Are We Doomed to Fail?
Papi, my situationship has an expiration date
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¡Hola Papi!
I'm a gay thirty-something who's had a few long-term relationships, but never truly fallen in love. I've filled the void in my heart with lots of casual sex and occasional dating and flirtations over the years. I love my life and have never felt particularly desperate for a relathip, but now I'm starting to feel feelings again.
I moved to a new, smaller city for a two-year fellowship, after which I will move on to a new job in a new city. A few months into being here, I met someone great. We started hanging out as friends, and then after a few months it turned intimate, romantic, and sexual. He is here for a one-year fellowship that ends next summer, and he will move away for a job somewhere else.
I think about him all the time and feel like I'm living in Kacey Musgraves' song Happy & Sad. It's all new and exciting and erotic and impossibly sweet at times, but tinged with a sadness and anxiety about the fact that it is delimited by time and geography. How do I enjoy the excitement of a new romance knowing that it's doomed? I know I should avoid the trap of thinking too much about the future (and heaven forbid bringing that up with the boy), and all the pressure that adds to early dating when things are so new and uncertain and could go any direction.
At the same time, I don't want to get heartbroken, and I wonder if I will act, even subconsciously, in a way to protect myself, rather than let myself be totally vulnerable and open up to the connection becoming deeper. I'm a clinically anxious person, which doesn't help things.
I know that we can only control the present, not the future and not the past, but it's really hard.
Love,
Starcrossed
Hey there, Starcrossed!
You’d be surprised how many letters I get about a similar phenomenon: A person who isn’t usually in a relationship finds someone great, but there’s a catch: there’s an expiration date. Does being in a temporary situation make dating easier somehow? Does it release a secret chemical? Or do we live under the thumb of a particularly cruel god?
Who am I to say, I suppose.
But, I have to disagree with a few of your premises here. Namely, that your entanglement with this new fellow is doomed to fail, and that talking to him about the future is something that would add unnecessary pressure. “Heaven forbid,” you even said!
Yet heaven has not forbidden it. Yes, the dynamic is new, and you are right to say it could go in “any direction.” But that doesn’t mean there’s a predestined outcome written in the stars you have no say in. A relationship isn’t some ride you’re strapped into where cupid pulls a lever and sends you flying through a series of loops and dips, stripping you of all control except for the volume of your screams.