Where my fellow journaling fans at?! I flicked through all my journal entries from the entirety of 2018 (phew!) and picked 6 of my faves for you…
January 30th
I’ve been in love 3 times before and here’s what happened those previous times:
E___ told me after about a month and a half, which I thought was surprisingly early, and then I told him about 2 weeks after that, if I recall correctly.
It took me about a year to even be comfortable conceptualizing my feelings for C___ as love in my own head, or calling it that out loud. I don’t think I ever actually told him to his face that that’s what I had been feeling, though I’ve certainly used the word many times when I’ve written about him online.
I told G___ at about 11 weeks, which is the closest I’ve ever come to hitting the mythical 3-month threshold I’ve somewhat arbitrarily set for myself as a reasonable minimum before saying it. (We said it on July 10th. 3 months would’ve been July 18th or 25th, depending on how you count it.)
I don’t know why I’m obsessing over these numbers like they contain any kind of answer to the questions I am implicitly asking, which are: 1) Am I in love with Matt? and 2) Is it too soon to tell him that, if so?
I have a feeling he would say it’s not too soon and it’s okay to say it whenever you feel it, but I have objections to that, namely:
-How do you even actually know you’re in love? I don’t want to say it until/unless I’m sure, because you can’t really take that shit back. In the past, when I’ve said it, it’s been after a period of at least a few weeks where I consistently found myself thinking it and wanting to say it, and eventually reached a point where it felt like it bubbled over and I had to say it.
-I think it is perhaps irresponsible and premature to say it before you establish adult shit like “Do we have actual long-term potential?” and “Do we even actually like each other, once NRE has worn off?” and “Do we fit functionally into each other’s lives?” because, while “I love you” is technically just a statement of feelings, it is also, to some extent, a statement of intent and commitment and devotion, etc., and I would rather we figure our shit out before jumping to that.
-I would rather say it to him in person, because it’s so weighty and I just think that would be the appropriate and right way to do it. But of course, life happens, and feelings are intense and unpredictable. Who knows what’ll happen. (I do have a lot of romantic feelings about the idea of him putting my collar on me before the Hippo Campus show, though, and I have a feeling an emotional outpouring could take place when that happens.)
-Part of me is afraid to fall in love again (god, what a clichéd sentiment) because the last two times it’s happened have been probably the two biggest heartbreaks of my life and they happened within a year of each other and it was just… a lot. I’m hesitant to give someone else that much power over my heart again, although, let’s be honest: I already have. (Wow, this journal entry is getting REALLY REAL, huh!!)
-7 weeks is probably too short a time to have really fallen in love with someone… maybe… probably. We are still squarely in NRE territory, where everything about a person seems perfect and adorable and even your conflicts are kind of cute and quaint. I would feel more secure calling a feeling “love” if the smog of NRE had cleared and love was still visibly in the picture. But what is the distinction between NRE buzziness and love, anyway? What does any of this mean??
-There is also a self-protective, superego-y part of me that wants to carefully weigh and consider the idea of getting into a long-distance relationship before I wade this deep into it, but tbh, love is not controllable in that way (at least not this late in its development) and I, in particular, have never been good at moderating my feelings in that way. I remember friends suggesting to me, when I was in painful heartsick love with C___, that I take a step back, stop seeing him, at least stop fucking him, and that was utterly unthinkable to me. It literally did not feel like an option. I loved him, therefore, I needed his presence in my life to continue, to any and every extent possible.
-Re: it being fast – Matt and I have talked on the phone for so many hours that we essentially fast-tracked our relationship. I’ve honestly probably spent as much time talking to him as I spent talking to G___ in our entire 3.5-month relationship. So there’s that. Maybe that makes it less insane and more okay, I dunno.
I feel practically ill with emotion today. Having a heart is hard.
March 13th
Been dating Matt for 3 months today. Grateful for long phone calls full of intimacy, vulnerability, orgasms, and laughs. Grateful for emotional support that stretches across national borders. Grateful for a dependable smiling face so handsome it still makes my head swim. Grateful for a daddy/Sir who understands my kinks so fucking perfectly somehow and makes me feel so small, submissive, and taken care of. Grateful for gentle, loving pushes toward productivity, assertiveness, achievement and self-advocacy. Grateful for hot hard kisses in hotel rooms that make me feel adored and desired from the inside out. Grateful for emotional safety like a big comfy net to catch me. Grateful for impeccable cocktails in low-lit opulent establishments. Grateful for big blue eyes staring into me with a want and wonderment I’m always ecstatic to see mirrored back at me. Grateful for nerdy musical theatre references that make my heart soar. Grateful for silly giggles at 2AM. Grateful to feel so close even when we’re far. Grateful for his effort, his attention, his love.
April 15th
I wonder often what my therapist would think about Matt – she who witnessed my hero’s struggle to get over C___, my almost-compulsive hunt for a primary partner after that, my happy early days with G___ and then my utter brokenness when he changed his mind about me so suddenly. I think she would be very happy for me, but in the early days of our relationship she would’ve warned me to be careful, to modulate my level of investment, to keep my heart safe for a while before handing it over to someone else.
I tried to do that. It was hard; I’m not built for romantic reservation, not used to it. Both H___ and Matt have told me they admire my openheartedness and were surprised at my willingness to pour my soul out to them so quickly; I think this quality is a large part of why I’m so susceptible to ruinous heartbreak but is also what enables my relationships to frequently be so deep and electric and juicy. I feel things strongly and I don’t want to tamp them down once I feel them. It’s at once a blessing and a curse.
