I’ve been in a long-term relationship for the past two years. Before that, I was single for 5 years. And before that, I was in another long-term relationship.
I remember dating my previous partner and thinking I was missing out on so much. I was craving my Sex and the City life which looked so incredibly cool. We ultimately broke up because we weren’t right for each other, but I welcomed that breakup with open arms.
It was my time to shine.
I don’t know what I expected. I guess I thought you went on dates until you like someone and then the moment you decide to go on a second date that is when you start a relationship.
What I most definitely didn’t expect is that you can see someone for a year and a half and still not be in a relationship with them.
I also didn’t expect that the day in the week and time of day when someone is meeting up with you determines how serious they are about you.
That ‘let’s just see where it goes’ means it is most definitely not going anywhere.
I personally never enjoyed casual dating, although I know people who do. However, I did learn how to navigate it successfully — which ultimately led me to my current partner (which also started as a casual dating scenario).
The ability to date casually and be in a serious relationship are not mutually exclusive. One is oftentimes a precursor to the other.
But looking back, I noticed that the skillset I developed to navigate the casual dating scene caused a variety of issues in my current relationship. I just wish someone had told me that, even when you meet someone great, the transition from one to the other is a bumpy ride.
1. You walk away easily
As you are dating and looking for ‘The One’ or one of them, one of the most important skills to develop is spotting red flags early on. With time, as you spot enough red flags, you learn how to move on quickly. You learn that it’s not worth sticking around for months or even years in the hope that someone will change.
In an ideal scenario, you remain open but vigilant and once you spot that something is really off, you let go and walk away. No turning back.
But once you settle down in a committed relationship, that habit of giving up and moving on easily starts biting you in the ass. Because while your partner shouldn’t have any red flags, they most definitely have yellow ones. The happy little yellow flags that blow in the wind right by your face just when you had a really long day at work and you just want to sit down and have a glass of wine.
I’ve realised that walking away easily comes in two forms:
a) You see every argument as a reason to walk away.
If you’ve been single for long enough, the difference between preferences, deal-breakers, and reasons to compromise starts getting blurry.
Someone refusing to let you get involved in their life is waving a red flag. But occasionally prioritizing their family, friends or career is reasonable.
But you forget that in the middle of an argument as the sentence ‘If he wanted, he would’ is going through your mind.
It’s difficult to remember that not every argument leads to a breakup and not every yellow flag means that you should leave the relationship.
b) You shut down in the middle of an argument
Maybe this is just me — and I admit, this one is just awful.
As a consequence of thinking that every argument ends in a breakup, every argument becomes unnecessarily intense. It feels like everything is always on the line which makes it virtually impossible to see the situation rationally and to see the point of view of your partner.
It’s what John Gottman calls emotional flooding or ‘a sensation of feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed during conflict, making it virtually impossible to have a productive, problem-solving discussion.’
And because it’s so overwhelming, what do you do? You shut down. You stop responding. You refuse to engage.
It’s a shitty shitty thing to do and it’s one that needs to be learned how to overcome. Otherwise, your worst nightmares will become a reality.
Personally, I am trying to process my emotions faster and my partner takes into account that he needs to give me space if an argument gets heated. It’s gotten so well, that we now get into arguments more frequently.
In an interesting twist of fate, knowing that we can argue without putting the relationship on the line, makes the relationship a lot more psychologically safe.
2. You are used to excitement
Casual dating is full of excitement. The excitement of new beginnings and the excitement of the rollercoaster of the more…let’s call them passionate relationships.
The big highs where each conversation requires you to bear your soul and the anticipation of sex that consumes your day-to-day thoughts.
A strong stable relationship can start off the same way, after all, it’s nothing but a new beginning at the start of it. However, typically in a few months or years, that excitement diminishes.
Don’t get me wrong, life with your partner should excite you — you should enjoy their company, the sex should be higher quality as you learn and communicate what you enjoy and you should feel excited about your future together.
But it should be a more reasonable amount of excitement with the highs being less high and the lows less low.
Except if you are used to all the highs and lows (and if you’ve watched enough rom-com), you convince yourself that that is how true love feels ALL THE TIME.
So if you find yourself thinking about whether you made the right choice because there is a lack of excitement in your relationship, ask yourself if stability and safety make you feel bored.
If yes and that is not something you ever want in your life — maybe a long-term partner (in the traditional sense) doesn’t work for you.
If yes, but deep down you know you want a long-term partner (in the traditional sense), you need to:
a) Adjust your expectations. A good relationship won’t and shouldn’t ALWAYS feel exciting (although it should feel fulfilling).
b) Learn how to actively introduce excitement into your relationship (other than by changing your partner).
3. You struggle communicating your needs in the context of someone else
If you’ve been single for a while, you know how to be self-sufficient. You know how to satisfy your physical, mental, social, and emotional needs. You have friends to call when you want company, handymen when something needs fixing, a specific time you go to the gym, your preferred meals, Deliveroo orders, and Netflix specials. And occasionally, you like to go out with your friends for one drink and end up coming come at 5am because that is where the night took you.
But then there were two.
And your partner has the exact same things.
When people say it’s better to wait and get into a long-term relationship later in life when you know who you are and what you want, I can’t help but think it’s a double-edged sword.
Sure, in your twenties your personality and preferences shift and stabilize so when you meet someone later in life it’s less likely you will grow in radically different ways (we could of course debate for hours what it means to radically change).
But no one talks about how difficult it is to merge two people with two stable lives. Two flats, two sets of habits, two strong personalities, two handymen, and two people who each have an opinion on the best way to stack the dishwasher.
Suddenly your preferences, habits, and needs exist in the context of another. Even worse, two separate needs will suddenly be satisfied with distinct behaviours that cannot coexist at the same time.
Let me explain. Imagine you find cleaning your flat once per week a calming and relaxing routine. Imagine also you like to do it yourself — because you like to dance as you clean and because you have a preferred way of going about it.
Imagine also you moving in with your partner and that routine now makes you feel resentful for them never cleaning the flat. You want their help. You want to feel supported. But you also want that time for yourself to relax and dance around the flat.
Two distinct needs require two separate behaviours that cannot coexist.
And your first instinct may be to do it alone — to figure out how to satisfy those needs yourself. Or to think you should just go back to being single since that was so much simpler.
But if you want a long-term partner, you better learn how to communicate your needs and find solutions that require out-of-the-box thinking.
4. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop
Yes, life is great. But for how long?
You keep waiting for them to change their mind and break up with you. Or that their personality will rapidly shift and you will have to break up with them. Or that their family will hate you and force you guys to break up. Or that they will run away on the wedding day. Or that they will die in a car accident. Or that you won’t be able to have kids. Or that you will divorce in 5 years…10…20…
When you are used to casual dating, you are used to things ending and that puts you in a constant state of vigilance.
It’s also what Brene Brown calls foreboding joy — ‘feeling you get when joy is followed quickly by thoughts of worry and dread, an inner dialogue of “but what if this happens,” or a sense of impending doom that something bad will happen to counteract the happiness you feel’.
And unsurprising, it’s a great way to stop yourself from being vulnerable — a necessary component of strong relationships.
Instead, be grateful for your relationship, trust that even if something bad happens you’ll survive and God forbid don’t push your partner away.
But that is easier said than done. I know.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
