Throughout the years, and every now and then, I would learn a valuable insight about what it takes to be part of a healthy romantic relationship, which is one central criteria for “falling in love”.
Not so long ago, I figured I would put together all what I have learned through books, articles, first and second-hand experiences into one -possible- theory that can more or less help me explore different perspectives.
And so as time passes I find that a theory like this would inevitably have more than one dimension, you can’t just jot down thoughts on love, but you can aim to discuss & understand aspects of it. In this part, I’m going to discuss chemistry and timelines.
On chemistry
I’m getting used to witnessing a lot of marriages lately. However, despite of how beautiful they are, I’ve always found myself wondering about the strength that it takes for two people to decide to get married. I wonder how strong a relationship has to be in order for you to be firm upon your decision to marry someone.
I find myself having these thoughts often because I’ve witnessed people screw up the healthiest of relationships in the most absurd ways - that love can be fragile and can disappear over the course of a night. I’ve witnessed people grow apart while growing together, I’ve witnessed the outbursts of second thoughts and I’ve witnessed the kindest of people turn into savages.
I believe marriage is to your life what a tattoo is to your body. Because whether the marriage did work or not, it will still be engraved in you till the end of time. Scary & unfathomable from an extremely realistic point of view, beautiful & life-changing from an optimistic point of view.
I guess it's either that the couple is lucky enough and have found out early that they’re meant to be, or that they’ve accepted their imperfections and are willing to take a leap of faith. Why? Because there’s no such thing as a “soulmate”.
The word only exists in fairy tales and it’s about time we gen Z ease on consuming stuff that turn the best of what could have been into the hardest life lessons. The whole disneyfication of romance has led us to believe that there's one perfect person out there for everyone.
Romanticizers believe that love is something that happens to you, and that the reason they’re single is they just haven’t met the right person yet. Romanticizers might not consciously identify with fairy tales, yet they expect their lives to resemble one. They believe the perfect person will walk into their lives one day. All they have to do is wait for that moment.
This is utter bullshit.
Soulmate mindset
There aren't millions of people out there that will be compatible with you and I for the most part, but in no way there’s only one. Actually most of the success of a relationship comes from the effort that you put into it, rather than pre-existing compatibility. And the sooner you internalize this, the better your chances can get.
It took me having to bear through tragic scenarios to swallow the pill that: Your cages are mostly illusional, there’s no such thing as loneliness, there’s no such thing as destined love, and most importantly, everything boils down to how you choose to look at things. Our attitudes and expectations create the context for our experience, which in turn affects how we make decisions.
What I’m vividly trying to say here is, you have to maintain a work-it-out mindset as opposed to a soulmate-mindset. Imagine that you & I have soulmate mindsets, here’s what’s going to happen:
1/
We believe love is something that happens to us. We wait for love and we will not put any effort in to create love.
2/
We tend to have a very specific vision of how our partner will look. This mindset often influences whom we’re willing to go with. A big mistake!
3/
When we get slightly interested in someone and we start dating them, we believe they are “the one”, so our expectations skyrocket. Which in turn makes us check out at the earliest inconvenience. Giving up on things becomes far more rationalized than “trying to overcome”.
4/ We believe our soul mate will intuitively understand us and know what we need before we do, we will feel an immediate attraction to only them, and vice-versa.
Well real life isn’t The Notebook. This mindset messes up potential relationships and drives the “dump, rinse, repeat” cultural practice. Where this has become the norm.
Work-it-out mindset
No one is perfect, including you, it’s time to give up on this idea of perfection. No relationship is easy all the time, and even the healthiest, most rewarding marriages require effort. Finding someone can be hard, but often the real challenges come later. The hard part is the daily work you put in to grow and sustain a great relationship.
Think 3 4 5 6 years into the relationship, on a normal Wednesday morning when you’re having your 2240th meal together. A day that is not your annual anniversary, your birthday, their birthday, valentine’s day or Christmas. Just a normal day during your life with them. The hardest part becomes: Remembering why you love someone during all the challenges life throws at you both. Now that’s effort, and it’s the same exact work that helps keep the relationship happy & healthy moving forward.
Love takes work. The magic often lies in the fact that two strangers come together and create a life. Many hours of a relationship are spent on the everyday, rarely posted aspects of life. Love happens in these moments, not in spite of them. Love is so much more than a filtered photo captured at sunset.
It’s safe to say that all extremes are outliers, if you want to live a happy romantic life, one that only happens to the 0.01%, you’d most definitely have to work for it. If you ever ended up in a terribly bad heartbreak, you have most definitely led your way to it. There’s always something, things don’t just happen to you, me, or anyone.
In fact, like everything else in life, you get to experience the full sweetness of a relationship with someone only when you have accepted it to be bittersweet.
“Compatibility is an achievement of marriage, it should not be its prerequisite.”
– Philosopher Alain de Botton
Here’s what I know: I've never regretted asking, never regretted knowing more. Asking only accelerates the already-present ground truth of the relationship—either you two will be able to accept each other, or you won’t and it was always doomed. You might think that presenting the truth in a pretty way will change the outcome, but it won’t.
When I try to talk to you, when I ask for more explanations, I’m expressing my faith in the possibility that we could understand each other completely. And it’s so very hard to understand someone completely. I wouldn’t claim I’ve gotten there with anyone. But it’s the dream.
– https://ava.substack.com/p/communication-on-all-levels
On Timelines
I’ve also come to realize that timing plays an important role. When the timing is right, everything runs like clockwork. The love flows and churns, the hardships look easy, the dealbreakers turn into small problems.
Now “timing is right” is a flexible statement. There could be many versions of that. But the most notable of all is when your timelines align.
“Timelines” are a very interesting perspective.
When you think of new people you know in terms of timelines, it’s harder to get upset when things do not work out, and easier to be grateful when things do.
Timelines represent where exactly they are on their journeys? Do they have the emotional capacity? Are they psychologically ready? When was the last time they suffered because of somebody? Are they equipped enough not to carry over from their past, if there is? Are they open enough to talk about these topics?
Not every boy or girl you’ll like at the gym will potentially have a timeline that aligns with you. And it takes some time to reveal these facts. A bigger part of the problem is we often don’t know the answers to most of these questions. But when we’re in it, everything comes to the surface, it’s inevitable.
Let us put it this way: You are extremely lucky if 1. You like each other and 2. Your timelines align.
That often isn’t the case though, and from an optimistic point of view, if you can just keep this at the back of your mind, the size of the opportunity is far bigger than you might think.
Pt.II of this, I’m going to talk about components of a healthy relationship, including mental stimulation and co-therapy.