This Can Show Your Potential in Having Deeper Connections

I just read an article on Medium about honesty in dating.

Should the person be honest with someone they were already intimate with if they are still dating other people, and potentially get intimate with other people too?

The article and the comments made me reflect on why dating feels like a minefield for many people nowadays.

I’ve been on dating apps two times in my life. Met with a total of five men. Got into a serious relationship with two of them.

We all knew we were seeing different people. But the moment we started to be closer emotionally and physically, we stopped seeing other people.

Once, I had a friend with benefits. It happened so suddenly. Before I got more intimate with him, I worried about misleading him, so I stopped, and I told him that I wasn’t ready for a relationship (I was healing from a previous breakup). He said that he wasn’t either.

I eventually decided to give it a try, but I told him that I’d prefer exclusivity, so if he was ever interested in getting involved with someone else, he could tell me and we’d end this arrangement. I’d do the same too.

We both ended up falling in love with each other.

Many people long for deep connections where they feel truly seen and loved. And yet many people seem so careless with other people’s feelings nowadays.

They say that other people should know that until exclusivity is agreed upon, there’s no exclusivity.

That the other person should understand that even if they got closer emotionally and physically, they are the ones entirely responsible for their own feelings, if they ever fall in love.

But humans are messy. Feelings are messy. People do fall in love. Even when they are not “supposed” to.

Since day one, I treated my unexpected friend with benefits as a fellow human being. I treated his feelings with care, even when I wasn’t in love with him at first.

When intimacy is involved, there is always a possibility of someone falling in love. Even if we had never fallen in love with each other, I would still have cared for his feelings.

Because when we are really getting closer to each other, emotionally and physically, how can we not care for their feelings in any way?

People are free to experience different kinds of relationship settlements, whether they are involved with just one or multiple people.

What’s important is whether we can treat each other with a level of care, even if we haven’t agreed on exclusivity.

It’s true that “other people’s feelings and what they choose to do are entirely their own responsibility”. But we can at least have a bit of concern for how someone might feel.

Because when we begin to see glimpses of someone’s inner world unfolding in each conversation and moment we have with them, how can we not feel even a bit of care for them, in any shape or form?

How can we be indifferent to the fact that in front of us is a human being, with their own dreams and hopes, yearnings, and an entire universe within?

Being able to see each other’s humanity, and honor the preciousness of it, is what can show our potential to actually connect as humans.

Mónica Valverde is a daydreamer navigating the experience of human life. She’s in love with Spirituality, Inner Work and Relationships.