Magic beginnings do not exist, but magic attempts do.

We all know how complicated dating can be.

I don’t mean the process from installing an app to meeting another person. I mean everything that comes AFTER a date that went well.

After all, many claim that the beginnings are especially magical.

Everything would be so wonderful and sweet.

Everything beautiful and kind of cute.

The red flags, get dipped in cotton candy and get our mouths stuck whenever we try to stop the other person from chewing too loudly. After all, we know that chewing too loudly will turn into obnoxious smacking and get on our last nerve in 14.3 months and escalate to the first argument at 8pm in a one-room apartment.

I found beginnings exhausting because nothing is clear. Everything is uncertain and must either be closely observed, questioned, inquired about, or ignored at the exact discretion of the person.

For example, whether someone suffers from constipation or is simply looking for conspiracy theories in the bathroom to wind down from an exhausting day at work, we don’t find out in the first few weeks and months, but over a much longer period of time.

Questions that always unsettled me, especially at the beginning, were for example:

• How much of my inner struggle can I share without being labeled mentally ill?
• Can I steal food from his plate before I have even tasted my own food? And if not, what does that say about him?
• Does he really just need some me-time, or is it an avoidance mechanism?
• Is he just full, or am I a bad cook?
• Am I exhausting, or is he just extremely unenthusiastic?

In the first weeks and months, I was not only walking on eggshells, but also walking a razor-thin line between authentic self-expression and insensitive criticism.

In the question of how I communicate my own needs, get to know the needs of the other and then learn to pay tribute to both, would be a big task and has little to do with magic from my point of view, but above all with a decision.

The decision to fall sometimes.

The decision to commit.

Among Millenials, I don’t necessarily belong to the group that should give relationship advice. I belong to the group that has skirted around love like cats around the bush. What I know about relationships is mostly through what I haven’t experienced.

That’s because, for example, I always thought that beginnings had to be magical, and then I didn’t know that a commitment doesn’t always refer to a lifetime, but sometimes just to the next step.

To honestly try to go beyond the beginnings and wait.

To trust.

What I know about relationships is mostly through what I haven’t experienced.

The deep understanding of each other.

A slight smirk when the loud chewing is nothing more than an acknowledgement.

A frown, because I am sometimes exhausting.

A guffaw, because sometimes I’m funny.

A warm look, knowing that I am loved.

Just the way I am.

Someone who wants to share what she feels.

Someone who steals food from the plate.

Someone who needs time out.

Someone who is sometimes exhausting,

But most of the time very funny.

Someone who has forgotten that love doesn’t mean forgetting yourself.

I don’t believe in the magic of beginnings.

I believe in the magic of honest attempts and the magic of trusting yourself.

I believe that I will experience all of that, one day.

Because I remember what love is.