I’ve been in all sorts of relationship situations over the years. Once upon a time, I was one of the only single people in my friends group — surrounded by couples. I’ve also been in a long-term monogamous relationship that opened up after eight years. I’ve been married, divorced. At one point, I was in an intricate polyamorous relationship system — in which I was dating somewhere between five to eight people, depending on what you counted as “dating” or a “relationship.” (If anyone is wondering how I had the time, it probably helps to know that I lived with three of my romantic partners.)
These days I’m actually just dating one person. I live with them. We’ve been together for over 10 years. We were friends for a while before we started dating. They were my best friend, really, the person I would talk to about problems I was having. We were so close. I was extremely attracted to them — but figured that it would be too much to expect a romantic spark to be there, in addition to our deep friendship.
I was happy to be wrong about that. We’ve both seen other people in the time we’ve been together. People who came and went.
At the moment, it’s just us. I have no idea whether it stays this way or not. Life is unpredictable, and I’m open-minded and have learned to just roll with how things want to work out versus how I think they should.
(Probably helps that we’re both ambiamorous, meaning that we’re about as happy being in a monogamous relationship as we are being in polyamorous relationship systems. It’s more about the health of the relationships involved.)
Being Able to Be Goofy With Someone Is a Form of Intimacy #
There are so many things I love about my partner. At this point, I’ve probably written a hundred essays about them that are basically love poems.
But there’s something that I forget to mention sometimes when I’m going down a list of both their personal merits — and the merits of the combination of us in a relationship… we get so goofy sometimes with one another. So silly.
We joke around all the time, and it’s so easy. We both poke fun of ourselves at times — and we’re able to playfully tease one another, without the other person taking offense or raising a big fuss.
This wasn’t the case in my last long-term relationship, the other one that lasted a decade. That ex took everything extremely personally. Even benign laughter, when I was laughing at something else or the situation — they would interpret any merriment as hostile laughter directed at them.
But not in my current relationship. We laugh and laugh.
And I realized that it’s the same way in all of my close friendships… we’re goofy with each other. We laugh at ourselves, at each other, at the sheer absurdity of life. And there’s no hostility in that humor — none given and none received.
I conclude from this that being able to be goofy with someone is a form of intimacy. Like every other form of intimacy, it’s not for everyone. But it’s definitely for me.