By Cassie Sheridan |
The most impossibly difficult, frustrating, confusing part of modern relationships is figuring out where you stand (or lay) and what to call that person.
I’ve personally used the phrase ‘almost-relationship’ an embarrassing amount of times, and have talked in circles around my romantic status to friends who nod along because they’ve all been there too.
We all seem to be caught in the middle of a weird dichotomy: Hooking-up or committing.
That mystical relationship point where it’s anyones guess what is going on seems to be expanding rapidly to the point where it’s more common to hear someone is “seeing” or hooking up with someone else than to hear even a murmur of exclusivity.
The pre-committal stage of relationships has taken on a new form - a multi-month beast of hooking up, hanging out and espousing your indifference about the outcome.
We all seem frightened beyond measure of committing.
We all seem equally frightened about having no one at all.
We’ve created an unfortunate social taboo where the people in serious relationships are labeled as insane and missing out on all the fun.
We’ve created an equally unfortunate social taboo where if you are not actively searching for someone or actively hooking up you are to be pitied and asked how your Netflix watching has been going.
We have been labeled by everyone a generation that is incapable of committing to anything in our lives: partners, jobs, etc.
We listen to adults tut-tut in disapproval of the foolishness of young engagements or settling too soon, and yet we are apparently sex-crazed fluidly oriented sexual beings throwing wild orgasm parties and refusing to commit to anything or anyone.
All of this seems to explain why that stage before the commitment is expanding greatly.
It’s easy to be negative and uncomfortable and nod and preach along that none of us can commit and boys are players and girls are loose and no one is willing to give up their freedoms at the age of 20 (or whatever) to commit to one person.
All of that can be true and in some cases it’s definitely true and mostly fine. There’s no reason to have to worry at all about finding someone right now and you should obviously and always do what is best for you.
But I’m sick of hearing from everyone, including those of us part of it, that no one our age values commitment.
I think there’s something else going on here. Something beyond being sex-mad youngsters sprinting out the door when it’s cuddle time, talking circles around our relationship statuses and caring only for the carnal and none of the heart.
We do care, perhaps we even care more.
Our extension of the period before an official anything doesn’t always have to mean that we are just trying to hook up and never speak again, maybe it means that we are taking commitment more seriously than ever.
In a world with divorce rates hovering around 50 percent, people screaming at us from every angle to not settle for anything, most importantly love, who isn’t terrified of committing to the wrong thing?
We don't want to fail, romantically or otherwise. We've seen our parents fail. We’ve seen our friends fail. We’re scared of getting too close to someone we could lose.
I think in many ways commitment has never been taken more seriously than it is now.
With all this fear surrounding making the wrong choice or settling too soon or settling for less or committing to the wrong things, is it any wonder that we are staying in the pre-committal stage for longer?
It’s safer there. If it doesn’t work you didn’t really “break up.” (You were conveniently never really ‘‘together!’’)
It’s easier to explore your desires or your compatibility (existentially, sexually or otherwise) without any of the normative labels or explanation that can make relationships so challenging.
I don’t know when exactly we suddenly leave the mystical pre-commitment ‘almost-relationship’ state and genuinely choose to commit to one another, but I feel like once we do we are more sure, more invested, more passionate and more committed to making it work for longer.
The in-between is never easy, but it's okay, because it's part of the process toward meaningful commitment.
