being with someone makes me resistant to change. i am tied to him and if i change, we'd inevitably shift, and what if it's a shift i don't want? i know that a good partnership entails leaving room and flexibility for all sorts of changes, and the best couples have changed and grown together, parallel, for decades and decades. i am built to adapt, as we all are, but i wish i could be easier on myself and allow myself to change despite the fact that i am with someone. whether my partner will allow me to change is a marker of how we'd grow anyway.

i remember the night my long-distance ex told me that he found calling every day draining. i knew, then, that we would break up soon. he proposed calling every other day, and it was just something i could not adapt to, because once this distance had been established, the last thing i needed was an expansion of a temporal distance, and by extension, an emotional distance. maybe i should have spoken outright how much i needed him to be more emotionally attentive at that moment, or just in general, truthfully. as i'd spoke of missing him, through tears, he was busy folding laundry.

his favorite movie was/is la la land. (of course it was.) at some point, he'd used the lessons learned from the cinematic masterpiece to justify a potential future split, when he'd need to go to med school while i potentially go on a Fulbright out of the country; he was unwilling to do long distance in med school. i understand why. i fully do-- med school is hard, and relationships, let alone long-distance ones, are tricky to navigate anyways. i was disappointed at how quickly he was willing to call it off. we were lying in bed and i felt my heart sink. the future was going to take us away, not necessarily because we had obligations distant from one another, but because he was fundamentally unwilling to make it work. he knew from the start that that type of relationship would not work for him.

ever since that day, i didn't feel like myself in the relationship. i wanted so desperately to close the gaping gap between us and our dreams that i frantically applied to jobs months before i should have even started. i didn't tell him how scared i felt, because control of the relationship's future felt like it belonged to him, really. of course i could always cut ties, but i was unwilling because of how much it would hurt. but i was already hurting. i couldn't tell him that. i feared that he'd leave me, because i knew he would. he'd "give me up" in exchange for his dreams. everyone should always put themselves first, sure, but what terrible wording.

mia and sebastian were never meant for one another, and their breakup says everything you need to know. they had a short-lived romance, one that helped them grow, but in the end, i don't think that their dreams tore them apart. they tore themselves apart -- more specifically, it seemed like seb was unwilling to make it work, at that point. not to mention, they'd already spent months split up before that final conversation on the bench. the ultimate, good relationship doesn't split with dreams. a good relationship would allow me to pursue everything i want to do without feeling like i need to tailor my entire life to someone.

more on relationships

(written a little later in the day)

i talk a lot about romantic relationships because it matters a lot to me, perhaps to a slightly embarrassing degree. i've consumed enough content to know how prized romantic love is in society, and enough of such countercontent to know how individualistic and self-reliant we've all expected ourselves to be.

having been through a grand total of 1(!) relationships (and perhaps numerous crushes before that), i realized how different of a person i become when i become attached. yes, i am absolutely cognizant of my anxious tendencies, but there's a part of me that becomes a lot less ambitious of a person when i suddenly have someone to love, as if the prize was the person itself, and everything i've done in life was to earn the partner. it feels like a self-inflicted kind of misogyny -- or a misogynistic view, at least -- when i put it that way, when i put someone else's well-being before mine for the sake of remaining in a partnered unit.

being ambitious entails an almost conceited, self-centered approach to your own goals. "i can't move for anyone right now," he'd said. i understood. it's completely reasonable. "and i don't want you to move for me," he continued. that was the part i didn't understand. he knew that i was an ambitious girl. but if i loved someone enough, i would move, and if i couldn't, i'd be happy if they did willingly move for me or consider moving for me. i rationalized that he didn't love me enough, didn't know me enough. i would have moved for him because it was a city i genuinely wanted to explore. i would have moved for him because i wanted a new experience. it was for him in the sense that it was because of him, sure, but it was ultimately something i believed to be for me. my own dreams shift constantly, and when my orbit gets caught in a partner's gravity, i'd dive into the gravity headfirst. in a viable relationship, ambition doesn't need to -- and shouldn't -- come at the cost of a person you love.

my mother told me that i was a very clingy kid. during the four years of my early childhood when i lived in china, i reportedly cried at every babysitter, including members of my own extended family, for several days before i got used to them, or until my mother returned. it's a deep-seated fear. it's a deep-seated sensitivity. i'm no longer clingy when it comes to my own family; i hardly call my parents at all, really. i can't say the same for relationships. the amount of times i'd panic slightly as my partner would withdraw, and then i'd wonder if i'd said anything wrong. the amount of times as my ex watched me cry. looking back, i cried a lot in front of him for things that he did or said. i remember a sentence he said that stung me, to which i reacted with an utmost superficial equanimity, and i'd held onto it just to cry about it to him four weeks later. he was affectionate about it, but the type of person he is just wasn't what i needed to feel comfortable. he's a good person; i have a lot of respect and frankly, love, albeit in a different form, for him; we're just fundamentally incompatible. H, if you're somehow here and reading this, i wish you all the best. love, isa