Despite the speed, I feel like we fell in love in slow motion – maybe still are falling – because of not having as much physical access to each other as most couples have. It was like one of those orgasms where you teeter on the precipice forever, dangling helplessly, until finally you tumble over the edge and it’s so sweet and delicious all the way down.
May 9th
Happy one-year anniversary to the day G___ first slept with someone else and started the slow, cruel process of breaking my heart! LOLOL. I think I’ve done a lot of useful emotional processing since then, in therapy and with friends and partners, to the point that it doesn’t sting anymore. And it helps enormously that Matt always affirms the validity of my reaction to that. “Non-monogamy” doesn’t mean “no rules.” It means you set rules, talk about them, mutually agree on them, and then follow them. It means you take your partners’ needs and feelings into account. It’s not a free-for-all.
I recognize, too, that I have been guilty of what he did – being too cavalier about boundaries and partners’ feelings on my sextracurricular activities – in, for example, my relationship with B___. It’s interesting how these past couple years have repeatedly shown me both sides of a particular interpersonal conflict or mistake, almost as if to give me greater empathy for someone who hurt me or to help me understand how I’ve fucked up and how to avoid making those mistakes again.
I think at this point, I’d definitely check in with Matt a lot before doing any sexy and/or date-y things with a new person – because our relationship is of foundational importance to me and no new thing, no matter how exciting, would be worth upsetting or alienating him or making him feel unconsidered. There are no such opportunities on my horizons right now, but I know they will come up whenever they come up and we will navigate them by communicating with each other as kindly and thoroughly as we always have.
June 4th
My mental health is predictably kind of tanking in response to Matt being at the nerd convention and being too busy for me for a few days. I mean, before he left, he said, “I love you and I will make time for you,” and I see him trying to do that – instating a protocol whereby I have to send him a daily nude, because he knows our protocols usually make me feel closer to him; calling me last night to say good night; texting me occasional updates – but it’s interesting how my brain is still responding by feeling rejected and like the safest and best thing to do is to pull away, act unaffected and uncaring, front like I don’t miss him and am not even thinking about him.
This is a conditioned response developed in former relationships where I wasn’t sure the other person liked me as much as I liked them – or I KNEW they didn’t – and I’d respond to their coldness and distance by mirroring it, instead of clinging, because I’d learned over the years that unreciprocated clinginess feels unimaginably horrible. It makes me feel pathetic, like the worst of the worst, impossibly unwanted, fundamentally undesirable. So I learned that the safer thing to do was to match their distance exactly, so that if anyone were to accuse me of caring, I could say, “Who, me? Nah. You must have me confused with someone else. I’m chill and casual and could take or leave this. Just like you.”
I recognize now that when this defense mechanism kicks in at the wrong times – i.e. with people who actually do care about me and are maybe just temporarily too busy to give me their usual level of attention and focus – it makes me come across as callously uncaring. I can see how I could actually sabotage relationships this way, backing up so hard to stay safe that I back my way right out of the relationship by mistake. That isn’t me; that isn’t what I want to do here.
The trouble is that fighting that knee-jerk defensive response feels as absurd and dangerous as fighting any instinct – like sticking your hand in the fire, touching your tongue to the outlet. It feels like I am literally endangering myself and the relationship, even though I know the opposite is true. To express love, and not have that expression returned for a while or in kind, feels too close to nauseously revelatory heartbreaks I’ve endured: the sudden (and sometimes stupidly repeated) realization that I thought I could be loved by this person but I actually was not. I’m in deep enough with Matt, I suppose, that that realization would crush me massively, so I get even more defensive than usual when it seems imminent. Maybe I even get mean. I’m sure it’s confusing for him. I’m trying to fight it but it’s hard.
My CBT training tells me to remind myself constantly of how much he loves me, to review the evidence of that until I believe it again, to do this myself instead of relying on him for constant reassurance. But then I just think about all the people were so into me until they suddenly weren’t. I don’t know how to believe that he won’t have a sudden change of heart and decide I’m too much work, too much effort, too much.
October 11th
Some climate scientists announced a few days ago that we don’t have much time left to avert the creeping disaster we’ve brought upon ourselves; that true chaos and destruction will be upon us by 2040 if not sooner, unless we change a lot real fast. And we won’t, because Republicans and big corporations believe in saving their bottom lines and their own asses more fiercely than they believe in saving the world, and the only thing that could really do any good now would be the total overthrowing of capitalism from top to bottom, and who the fuck knows how to do that? Not me.
I’m scared and depressed and everything seems so futile. But at the same time, this news is putting life into perspective. There have been times, in my current and past relationships, when I’ve wondered what the point is of staying in a relationship that has no conventional “future” – no hope of marriage, living together, or even living in the same country, probably – but this is making me reflect on how none of us are actually guaranteed a future anyway so we should cling to the things that make us happy NOW. It’s not possible to do this in all cases – for example, I can’t exactly quit my job and spend this planet’s last years making only the art I want to make, because getting through these years will require money and shelter in the meantime – but I should prioritize my happiness in the present whenever possible. And I am in love with Matt and he makes me happy even though there are things I want that I know I can’t get from this relationship. Happiness is a valid criterion. It’s maybe the only one that matters. Maybe I’ll be able to find those things with someone else someday, but there might not be a someday. This exists now and it’s very good and I want it, even if it’s not all I want.