Somewhere along the way, we started confusing love with fusion. We celebrate couples who do everything together. They share hobbies, friendships, passwords, opinions, social media accounts and sometimes it feels like they even share a single personality. People call it relationship goals. To be honest, in my early twenties, I probably would have called it that too. Back then, I thought the closer two people became, the stronger their love must be. It took me years and a fair amount of life to realize that closeness and losing yourself are not the same thing.The older I get, the more I believe that love doesn’t ask us to become less of ourselves. It asks us to become more. I’ve lived enough life to know what it feels like to lose yourself. Sometimes it happens because someone takes pieces of you away. Sometimes it happens because you hand them over willingly, believing that’s what love requires. Neither is healthy, by the way.
A relationship shouldn’t cost you your identity. I don’t want someone who needs me every minute of every day. And I certainly don’t want to become someone who needs another person to feel complete. I want to choose someone. There’s a huge difference. For me, the healthiest relationships are built on a simple paradox: we grow together because we also grow separately. You have your passions, I have mine. You need a weekend with your friends, I might need an afternoon with a book and complete silence. Neither of us should feel guilty about that. In fact, I think it’s necessary.
Togetherness is beautiful. Separatedness is necessary. The challenge is learning the difference.
When two people stop growing as individuals, the relationship often stops growing too. It becomes predictable. Comfortable, perhaps, but stagnant. And here’s something I don’t hear people say often enough. Missing each other is healthy. There is something beautiful about looking forward to seeing the person you love, about having stories to tell because you’ve actually lived a little apart, about discovering that your partner has learned something new, experienced something new, become something new. You can’t be curious about someone who has become an extension of yourself.
I also think trust looks very different from what many people imagine. Trust isn’t knowing where your partner is every second of the day. It isn’t checking phones, sharing locations, or needing constant reassurance. Trust is peace and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the whole world. Trust it’s knowing that someone can have a life outside of you without that life becoming a threat to you. Maybe that’s why I no longer believe that togetherness is measured by proximity. It’s measured by freedom. Can I be fully myself with you? Can you be fully yourself with me? Can we encourage each other’s growth even when it leads us in different directions for a while? If the answer is yes, then coming back to each other becomes a choice rather than an obligation and I think choice is the purest form of love because anyone can stay when they feel trapped. It takes something much stronger to stay when you’re completely free to leave.
I don’t want a relationship where we hold on so tightly that we slowly suffocate each other. I want one where we hold on lightly enough for both of us to breathe, where silence isn’t threatening, where independence isn’t suspicious, where saying “I need some time for myself” isn’t heard as “I love you less.” Maybe that’s an unpopular opinion or maybe it’s simply what love looks like after life has taught you that losing yourself is never the price of keeping someone else.
The best relationships, in my view, are not built by two people becoming one. They’re built by two whole people who never stop becoming themselves and who keep falling in love with the person the other is becoming. Consciously and willingly.