I Got A Boyfriend … and an Identity Crisis

An explanation for my hiatus and some thoughts on what you give up when you finally find someone

Illustration by the one-time thief Nicholas Konrad. Be careful with your keys.

I. Sorry I Disappeared

I’ve spent the last few months trying and failing to complete this newsletter.

I wrote about my three week stint searching for the right couch for my new apartment, and how much the process of entering strangers’ homes to lay on their sofas mirrored the forced intimacy and exhilarating discomfort I felt in dating.¹

I wrote from an airplane, tens of thousands of feet above the Pacific Ocean, about the trip I took to Japan with two of my friends, and how great it felt to finally put to rest my deep-seated fear that being single would stifle my ability to travel as adventurously as I wanted. (I thought correctly that I would be too on edge to enjoy solo-travel to a country where I knew no one and didn’t speak the language. I thought incorrectly that my closest friends who were in relationships wouldn’t have the time or interest in spending their limited vacation days with me instead of their own partners.)

But every time I got about 300 words in, I’d re-read what I’d written and think: This isn’t right. The isn’t capturing how I really feel. Something is missing.

II. The Missing Ingredient

Remember that guy I mentioned from my Valentines Day dinner? The one I cooked a meal with? I’ve kept seeing him.

We went from one date a week to two, to three, sometimes more. I met his brother and his friends and his giant collection of records. I learned that he gets quiet and withdrawn when he’s bored and that he likes to eat exactly two squares of dark chocolate after dinner.

I waited for the resistance I’ve become so accustomed to. For some behavior of his to repel me, for his interest in me to flatline, for the discovery that I didn’t like the version of myself he brought out.

But those things never came, or if they did, they were resolved easily. And so, I began to accept…with equal amounts relief and panic… that I liked this guy more than I have liked anyone in a very long time.

One night, a couple of months in to seeing each other, after we’d both lost count of exactly how many dates we’d been on, I found myself awake in his dark bedroom, unable to sleep.

I listened to his consistent breath beside me, stared up at his ceiling and experienced what I can only describe as an adrenaline-induced apparition of the future.

I saw us together, our social lives getting more intertwined. I saw us in a home, an apartment - I don’t know, a structure of some kind! - living together. I imagined us getting married and having an alien-looking infant.² I pictured myself barefoot, frozen in motion, with one leg in one realm, and the other crossing over into the next.

My date flipped on to his side to face me, maybe somehow aware of the melodrama playing out in my head.

Are you ok? He asked.

I think I’m having an identity crisis, I explained. I think this is it. I think we’re going to end up together. I think we’re never going to date other people. I think we’re never going to be single again.

He paused for a few seconds to consider this and then said something like: well, I guess this is a good time to tell you that I don’t want to date anyone else.

Are you proposing? I asked.

How do you feel about being my girlfriend? he replied.

III. Mourning

Over the last three years, whenever someone in my life - even a celebrity I keep loose tabs on - goes from being single to being in a relationship, there is some small part of me that thinks: There goes another one.

Sometimes this realization is accompanied by optimism: if they can find someone, I will too! (I felt this way about Allison Roman), other times anxiety: the pool is narrowing! How am I still single?

But always, it comes with mourning: That person is no longer apart of the community. We are no longer navigating the same kind of uncertainty.

And so, while I feel incredibly lucky to be with someone I like so much, I also feel like I’ve given up something very enriching and self-orienting by entering into this new relationship.

IV. One Thing I’ll Miss

When I was working on this newsletter, I told my boyfriend that I thought being in a relationship had made me less cool.

He didn’t relate.

Being in a relationship, he argued, expanded his confidence. Knowing someone else loved and accepted him made him feel more capable of being the fullest version of himself. And seeing the world through someone else’s eyes made him more interesting, more curious.

That’s exactly my point, I tried to explain. My confidence, my optimism, my ideas - they’re slightly less self-generated. I can’t hold as tightly to the illusion that I am doing it all on my own.

Being in a relationship has made me feel a little bit less bold, a little bit less self-reliant, a little bit less like I’m living in defiance of social norms.

It has forced me to confront how much I am deriving from this new person in my life, and by extension, how much I have always derived from the people in my life: my friends, my family, my colleagues, the people who read this newsletter, even the strange, sometimes enraging, creatures I met on dates.

I will miss it: the feeling that I was the master of my own universe, the moments of intense pride when I felt like I didn’t need anyone else to feel happy and fulfilled.

I am so much more vulnerable now, I know how much I stand to lose.

See you in a couple weeks - I look forward to writing on a more frequent cadence again.

1. One highlight: watching a man coo in baby voice to his dog.

2. All infants look like aliens.