Romantic Love

Romantic love is difficult to qualify or quantify or make any sense of. People talk about it all the time, there are songs and books and poems that all try to make sense of it. Defining it is tricky, however, and it gets more so when you start to look outside of heteronormativity, monogamy, and the relationship escalator.

I can tell you that romantic love, for me, is different from friend love, family love, puppy love... It feels like warm honey in the sun, golden and liquid. It feels like tiny fireworks going off in my brain. It is tied to a few people in my life, and it usually starts with a heavy dose of apprehension because it's something I feel all the way, every single time.

My concept of romantic love is complicated by my friend Spencer. Spencer is someone I have been friends with since April of 2012, and when we first started talking I fell head over heels for them within weeks. I expressed my interest and affection, I was gently rebuffed, and I was a broken little heap for a couple days. I revived. I recovered. I didn't lose that spark. Spencer and I lived in the same dorm freshman year of college, and I went to see them whenever I could. I listened to stories about their life and classes, I sat on their floor while they did homework, I adjusted every time they changed their name or pronouns, and listened every time they expressed their identity and orientation differently.

I expected nothing. After I asked the first time, I never again told them I wanted to date. I didn't want to date. I wanted them to be happy, to be part of my life, to thrive in their environment and relationships. I wanted to support that in any way that I could. I've spent a few years now watching Spencer from afar as they do all of these things, and as they become the person they've always wanted to become. And I still feel that spark, that liquid gold, that certainty of affection. This person will always be my person.

My love for my friend Whitney is a different kind of love. It's bright and happy and sometimes exasperated and protective. It's standing up for her when she can't stand up for herself, and it's her reminding me that my feelings are important even when I want to prioritize other people. We have steel cables connecting us across the miles and time. This person will always be my person.

Ben and Jakal are my people, too. My partners. Honey in the sun, fireworks in the brain, butterflies in the stomach affection and joy and anticipation. The building of something new and beautiful. Still learning each other, still reaching out at random times just to feel the warmth and reality of each other. Reassurance and emotional support and jokes and sharing. Building lives that entwine and entangle and converge. These are different, and they do not come with the certainty of forever, but they come with the certainty of "right now, forever." One of my favorite lines of poetry that I've ever encountered is from "How It Ends" by Andrea Gibson.

"But whatever

Whenever
However this ends,
I want you to know, that right now,
I love you forever."

Who do I know?

I talk to a lot of people. I make new friends easily and share pieces of my life. I hang out with people whose lives are complex and existed long before we were friends.

One of my favorite things about this is stories and names. When you are telling a story to someone you don’t know well, there’s a toss up between identifying them in relation to you (my best friend), offering the relationship and the name (my best friend, Whitney) or just offering the name (Whitney said...). And sometimes you have to make a fuller distinction with people you’re sure know about each other (you know, my friend, Danny. He went to Wooster and we met that one time because of music and we started talking again for reasons x y z) until you get the “ohhhh, right, that person.”

I have a tendency to talk about the same people frequently, and I switch off between the names and the relationships, only occasionally offering them at the same time. Basically my method is that I’ll try to make it obvious the first few times, then I’ll just use what’s easiest in the moment and you’ll figure it out.

I love watching how other people approach this as well. The times that they expect me to know who the name belongs to, and the times they think they need to explain, and the times they use the relationship only even when I probably know the name. The times when they’re going to use the name, and it doesn’t really matter if you know the relationship or not.

It’s just interesting to think about the level of familiarity we expect people to have with the cast of characters in our lives. I love putting the puzzle pieces together, and I love feeling like the other person thinks I’m close enough to know who they’re talking about or that I’ll figure it out. I love when they’re right. I love getting people up to speed on my MVP list quickly.