Going and Growing

I spent the majority of my teenage years and early 20s in a series of unhealthy relationships. My relationships were all unhealthy in very different ways, but there was one thing they had in common: they were unpredictable, and in a perverse way, that made them addicting. There’s something weirdly thrilling about a relationship that is off-the-charts intense all of the time, even if it’s often a bad intense. My stomach used to drop like I’d just gone down the first hill of a roller coaster every time I opened the door to the apartment I used to share with my ex, because I never knew what I was going to find inside. Maybe he’d be on the couch, writing a song about me with that big smile on his face. Maybe he’d be half-coherent and the entire apartment would be trashed, with all the shades drawn. Maybe he’d be gone altogether with absolutely no explanation, and no way of getting in touch with him. There’s a sick thrill to waking up every morning and not knowing if your day is going to end with an impromptu romantic 2 am adventure that involves kissing under the stars, or if you’re going to go to bed in tears because you just got screamed at in a dumb fight over paper towels. Maybe it’s both. 

Often, it was both.

And after a while, when someone makes your heart pound every time you see them, your brain stops trying to learn the difference between attraction and fear. 

Then in my final year of my master’s degree, I swiped right on the right person and got into the first healthy relationship I had ever been in. My new relationship was everything I could have dared to hope for, back in the days when I was begging my ex to tell me where he was because he hadn’t been home in four days, or getting woken up at four a.m. because he’d found a man’s name when he went through my phone while I was sleeping and didn’t believe it was my brother. My new partner is, at a very fundamental level, an incredibly gentle and thoughtful person. Regular “good morning” and “good night” texts became a regular staple of my day, instead of passive-aggressive jabs and so-called “silent treatments”. Encouragement was given freely, without any accusations that I was seeking attention or trying to out-do him. Birthdays and important dates were remembered without any reminders. Hugs were given out in generous quantities, small issues were laughed off instead of fought over, and male friends were encouraged instead of demonized. At long last, I had the relationship I had always wanted. 

And to my absolute horror, I realized I was bored.

Without even realizing it, I had trained myself to think of relationships as battles, and being in a healthy relationship for the first time felt like I had suited myself up for an epic war, only to end up in an old ladies’ pottery class. The lack of unhealthy behaviours started making me antsy. Why wasn’t he going through my phone and looking through my social media? Did he just not care? Did it just not matter to him that other guys might be speaking to me? Why was I feeling so calm all the time? Where was the adrenaline rush? Why weren’t we clashing more? Did it mean that we just weren’t invested enough to even bother to fight with each other? We were - and are - deeply compatible people who have a lot of fun with each other, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the relationship just wasn’t intense enough. I absolutely knew that my past relationships were deeply unhealthy, but it’s hard to un-learn the idea that relationships should be high-stakes and constantly exhausting if both people truly care about each other. 

It took a lot of time, but I gradually come to realize something: I’d never actually known love in any of my previous relationships. What I had known was obsession. My exes had put me up on pedestals, and ripped me down as soon as I failed to live up to impossible expectations. Over and over again. Everything was big and over-the-top: life was a series of grand gestures, big fights and enormous apologies. I had one ex comb through years and years of my social media photos, commenting on every single one, while another ex would make the hour-long drive to my house in the middle of the night several times per week, whenever he felt like seeing me, letting himself in through my bedroom window. When you’re young and don’t know any better, that level of obsession is flattering. It’s what we’ve been taught is romantic. But it’s not - it’s not a good basis for a strong and healthy relationship. And in the end, none of it was really about me. My exes were caught up in ideas about the relationships they’d fantasized about having, and the way they wanted people to perceive them, and I was more or less just there to play a part. And it always came crashing down. 

Real love, on the other hand, is not about the grand gesture. It’s not about non-stop “dialed-up-to-11″ intensity. It’s about being there, day by day. My boyfriend has never gone through my social media for six straight hours or broken into my house because he couldn’t wait a moment longer to see me, and he’s never screamed at me for having male names in my contacts list or for not texting back fast enough because he’s just so afraid to lose me. Instead, he is patient. He is kind. He listens to what I have to say and he doesn’t get upset about the small things and he always remembers to make  my coffee exactly how I like it. I know that he will be there for me when I need him - whether I need to vent about a bad day at work or build a bookcase or double-check that I added enough salt to the soup - and I do the same for him. It’s a kinder, gentler kind of relationship, and now that I’m used to it, it’s anything but boring.