I am not good at being on my own. I never have been. I lived in an apartment with my older brother from age nineteen to age twenty-two, and whenever he would spend the night at his partner’s place, subjecting me to isolation, I would stare blankly at the walls, unsure what to do with all this—all this meaning me. I would lie on the balcony, smoking ill-advised cigarettes, scattering ash across my abdomen, waiting for someone—it didn’t even matter who it was—to come over. I want someone to do everything with: sending emails, grocery shopping, doing the dinner dishes. I even call my youngest sibling while I’m brushing my teeth, or even mid-toilet flush, much to their horror.
But I am good at being single. I was, for the first heady years of my adult, independent life, uncannily good at avoiding any committed romantic partnerships, even when I secretly, or not so secretly, craved them. I spent my late teens and early twenties engrossed in a series of high-octane, shambolic, and doomed affairs. I fell in love twice. But I never, until recently, found myself in what I consider a serious relationship, described willingly as someone else’s partner. It is something that is uncannily overwhelming. I wish I’d had a gentle, inviting handbook of how best to navigate those unprecedented (for me, and for many) waters to look to; notes and information and common ground to ease the experience. This handbook is something that I want to provide to others.
Before I continue, I feel that it is important to acknowledge how expansive and loose the term “relationship” can be. It is a concept that is ever-fluctuating, a term that looks different for everyone, but “relationship” is ultimately a word that just describes any and every kind of ongoing interpersonal interaction. In my case here, though, I am referring to a long-term intimate partnership, founded on intentions to enrich each other’s lives, with a tentative, hopeful future in mind. This common, mundane, everyday kind of relationship—where being loved happens at the same time as loving—is something that I have never before launched myself into headlong, and as such it is all at once eye-opening, rewarding, tear-jerkingly beautiful, and stomach-droppingly terrifying. But, again, this isn’t about what the word relationship means just to me, it is about what it can mean to anyone. Whatever the term means to you, take my words and run with them; update them, metamorphose them, as best you need.
I also feel that it is important to note that just because I now have a partner, I am not some kind of relationship expert entitled to impart nuggets of wisdom. But I am someone who, by nature of the current trajectory of my life—and by nature of the way that my overly poetic, overly analytical brain works—has been thinking a lot about what it means to be in a committed relationship, the patterns we all fall into, and the patterns we are attempting to break out of, and I believe those thoughts are worth sharing.
Losing Our Single Selves
Becoming part of a united front, at first, dissolved a sense of my personhood in a way that I wasn’t quite expecting. Only once in a committed relationship did I realize how important being single had been to my identity for so long. I was so used to shutting down pointed questions about my relationship status—“Seeing anyone special?”—at family gatherings. While my brother brought his partner along to these gatherings, I brought my best friend. I got used to being The Single Friend, attending dinner with my coupled-up pals and understanding that my role was, partially, to regale them with wild anecdotes of my footloose and fancy-free lifestyle. I felt inherently superior because I had not prioritized romance, I had found safety and fulfillment in myself, in my career, and in friendships. I was the local Frances Ha, Susan Weinblatt, Carrie Bradshaw. I was healthily skeptical of Big Love, and whenever one of my closest friends succumbed to it and started to get that rosy doe-eyed look, I tutted and shook my head.
Losing that identity was, and still is, desperately strange. I’m happy, and I’m in love, but in some ways I have lost that part of myself that I spent the entirety of my early twenties cultivating, that part of myself that I was so proud of: my clear-eyed self-sufficiency. Even if, in all honesty, that self-sufficiency was largely rooted in a sense of hardened cynicism, borne of one too many situationships gone awry. And because I am such a veteran of the casual dating world, I didn’t expect all of this to feel so new. I am the oldest I’ve ever been and I am still stumbling about on shaky foal legs.
Being part of this kind of relationship—especially if it is a heteronormative one—can function as an odd, suffocating sort of social capital. I feel that there is a generalized hostility projected toward single women because you’re not hitting the milestones expected of you. You are single, therefore you are probably not getting married any time soon, probably don’t possess the financial assets to buy property, and are probably not producing progeny any time soon (a principle that, of course, also neglects single mothers).
I can already feel the way that I am viewed differently by the average person because I am now in a stable intimate relationship. The implication that I have “finally settled down” is apparent. I resent that mentality: the idea that now I’m a functioning, productive member of society only because I coupled up with someone? It’s a very heteronormative view of things. I don’t feel and am not fixed because I am in a relationship. I was whole then and I’m still whole now. I am the same person: my motivations and values remain unchanged, but my life looks different. Wholeness is not only found within the confines of steady romance. I want my relationship to be totally separate from preconceived notions about gender and social obligations, but of course, it isn’t. This is a difficult thing for me to contend with.
In fact, there are many things about being in this kind of relationship that are difficult for me to contend with. I think this is normal.
Thus, I think it is important to do your best to hold onto parts of your single self, even if you are not, technically, single anymore. Now that I am not technically single, it is more important than ever for me to schedule in time to spend by myself. I make an event of alone time. I go to the movies on my own, with a tumbler of coffee and fresh pastry in hand. I go out to cafes with a book in hand alone. I buy myself bouquets of baby’s breath every now and then. I shop alone. Sometimes I turn off the lights and sit in silence. I treat these moments as important, because they are—because my relationship with myself will never be replaced by anyone, even if I am in a relationship with someone else. I am honest with my partner about this—it is something that they have made room for.
