Relationship Resolutions for 2014

I’m turning 27 this week, which means that a year has gone by since I decided to start intentionally dating. When I was 25, I broke up with my best friend and became single for the first time in my 20s. Together we’d moved to two new cities, watched my father slowly slip away, marathoned Veronica Mars until 5am and become each other’s lives. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I lost track of myself.

When I turned 26, I set up an online dating profile. I wanted to be brave again, to learn more about myself and what I wanted and my own agency. Over the last year I’ve come to feel more like myself than I did for a really long time, but there’s so much more to do.

This year, I want to be braver. I want to be intentional about the relationships that I build. I want to hold myself accountable. Here’s how I’m going to get started:

1. Run at full throttle .

I am a lot of person. I want to know what it feels like to be in a relationship that is so safe that I’m not always using 20-50% of my brainspace monitoring and self-censoring based on how somebody responds to my enthusiasm or my intellect or my emotions. You know, being less. I don’t want to be less anymore in my one primary relationship.

I think there is a ton of value in being less some of the time. It challenges me to see things the way that other people see them, and slow down or speed up or change tone. It is another part of growth. But I hope that my person is the one person where empathy and caring and love don’t have to equate to being fundamentally less.

2. Distill what I say/think/ feel down to what I would say/think/feel if I weren’t afraid of rejection.

I have these cyclical conversations in my head sometimes where fictional me is reframing and rephrasing the same point over and over again until I get to its truest version. I usually know when I find it because I don’t feel defensive anymore. There’s this moment where my brain stops spiralling in on itself and takes a deep breath. “Aha!” it says. “This is the thing that you really want to say. You were saying all of that other stuff to prevent yourself from being heard.” I want to stop saying all that other stuff.

3. Separate what happened from how I felt about it.

During the first 3-6 months that I know somebody, I have a really hard time coping with tardiness. Like, panic attack hard time. (Un)fortunately, it’s socially acceptable to be annoyed when somebody is late. It’s disrespectful, my time is valuable, etc. The funny thing — for me at least — is that it’s not about that. I know, because the anxiety subsides when I’ve known somebody for a while and I’m no longer worried that they don’t want to spend time with me. It’s convenient to tell somebody that I’m upset because they’re disrespecting my time; it’s honest to tell somebody that I’m upset because I’m feeling insecure. I suspect that tardiness isn’t the only thing I get upset about whose root is worth isolating.

4. Remember that dating is about collaborating not competing.

On an online dating site, it’s easy to think that I’m competing against an infinite number of girls just like me. Bangs? Check! Sarcasm? Check! Smarmy comments about grammar or punctuation? Check! In this environment I sometimes forget that whether or not I want to see somebody again has very little to do with whether or not I want to see somebody else again, and much more to do with what I can imagine building with them. I don’t need to be funnier or skinnier or smarter than the last girl that somebody went on a date with. I need to be myself, and see if I happen to be a person he can imagine building something with.

5. Know that a relationship is not a destination. It never will be. No matter how you label it.

I want to build a relationship that is safe and challenging and engaging and loving. Calling it serious or monogamous or eternal does not automatically create any of those conditions. This year I want to learn what does.