I’ve been wondering, how should you see your significant other?
Some people say you should be each others’ best friends. Others say you should be like family to each other.
I think the ideal lies within the family dynamic as long as you can keep the romance alive and not allow it to become sibling-like.
That may be controversial because the idea of a “partner-in-crime” is really nice. The problem is that when someone becomes your partner in crime you begin to expect things from them. You begin to expect them to show up in a certain way.
I had a friendship like this in high school. Our circumstances made it easy to be inseparable. Not to mention, at the time, we needed each other.
That friendship carried into college and we got an apartment together, but at this time, we began to drift apart. Looking back, it was an odd dynamic because we both knew that we didn’t fit each other well anymore, but there was too much love between us to do anything but continue trying.
Then, after some time, it hit me…
She and I were no longer friends, and that was okay. Our relationship had transformed without us being consciously aware of the shift.
Instead of friendship, secured through circumstance, we had become like family tethered by love.
Initially, the issue was that neither of us understood that, so we continued desiring the things one might desire from a “best friend” or “partner-in-crime.”
This instance compelled me to question the dynamic of love that most people desire.
I wonder if it’s right…
We all want to feel known, but what if we’re misdiagnosing the type of “known” we want to feel?
I’m not sure about my conclusion here, but I’ll be pondering this one for a while. When I have my conclusion, I’ll write about it.