As someone who had never had a relationship, I never realized how your life becomes connected to someone else. It’s this thing that turns serious so fast, all of a sudden I’m not dating other people, now we have expectations from each other, a year in and I made plans to visit family over the holidays and didn’t think to first run my plans by him because the holidays are something you spend together… all of a sudden I need to think about someone else when I make plans, and that is so completely foreign to me.

I am an adult, but even that fact still hasn’t fully solidified in my mind, but this is an adult relationship. A future together is this thing you have to keep in mind, and plan for. It’s crazy how it goes from dating/hooking up to being exclusive, to 2 years in and that means we are invested in dedicating a large portion of our lives to each other, what does that even mean?

How do you go from feeling like life is so open, you have no commitments, to then creating this tie to another person? Especially when none of this was planned. You were attracted to someone, wanted to bang them, and now what? You are a ‘we’? You make plans for a trip 6 months from now, you have to invest in the emotional support of your partner.

I feel like a relationship is this thing that requires so much vulnerability so suddenly, especially when you get into a relationship with someone who is more experienced in this sort of thing.

How do you give so much of yourself?

How are people not terrified by the void that will be left if this thing doesn’t work out?

As someone who has always assumed each partner came with some expiration date in the future, and planned my emotional availability accordingly (or lack of emotional availability), how do I open up? I find myself wondering when and how this is going to end, and wanting to prepare myself for that, to keep myself from getting hurt. I also find myself wondering how I got here, how did things escalate so fast? Do I even want to be here?