Dating : care

I’m watching Street Food:Asia on Netflix (which I highly recommend btw), and the episode in Yogyakarta features a painfully adorable old married couple who’s livelihood is the jajan pasar they sell together. They told their story of meeting on a street, selling food, and began talking and just…fell in love.

Something about their story kind of split something open in my head. My first instinct was (as usual) a sort of whiney cynicism about how lucky they were to have found love so easily and how rare it is that two people who just happened to be good for each other also fell in love.

Then in actually dawned on me.

This isn’t dumb luck. It’s care.

See, I had been at the point where I assumed if two people were attracted to each other and it became love and they were able to make it last because neither of them had issues or trauma, or even if they did they just worked well together, that they won some cosmic dice roll. Now I’m not so sure.

I very much agree that the idea we are fed of « soul mates », or « my one and only forever and ever » is poisonous and leads to lot of people stuck in toxic situations.

But, like so much else that has resulted as a backlash against this, I think we went too far and forgot some things. I think maybe people are forgetting to actually value the feelings they have, and this leads to them not valuing the other person. The idea that we are always free to leave an unhappy situation should not have ever lead to « well I’ll just find another tomorrow or next week so why bother working on this? »

I don’t know, maybe because you care?

Does anyone still care?

People are not your crotch wetting place holders.

I’m someone who will always value it deeply when I feel for someone, meaning I value them, and it breaks my heart to think how rare this might be becoming.

No, we don’t just get one shot at some once in a lifetime love and if we miss it we die alone. Neither is love simply some honeymoon fleeting passion which will eventually die out. Love is what happens when two people recognize the connection they have and CARE for it, and tend to it, and for/to each other. My instinct is and always has been to treat my feelings for someone else (and that person) with care. And sure, being that attractions and romantic feelings are more rare for me perhaps it’s easier for me to care when they do happen. But still, isn’t that the whole fucking point? I’m only now realizing that this is not everyones instinct. It’s maybe not even most people’s. Not enough people are caring, because maybe finding new connections has become too cheap.

And real talk whatever y’all are feeling at a profile thru your rectangle, or after your 5th beer on your first or third date…that shit is not a connection. You’re fucking horny. Embrace it! And call it what it is.

Mbah and Jumirah aren’t lucky. They gave a shit. They looked at each other and the connection they had, realized it was worth something, and made a decision to keep giving a shit, together.

Giving a shit means showing up every day for the other person, seeing them in their whole truth and letting them see you, and assuring each that the other is safe by showing them. Giving a shit means choosing each other and your relationship every day, because while attractions may be a dime a dozen, love is not.

I guess, while I still don’t believe in marriage, this makes me understand some of the idea behind it. The concept of working to continue to foster the connection the two of you found makes total sense to me (I just dont think we need any weird ownership contracts to do that. Plus I’m still pretty meh on living with a partner again but who knows?).

This all makes me sad, but it also makes me hopeful. I know I’m not alone in this. I think the casual hookups, the free-love-I love-everyones, the tinder types, have dominated this conversation for quite some time, and its weirdly morphing into new definitions of « love » that are based on over excitement at attraction, getting a boner at being wanted, and not on care.

I was talking about this with Regan, the best friend, and she mentioned that traditionally it has never been expected that two people were to put equal care into creating a bond, because care was what women did. I don’t think it controversial to say this strange eschewing of care is absolutely not exclusively to hetero relationships, but it did make me wonder if this trend isn’t also tied to that same backlash against patriarchal toxic norms of ownership of women, and emotional labor placed on us exclusively. That or its just emotional immaturity being bred by a culture of convenience. Maybe it’s both.

And I get it. I do. There is plenty to criticize about toxic romantic fantasies and concepts which we are all raised on. But these types who are reacting against it are largely fucking up when it comes to love and relationships too. Lord knows attractions can and do happen all the time. And maybe “love” IS limitless.

Care is not. Don’t forget that.

Or maybe I just value quality over quantity, cuz I’m not shallow.

::shrug::