataloguing at the library (or whatever).
Why do my friends' relationships make me feel claustrophobic, if that's what I want? Why is it that I have to stop myself from thinking too hard about having a toothbrush at someone else's house, because if I do, I freak out? If you'd asked me six or seven years ago, I would have told you that by the time I finished college, I would be in a big-R Relationship, probably living together, talking/thinking about marriage. I'm sure that'll happen sooner than I expect, but right now I am so content.
How do you do it, friends in Relationships? How do you keep yourselves separate and enjoy the rest of your lives? I know you do, because I still interact with you, and you're still you. How do you make it work? Not your relationship, but your you-ness? How do you let another person take so much prominence in your life without missing the rest of it?
(This all comes out of the weirdness of realizing that I probably won't make another just-us-two trip with Rob anytime soon. His girlfriend wouldn't like the idea of him going off for a weekend with another woman, however platonic our interactions may be. Hell, she's uncomfortable with the two of us hanging out without her. I wish this wasn't the case, and I need to figure out how to communicate that I'm not a threat.)
Spent a lot of today thinking about relationships. Vera and I watched West Wing together yesterday evening, during which her relationship was a topic of conversation. My roommate has a shiny new boy. I spent a lot of the afternoon watching parents (mostly mothers) interact with their children in the park, and this evening I rehearsed and then watched Firefly with Rob and his girlfriend. And when I stop to think about it, a greater number of the people I interact with regularly are in serious, monogamous relationships than were a few months ago.
I don't typically do relationships easily or well. I simultaneously want regular, frequent contact and regular, frequent solitude. I can be needy or standoffish depending on my mood, and I have been bad at articulating this. My brother needs a relationship. Ben without girlfriend is miserable; Ben with girlfriend is happy and can live his life normally. It's a good thing he's a nice, attractive person who does relationships well. I look at him and I am in awe, as I am with my friends who are capable of having the kind of not-living-together-but-not-spending-nights-apart relationships that so many of my friends have.
Living with another person, or being married to (and living with) another person -- that I get. There's a lot of freedom there and a lot of convenience. Everyone's stuff is in the same space and you don't have to negotiate where you're going to sleep that night or how you're going to meet up. I guess the difference is this: people who live together make a one-time decision to have their significant others share huge portions of their lives. When you're spending each night with a person, but not living with them, every night is a decision. Staying out until 3 a.m. with buddies becomes different when you also have to negotiate where you're sleeping.
I'm just surmising. I've never had either kind of relationship, although there have been periods of my life when I made a conscious choice to see a certain person every day. My point is this: I greatly enjoy the freedom I have in my current state. I sleep at home most nights. I've been social every night this week but one, with different people. And I guess I'm a late bloomer, but I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever want the kind of relationship that my friends have. I certainly want a partner, someone to make a life and children with someday, someone to come home to after a hard day's cataloguing at the library (or whatever).
Why do my friends' relationships make me feel claustrophobic, if that's what I want? Why is it that I have to stop myself from thinking too hard about having a toothbrush at someone else's house, because if I do, I freak out? If you'd asked me six or seven years ago, I would have told you that by the time I finished college, I would be in a big-R Relationship, probably living together, talking/thinking about marriage. I'm sure that'll happen sooner than I expect, but right now I am so content.
How do you do it, friends in Relationships? How do you keep yourselves separate and enjoy the rest of your lives? I know you do, because I still interact with you, and you're still you. How do you make it work? Not your relationship, but your you-ness? How do you let another person take so much prominence in your life without missing the rest of it?
(This all comes out of the weirdness of realizing that I probably won't make another just-us-two trip with Rob anytime soon. His girlfriend wouldn't like the idea of him going off for a weekend with another woman, however platonic our interactions may be. Hell, she's uncomfortable with the two of us hanging out without her. I wish this wasn't the case, and I need to figure out how to communicate that I'm not a threat.)