DO YOU WANT SOMEONE… OR ARE YOU JUST BORED?
I was rewatching Sex and the City (again) when I heard Carrie ask, "Was Charlotte right? In a world where everyone is desperate to make a connection, can a relationship actually bring you back to life?" and I kept thinking about it much longer than I'd like to admit. Probably because the day before, a friend looked at me and said, "I'm so bored. I need to meet someone." And my first instinct was, do you? I mean... I get it. I really do. But also... do you? Because if you think about it, we're surrounded by things happening all the time.
Look at me, I live in the city I always dreamed of living in. My friends are here. There's the beach, parties, restaurants I still haven't tried, beautiful people everywhere. In theory, life should already feel exciting. And yet, every now and then, usually on a completely average Tuesday, I catch myself thinking that something feels... missing. What's funny is how quickly our brain decides that the missing thing must be another person. Not a hobby. Not a spontaneous trip. Not a different routine. A man.
To be fair, it makes perfect sense. Someone new really does make life feel different. Suddenly you're checking your phone without even realising you're doing it. You open his instagram knowing perfectly well he hasn't posted anything since last week. You spend twenty minutes deciding whether replying now makes you look interested or desperate, then wait another seven minutes for absolutely no reason because apparently we're all actors in the same weird social experiment. You start imagining tiny things that don't even exist yet. Maybe we'd like that wine bar. Maybe I should tell him about this restaurant. Maybe he'd find this funny. Your imagination, which had spent the last six months thinking about work deadlines and what to cook for dinner, suddenly has something much more entertaining to do. And I don't actually think that's about romance. I think it's about possibility.
Because the beginning of liking someone is basically one long what if. What if he texts? What if I see him this weekend? What if this actually becomes something? Even when nothing is happening, something feels like it's happening. That's why the beginning is so addictive. Not because you've met the love of your life. You probably haven't. Half the time you barely know this person. You've just been given a plot twist. Adult life is weirdly predictable. We know what next Tuesday looks like before next Tuesday even arrives. Work. Gym. Dinner. Laundry. Maybe drinks on Friday if nobody cancels. Then someone new appears and, for the first time in ages, you genuinely don't know what happens next. The brain loves that. We love that.
Which makes me think Charlotte might have been asking the wrong question. I don't know if a relationship brings you back to life. I think it definitely brings excitement. Novelty. A reason to look at your phone more often than you'd like to admit. A reason to suddenly care about what you're wearing for "just one drink." But I also know how this story goes. The person eventually becomes... a person. The mystery disappears. The routine comes back. Tuesdays become Tuesdays again. Which is why I don't think the person was ever the thing making you feel alive. They were just interrupting the repetition. And when I think about the moments I've felt most alive over the last few years, most of them have nothing to do with romance. They were the dinner that accidentally ended at two in the morning. Booking a flight three days before leaving. Moving countries. Saying yes when I was about to say no. Going for a coffee that somehow became dinner. Every single one of those moments had one thing in common: they made life feel unpredictable for a little while. Maybe that's the feeling we've been confusing with love this whole time. Because if I'm honest, I almost never hear people say, "My life is amazing. I've started new hobbies, met incredible people, travelled loads, every week feels different... I just need a boyfriend now." It's usually the opposite. It's when the weeks start looking like photocopies of each other that we suddenly decide the answer must be another person. Maybe it isn't. Maybe we don't miss being in love nearly as much as we miss waking up with the feeling that something unexpected might happen today.