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. I did this exact thing two weeks ago with a guy I'd met once, at a birthday dinner, who I was never going to see again realistically. I knew that. I knew it while I was doing it. And I still refreshed his instagram three times before lunch like it was going to say something different the fourth time.
And here's the thing, it's not even about him specifically. I'll admit this and I don't love admitting it: I get the same tiny hit of something when a DM I wasn't expecting shows up, or when someone at a dinner I almost didn't go to turns out to be genuinely interesting to talk to, or honestly even when a new follower has an interesting bio. It's not about romance at all. It's about someone, anyone, being an unknown. We've just decided romantic attention is the acceptable version of wanting to feel chosen by something new, so that's the one we admit to out loud.
That's the part nobody really talks about. Not that we want the person. That we want the wondering. The beginning of liking someone is basically one long what if, and even when nothing is actually happening, something feels like it's happening, which is somehow enough. 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 actually felt most alive over the last few years, almost none of them have anything to do with romance. It was the dinner that was supposed to end at eleven and somehow ended at six in the morning with people I'd met that same night. It was booking a flight to Copenhagen three days before leaving because a friend said "just come" and I, for once, didn't overthink it. It was moving somewhere I didn't know a single person and having to figure out where to even buy groceries. Every one of those moments had the same thing in common: they made life feel unpredictable for a little while, the exact same feeling I get refreshing a stranger's instagram, except it actually meant something after.
Honestly though, knowing all of this doesn't really change anything, and I think that's worth saying out loud too. The next time someone new texts back a little too fast, or a little too slow, I'll probably still spiral about it a bit. I'll still open the app. I'm not writing this because I've cracked some code and now I'm immune, I'm writing it because I'd rather know what I'm actually doing while I'm doing it. There's a difference between chasing a feeling and understanding why you're chasing it, even if the chasing doesn't stop.
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.