growth of being in love.
I recently put out an episode on my podcast @queer_maintenance about being in love. I was having this moment of realization recently that my previous idea of being in love has completely changed and I needed to dig a little deeper to figure out what was happening. Previously I would have thought that being in love had to do with feeling in love, but I no longer believe that. At least not entirely. Yes, there are metrics/measures within my body that make me feel like I love someone but how much truth is behind that? How someone makes me feel in my body shouldn’t be the main deciding factor for why I love them or why I am in love with them. What I’ve come to realize is that I want more. More for myself and more for my partner in terms of what being in love consists of. I want things to be different than my previous relationships. I want to be so intentional with how I show up in my romantic partnership that they truly feel like I’ve chosen them. Maybe I need to break down what love is first.
Love, for me, is a choice. It is not a feeling. Sure, I can feel good when someone loves me but that is not in itself what love represents. Love is who someone is and how they show up in their life. Love is not blinding but rather eye-opening when chosen intentionally. When you can look at someone and think, “holy sh*t. They are a really good f*cking person. And that good person wants to be with me.” It’s about who they are at their core. There should be this period of truly getting to know someone at the beginning of a relationship where you get really curious about who they are. What makes them tick, what type of family dynamic do they have, what are their quirks, are they willing to be vulnerable with you, what are their interests and hobbies, are they comfortable being alone, can they differentiate their needs from their wants, etc etc.
Some metrics I look for, besides the ones I just gave, are how they interact with people on a daily basis. And people is vague on purpose because it represents their friends, family, the cashier at the grocery store, and anyone else that they may come in contact with throughout their day. Another huge factor that plays into who they are and whether they are someone I could be interested in is how they treat themselves. Do they put themself first? And then I look at what that consists of. As someone who has been codependent and gone through the steps to become a healthier version of myself, it’s really important for me to be with someone who takes care of themself. Personally, I try to take time daily for just me. I find that when I spend too much time on other people I start to get cranky and resentful, and that’s not anyone’s fault but my own. I like my own company. It took me a long time to get back to a place where I could admit that out loud, but it’s the truth. I can always come back to myself to rest and recharge my batteries, and that feels really good. So I need someone who also does the same or at least someone who truly understands that I need it in order to be the best version of myself when I’m with them.
It took me all of last year to come back to myself. I went through a divorce at the beginning of 2021 and spent the entire year single, preparing myself for the rest of my life. And in that year I came up with this idea of who I really wanted to be in a relationship with. The first thing I decided was that I was more important than anyone else would ever be. I took a lot of time understanding who I was and healing myself so that whoever the universe dropped into my lap was also someone that deserved me. In my past, choosing a partner was filled with drunken nights, empty packs of cigarettes, and clothes taking you from the front door to the bedroom, if we made it that far. And sure, that was a damn good time, but that’s not love. Whatever that was is what I needed in the moment that it was given to me. I couldn’t possibly have known how to love someone else because I didn’t know the first thing about loving myself.
Love, for me now, is intentional. It’s a choice. I choose to give parts of myself to one person every day (at least that’s the idea). And whoever I’m choosing had to go through this rigorous test before we even got to the point of me knowing that they could be an option. That test was friendship. Truly. Another realization I came to was that the only way I could be myself was if I took the pressure of dating off the table completely. Friendship allowed me to be my most authentic self. It gave me an experience that I’ve never even considered before and the universe took over from there. For me, friendship allows me to not put on a mask and not have to be this “best version” every single time we see each other. Friendship was a way to allow myself to be everything with someone that I might otherwise hide until months/years have passed and I felt comfortable enough showing them all of my cards.
There’s much more to be said here but the close of this post is that love, for me, now has to be intentional. I have to consciously choose to be with someone every day, not for the way they make me feel but for who they are at their core. They have to match me in more ways than what’s under our clothes and that is how I know I’ve grown.