On Getting Hurt or Hurting Others
Ideally, deepening intimacy is correlative to heightened vulnerability, and giving in to vulnerability is not a painless decision. Opening yourself up to someone fully means putting yourself in a compromising position. The catch with being truly loved and truly known is that you could be truly hurt.
I’m human, and like most humans, I’m scared of being hurt. Because I am human, I am also scared of my capacity to hurt someone else in spite of my overwhelming, dizzying, aching love for them. I don’t have the answers for overcoming this yet, and I think that is probably because there are no real answers. Being scared of pain—of being the cause of it and the receptor of it—isn’t something you have to fix about yourself. It is something that, in all likelihood, will never really go away. The truth is, there is a positive element to that fear: it is what keeps us mindful, aware of our own actions and power in vulnerable situations. So, I think that it’s best to lean into it, acknowledge the fact that the fear is there—that is what I am trying to do, anyway. I tell my partner all the time how scared I am. I’m scared of everything, I’m scared of myself, I’m scared of them, I’m scared of everyone else, and I burst into tears in the middle of the night for no reason, and they listen to me. Voicing what I am scared of does, of course, make me more vulnerable, but it gives me more control, too. It also allows my partner to reciprocate, tell me what scares them, and make themself vulnerable in kind. Then, at least, we’re being vulnerable together.
Living with this increased risk of getting hurt, or hurting, is no easy thing, but it is doable. It is important to check in with yourself—I try to map out my feelings on paper, to do my best to navigate what I’m scared of, and if what I’m scared of demands action or not. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a fear is irrational, but no less valid—for me, when that is the case, I journal, go for long walks, or try to speak the fear aloud, aloud to myself and aloud to my parter. A lot of these methods can also work when a fear is rational. All we can ever really do is try to communicate: with words, with gestures, with touch, with smiles, with tears.
Communication and Commitments
Communication is the foundation of any healthy relationship, including if and when we are making commitments to someone and creating agreements about our relationship, whether those are about exclusivity, time together and apart, or what we’ll call our relationship. And it is important to establish that from the very beginning. Within reason, agreements need to be properly outlined. Because, in all honesty, a relationship that doesn’t begin with real communication is unlikely to ever develop any.
This, however, does not mean you have to agree to things you don’t want or are unsure of. It’s never a good idea to agree to something you don’t want, or that feels wrong for you, because you’re desperate to hold onto someone. Some discomfort, some growing pains, are par for the course for any relationship, but no one or no relationship is worth total, ungovernable discomfort. And just because you do agree on certain conditions at one point does not mean you can’t retract your agreement later on. No matter how serious a relationship starts out or feels at any given time, you can always change the terms of a relationship, or you can leave it behind if it isn’t working for you. Breaking up with someone—so long as you do it with kindness—doesn’t ever make you a villain. Choosing to be single, or choosing to change the nature of or even terminate a relationship that no longer offers you anything meaningful, are worthy decisions—decisions that people make every day, and are the better for.
You can discuss how much time you want to spend together, and how you want your partner to fit into different aspects of your life—do you want your partner to be involved with friends, with family, and if so, how much do you want these worlds to collide? This is, of course, different for everybody—and, realistically, the answers to a lot of these questions will change over time, which is why it is important to regularly discuss these terms. That is also why dates are so important: They keep passion alive, and pencil in time to be with and communicate with each other.
Learned Patterns Vs. Bespoke Designs
Ultimately, I think a lot of being in a relationship—whatever that looks like for you—is learning how to look after someone, and learning how to be looked after. You shift between the roles of nurturer and nurtured, and it’s important that there is fluidity between these roles. Things otherwise can become so easily imbalanced, and resentment can build up. I always used to see myself as small, young, in desperate need of protection. It seems obvious, but I am only now realizing that that feeling of being protected needs to be shared around.
It is so easy to unconsciously recreate (potentially unhealthy) relationship patterns learned from the media you grew up consuming, or the familial relationships you grew up with—patterns that you might not be wary of recreating until you are in the thick of the act. It is important to interrogate these patterns rather than merely to give in to them. Giving in is easier, of course. Learned behavior can have an iron hold if we let it. But learned behavior does not have to be a constant; it does not have to be forever. People can change, especially if they want to. Especially if they discuss how to bring about that change. Being open with your partner about negative patterns you might have succumbed to is so important, as is being open with your friends. Learning how your friends navigate their relationships can help you navigate yours, and vice versa.
I can only be who I am to my partner because I have talked to my friends about who I want to be. I can only be who I am to my partner because I have talked to them about what I want and need, and what they want and need.
Truly, there are things I miss about being single. I think that you can love someone and want to be their partner and still acknowledge this. I miss the quiet and I miss the noise. I miss being able to focus entirely on myself. I miss only having to think about one person’s dietary requirements, one person’s work schedule. I miss not having to wait to watch certain episodes of a TV show. I miss painting my nails red and spilling the polish across my sheets and not minding, because only I was sleeping in them. I miss being content in the knowledge that I could uproot my life at any moment, that I could run away from things, that I wasn’t responsible for anyone in the same way that I am now. Every now and then, I miss having a Sunday morning entirely to myself.
That is why it is so important for me—even though I am in love, even though I am committed—to be with only myself. The fictional Carrie Bradshaw, for all her many flaws, once said, “The most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you that you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”
So I’ve become bad at being single, but somehow, I think I might have become better at being on my own.
