Here's a popular quote from "Pooh's Little Instruction Book": "If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." You might find this sweet phrase on wedding invitations or valentine's day cards. I found it in seventh grade, and the words reverberated through my heart. The idea is that love is a feeling with a long-term stretch; love is one of eternity. This idea caught my eye because it exclaimed what I believed. Serious relationships are portrayed as fairytales that should end in happily ever afters. And true romance works towards eternity. Why create something so intense with someone if you don't want to bear its weight 'til death do you part?
When I met my boyfriend almost two months before the end of this past semester, we just clicked. Over sushi and hugs, we found shared worlds. Realizing similar experiences with depression meant we found ourselves in deep and dark crevices of the other's mind. Yet we also came from greatly different lives, and we delighted in it. We agreed early on that it would be a short-term thing until I left for the summer as there was a possibility he would be transferring to a school eight hours away.
You could decide the way you want things to go, but you can't ever predict how life unravels. And despite the planned casualty of it all, things progressed. What ensued in the following weeks were unbearably emotional. Following trips around New York state and conversations about the universe, feelings deepened. And as the end date approached, there was a twinge of melancholy in all the fun. There was nothing casual about our relationship anymore.
We wanted it to last forever.
On the last Friday of spring semester, he revealed that he wouldn't be transferring—suggesting our final days wouldn't have to be a "goodbye" but "See you later." We were presented with opportunity to stretch out the time we had together, and we took it.
Yet understanding our relationship as short-term was vastly different from understanding it as long-term. What was magical became mundane. Short-term relationships are considered casual yet we felt differently. Knowing it was supposed to end liberated us from thinking about any implications of the future. We were allowed to feel what we felt and that was the point — no children or marriage plans nor anything else. And we felt passionately.
Knowing it would end gave less room for petty arguments over what our relationship meant; we just enjoyed being. On what would have been the final day of our love, I left New York City, and the pain of it fueled my understanding that what I experienced felt amazing. Knowing it would end made it almost like a fairy tale; fleeting yet eternal.
As our future transitioned from defined to ambiguous, I wondered about what could have been when we said goodbye at the airport. It was there that we felt strongest about the other. I had my final taste of what a magical affair felt like.
I don't claim that short-term relationships are any deeper than long-term relationships. In all honesty, I only write this because I want to explore why we assume short-term relationships are void of emotional authenticity. With bittersweet kisses under time constraints, there comes an intensity like none other. Yet I am content with where I am. There remain wondrous feelings in knowing you could be with someone for an eternity. goodbyes are peaceful because there will always be so much more you two can experience. There are no twists to the smiles you exchange. You can imagine a "next time" with that person. And I cherish it.
