Heartbeats

You watch other people’s relationships and you see the same pattern over and over. John and Mandy just broke up—both of them wanted out, it just wasn’t working. So like everyone does, John tries to fix himself. Goes full goth, decides he needs something real this time, someone he doesn’t have to perform for. As if the problem was ever the costume.

Meanwhile Mille and Sarah, who work together, are in that drowsy new-relationship phase where they’re constantly touching each other and eating Chinese food and probably responsible for someone’s quarterly condom sales. They don’t think about the future. They don’t think about kids or mortgages or any of that. It’s just the next moment and the next time they get to see each other. It’s the only time it actually feels good.

Then there’s everyone else. The people who’ve been with someone for five years, ten years, a decade. The butterflies stopped around year two. Maybe they’re still there on special days, but it’s not the same. Most of the time it’s just work—keeping it alive, keeping it functioning, using whatever you have left. You tell yourself that’s what maturity looks like.

But you can’t stay in any of these. The new relationship runs its course. The long-term one develops problems and suddenly you’re back on the ground, dealing with real things. Breakups end. You’re single again, looking. You cycle through all of it—new, stable, broken—over and over until you’re dead. And it never gets easier, or maybe it does, but the cycle doesn’t change.

You go through it anyway. That takes something.