fantasy
the illusion of relationship security
A big part of my early thirties has been about learning which ladders I have no interest in climbing and accepting the shift in identity that comes with this realization. Next to the corporate ladder is the relationship ladder, with milestones like become exclusive, move in together, open a joint bank account, get married, have kids. The two enable each other, promising the vaunted security of liberal capitalism: your corporate job provides for your family, and your family compels you to work harder at your job so you can earn a bigger paycheck.
When M and I first started dating in 2019, we took our time moving from one rung of the relationship ladder to the next, but the higher we inched toward the top, the shakier it felt. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that the ladder itself might be the problem. Like many couples living together for the first time and struggling to adapt to a shared lifestyle, we thought the problem was us. So nine months after signing our first lease and moving to Brooklyn, we broke up.
Attachment theory can be useful for understanding why people behave the way they do in intimate relationships, but over-reliance on it runs the risk of diagnosing any deviation from accepted convention as a problem. For example, if someone doesn’t want to get married, attachment theory might posit a fear of commitment as the culprit, a telltale sign of avoidant attachment. While this may be the case, it’s not the only possible explanation. If we accept, instead, the premise that there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to get married, then maybe the problem isn’t internal. Maybe the system we subscribe to isn’t serving our needs.
Ten months ago, M and I decided to give our relationship another shot. We threw the old playbook out the window in favor of trying something unorthodox: being together without living together (I first wrote about this idea while we were broken up). We fell into the cadence of seeing each other once a week, and it’s been working really well. I know this sounds crazy. It flies in the face of what we were taught to believe about romantic love. Why wouldn’t you want to spend every waking hour with your life partner, your best friend, your soulmate?
Living separately from my partner has given me enough independence to be the pilot of my own life, to have a constant pulse on my own desires, while still feeling connected. The idea that we could enjoy each other’s company and have our own hobbies and friends shouldn’t have been such a revelation, but it was. Now, we spend our time together intentionally instead of feeling like we have to cook dinner or watch TV or do something together just because we live under the same roof. We can appreciate each other’s presence instead of taking it for granted. Of course, what works for us might not work for others, and what works for us today might not work for us five years from now.
We all carry wounds, often unrecognized, from our past. No one is a clean slate. When triggered, we resort to coping mechanisms that once served us in childhood but have become maladaptive, even self-sabotaging. When this happens, it can feel like we’re being walloped by the past, caught in the same conflict over and over. But it does get easier. The patterns become more recognizable. You learn how to listen to your emotions. But I don’t think you ever reach a point where you feel like nothing could possibly go wrong. “Secure attachment” as an end goal is a fantasy. The work of being in a relationship with someone is to learn to love each other better as we change, and that’s an unending endeavor.
The emergency safety instructions on an airplane apply well to relationships: you can only help another person if you help yourself first. Distance, and the perspective it provides, is just as important as emotional and physical closeness. “Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.” (I knew I couldn’t get through this without quoting Esther Perel.)
Of course, I would be sad if M and I parted ways, but because I know what I want in my life, I can be openminded about our relationship instead of clinging to one person like a life raft. For the same reason I don’t subscribe to traditional marriage vows (“’til death do us part”), I don’t believe in limiting how our future selves unfold. You can commit to someone without making guarantees about who you’ll be five, ten or thirty years from now. Commitment and an openness to the future aren’t mutually exclusive. I don’t need a partner who promises to be with me forever and always. What I need is someone who has faith that we can work through whatever life throws at us, even if it means reaching a decision that what’s best for us is to go our separate ways.
In choosing not to climb the relationship ladder, I’m also giving up the illusion of security that it promises and any claim I might have on another person’s heart. For the first time, I can truly say I’m at peace with it.
Thanks for the enlightened perspective, as making accurate predictions about the rest of our lives is indeed fraught with errors. Letting go of the need for security may seem frightening on the one hand but also liberating. In a way, it’s telling ourselves, “No matter what happens, I will still have me. Maybe that is all the security I need.”
Thank you for sharing this piece of writing. It really made me think of the poem that went viral on instagram a while ago called “if I had three lives” by Sarah Russell. I have an intuition that marriage and the traditional (heterosexual) relationship latter also feels suffocating in a gendered way, as my dream life growing up was a small apartment alone in a city with books and a cat, with no thought of a partner living with me. This is so thought-provoking. I love it.