5000 Days
Dear reader
Today I bring you a new installment of the Yes Yes Advice Column all about the great dance of letting yourself fall in love but not fall out of practice with everything you do to stay alive.
In honor of my own aliveness I wanted to share that today I celebrate 5000 DAYS of sobriety against the first drink! It continues to amaze me how many 24 hrs I have strung together by miracle and hard work. All glory to god.
Alive alive alive
TODAY’S QUESTION
I started seeing someone about 2 months ago, and at 30 years old, this feels like the first healthy romantic relationship I’m developing and feels like the healthiest time of my personal life in self care, habits, and practices. He just finished the Appalachian Trail and is from far away, so is somewhat living with me, ie it’s not typical in that we go on a date and then go our separate ways until our next date. I am wondering how to keep up my personal practices that can feel pretty regimented and consuming and the sense of self that I connect to within them while also exploring this new person, this new relationship, and this new self I am discovering of myself in our relationship. I think more generally this question is - how do you keep connected to self while diving into a new relationship?
ANSWER :
What a gift! To be falling in love! To be in this season of sweet delight. My first thought might surprise you but I will take my time to unpack it a little bit : Let it consume you. Let it consume you in a safe way where you are on the edge of your seat but you are also totally in control.
But your question remains, how do you let yourself be in a season of falling in love and being consumed without it taking you under the waves where you can barely come up for air? How do we stay so rooted in our solo material that when it is time for the duet we instinctively know what moves to pull out?
I find that a crush or falling in love really disorients me. It has been part of the pleasure of not dating for the last year and having very little knock me off my center. And yet as I complete certain professional goals in my life I find myself thinking, ok perhaps I am ready to get knocked off my center again. Like you said, you are feeling the healthiest you have ever felt in your life. To me that is a good time to loosen the grip a bit so that you can now be a in a season of getting to know someone else.
What I am attempting to say is : Its ok if some of the daily routines are a little wonky while you settle in to this new reality. It’s ok if you aren’t as on top of things as you usually are. I don’t want you to miss out on this sweet season that only happens in the beginning. Let yourself luxuriate in it a bit and don’t judge yourself for the time and effort you are giving it.
Now, that being said, let’s dig in to all the ways you can still protect your time and energy in this new relationship.
TEN WAYS TO STAY WHOLE AS YOURSELF WHILE FALLING IN LOVE
Go for walks by yourself. Do not invite him on the walk. This is your walk. Whether you listen to a podcast, do it in silence, or listen to an audiobook, go on a walk alone and do not invite him to come with you.
Explain to him that you are going to be carving out time to protect your solo activities and how important that is to you when building a new relationship. Explain that you have a habit of losing yourself to love sometimes and you refuse to abandon yourself again.
Solo movie nights, leave him at home and go see a movie alone.
Morning pages or a journaling practice. Try to have some sort of daily writing practice that keeps you with a pen in hand to the paper. This will help you keep track of where you are losing yourself and where you are doing well. This also is time away from the convergence of love and is a set time every day where you pour back into yourself.
Schedule real dates with each other. In a swift move in together situation / long distance cohabitation it can be so easy to completely merge into one blob of a being and not have real experiences together. Make sure you are planning actual things to go to together - go to a cute bookstore, go out to lunch, plan a picnic somewhere, go to a museum together.
Keep your friends in the loop. Pick 1-3 closest friends who you will remain incredibly honest with about this experience. Do not lie to them. Do not say OH YAH ITS GREAT right after you fought about who scrubbed a dish in a weird way. Because yes that is how the toxic fights from being around each other too much start - its always about washing a dish.
Get a hobby or a volunteer position that has nothing to do with work and nothing to do with him. Try for once a week but once a month works too. Take a ceramics class, get into gardening, see if an organization near you needs help.
Have weekly or monthly checkins where you take turns sharing without interruptions. What is going well for each of you, what is a struggle, what needs to shift. Having regular checkins can help because if a small conflict comes up you know you have the checkin time scheduled to discuss.
Don’t cancel things to hang out with him. It will feel tempting to just want to cancel everything and hangout, but I find that keeping to my commitments builds self esteem.
It’s ok to cancel everything and hangout. I know I know thats the craziest thing to do to tell you both are possible. But I want you to cherish this new love! And sometimes that calls for a season of canceling work for the day and enjoying the magic of the new love.
The moral of the story is : Only you can know when you are in over your head and when you are treading water safely. I would make a list of your daily, weekly, and monthly non negotiables. If there is something on your list that you start missing every week because of this new relationship, that would be a cause for concern. But don’t beat yourself up, it’s so normal to let the new love take you out to sea. Just keep an eye on it, keep an inventory of it, and continue to invite in an awareness about how it’s going.
I wish you much luck and abundance in this new love and support you in both being a little swept up and in not losing yourself.
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