PQ 17.2 — What parts of my relationships are most important? How can I preserve those elements while knowing that my relationships will change over time?
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There’s a kind of rhythm to my life with Justin. We move in tandem. Pretty much effortlessly. We sleep in the same bed, eat most meals together. When we’re both home and one of us goes to bed, the other goes with them. Even if this means (in my case especially), that one of us is doing stuff on our phone while the other is sleeping.
My job is such that I could easily sleep into the late afternoon most days and work in the evenings — which is a time when it’s noticeably easier for me to write, since the darkness has a way of acting as an optimal emotional blank canvas.
But I don’t.
Instead, I get up in the morning. Stay roughly on the same schedule as he does. Without even meaning to, really. It just kind of happens.
Now, we both date other people separately. Spend time apart because of work trips and other obligations. And we do have separate friends and interests that mean we don’t spend every available moment together.
But there’s a kind of gravity, a tending towards each other, that means we reunite often. And predictably. It’s a rhythm that we both follow. After the solo sections, we’re back to the main melody. Where we play harmonies and riff off each other.
We’re pretty much always in sync.
I’d never had a relationship like that before Justin. Where we move past one another in such a stable orbit. Constant presences in one another’s life but able to swing out of view with each of us knowing, for sure, that we’ll be back in a moment.
I think if I ever did lose Justin — to heartbreak or mortality — that my expectation would be that he’s not really gone. Instead, my heart would believe he’s only swung out of sight for a moment. And that he’ll be back soon.
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This post is part of a series in which I answer each of the chapter-end questions in More than Two with an essay. For the entire list of questions and answers, please see this indexed list.