I think there are some things in life you can talk yourself into believing, and then there are things you can say a thousand times without ever actually believing them. For years, I have told myself that someday I will find someone. When I started college in 2021, I thought that surely, within a couple of years, I would experience love. Two years seemed like a reasonable amount of time. Then those two years passed, and I thought, okay, maybe another two. Then another two. Now it is 2026, and if you had told the version of me who started college that six years later I would still be saying the same thing, I probably wouldn't have believed you.
At some point, I stopped making predictions altogether. I don't really even have crushes anymore, and romantic relationships have become something I can understand intellectually but cannot really picture myself experiencing. I can watch people fall in love on television or see it happen in real life and understand why it is beautiful, but when I try to put myself into that picture, it feels like I'm imagining someone else's life. I don't necessarily believe that I don't deserve love, but I don't find myself thinking that I do, either. It feels more like love is something that happens to other people.
I Think My Family Has Something to Do With It
I've spent a lot of time thinking about my family dynamics lately, especially the way everything can somehow become a competition. You can't be tired because someone else woke up earlier. You can't be stressed because someone else has more responsibilities. You can't be upset because someone else has it worse. It becomes this strange competition where everyone is trying to establish who has the most legitimate reason to feel whatever they're feeling. Eventually, I think I just stopped complaining. Not necessarily because little things stopped bothering me, but because I learned that they weren't worth mentioning when there would always be someone who could "outdo" me.
I've also learned not to argue. That was a particularly important lesson last year, when I realized that being quiet was often easier than fighting. If something was going to turn into an argument, I could just stop participating. The problem is that being quiet can become a habit. Sometimes it protects you, but sometimes it just means you don't speak up for yourself, and I'm still figuring out which one I'm doing.
I think this environment also taught me to prove my feelings. I have a tendency to need evidence, logic, and proof behind everything I do, almost as though if I can prove that something is objectively true, there shouldn't be an argument about it. If I'm tired, I need a reason. If I'm stressed, I need evidence. If something hurt me, I want to be able to explain exactly what happened, why it was wrong, and why my reaction is justified. It's almost like I'm building a legal case for my own emotions.
But feelings aren't a court case. I don't need to prove that I'm tired enough to be tired, and I don't need to prove that something hurt me enough to be hurt. Someone else can have a harder day than I did, and my day can still have been hard. I'm slowly realizing that someone else's experience doesn't invalidate mine.
I've Become the Person Who Fixes Things
The strange thing is that while I've learned not to talk about my own problems very much, I've developed an almost overwhelming desire to fix everyone else's. If someone is going through something, I want to help. If someone is upset, I want to make them smile. If someone I care about is hurting, I want to do something, anything, to make it better. I have a lot of empathy for people, and sometimes I wonder if I developed so much of it because I spent so much time learning about other people's experiences through television, stories, social media, and simply observing people.
I learned that people can feel things differently. I learned that someone can be hurting even if I don't understand why, and that you don't have to agree with someone to care about what they're feeling. But there is something I've had to confront: I am much better at extending that empathy toward other people than I am toward myself. I can look at someone else and think, Of course you're struggling. You don't have to justify it. Then I look at myself and think, Someone else has it worse.
Maybe that's part of why I want so badly to fix things for other people. Maybe some part of me wishes someone would do the same for me. Not necessarily fix me, but notice me. Just say, "I know this is hard."
I Wish I Had Someone on My Side
I have one close friend. They know some of what goes on with my family, but not everything. I've shared pieces here and there, but I don't know exactly what they think about my relationship with my mother. I'm not looking for them to tell me that my mother is a horrible person, and I don't need someone to blindly take my side. I think what I really want is much simpler: I want someone who understands.
I want someone who, if something is wrong, might recognize that it could have something to do with my family without me having to explain the entire history. I want someone who remembers, someone who knows enough of the story that I don't have to start from the beginning every time something happens. I think that's part of what I mean when I say I want someone who is "mine." Not in the sense of owning another person, but in the sense of having my person: the person I call first, the person who knows the story, the person who notices, and the person who chooses me.
I think that's why the absence of romantic love has become so much bigger than simply never having had a relationship. I don't just want a partner because I feel like I'm supposed to. I want to know what it feels like to have someone in my corner, someone who cares about what happens to me and wants to be there for the good things as much as the difficult ones.
Love Doesn't Mean the Same Thing to Me
My definition of love is also different from what I've seen in my family. Last year, my mother and I had a larger argument about marriage and relationships. At one point, she was explaining that at a certain point in marriage, people's eyes tend to wander and that this is simply normal. I told her I didn't believe that, and her response was essentially that I wouldn't know what that feeling was because I had never been married.
Technically, she's right that I don't have that experience. But I don't think you need to have experienced marriage to know what you want commitment to mean. Maybe I'm idealistic, and maybe someday my ideas will change, but I don't believe that losing interest in your partner or becoming interested in other people is an inevitable part of love that you simply have to accept. My idea of love is much more intentional. To me, it's about choosing someone and continuing to choose them, not because you suddenly become incapable of noticing anyone else in the world, but because commitment means something to you.
Maybe that's naive and maybe it isn't. Either way, it is what I believe right now, and I don't think my lack of romantic experience makes that belief meaningless.
I Don't Think I Want the Wedding Everyone Else Wants
Ironically, I also don't particularly like weddings. Working around a wedding venue will do that to you. I've seen wedding after wedding after wedding, and eventually the supposedly once-in-a-lifetime event starts to look remarkably similar every time. The decorations change, the people change, and the colors change, but the basic formula is often the same. I think I've become somewhat allergic to the idea that something deeply personal is supposed to follow a predetermined template.
I don't want a wedding simply because I'm supposed to want one, and I definitely don't want to have it at the venue where my mother works, where I can already imagine the possibility of the day becoming about everyone else. I don't even know who I would invite. The people I can immediately picture being there are my brother, my sister, and my one close friend. That's it. My parents don't currently feel like people I would want standing beside me during what is supposed to be one of the most intimate days of my life.
Maybe that changes someday, and maybe it doesn't. Maybe I don't get married. Maybe I do, but I elope. Maybe I have ten people at dinner afterward, or maybe I decide that marriage itself isn't something I want. I don't have to know yet. What I do know is that if I ever do have that kind of day, I want it to actually feel like mine rather than another version of the same event I've watched happen hundreds of times.
New England Has Become a Symbol
There is one place where I have attached a lot of hope to all of this: New England. I know it isn't entirely rational to think that moving somewhere will somehow make romantic love possible, and I know that moving there won't guarantee anything. But right now, it is the only hope I have that feels tangible.
New England represents more than geography to me. It represents starting over, meeting new people, becoming more independent, and building a life that isn't already defined by the people around me. It represents the possibility of having experiences I've never had before, including, maybe, finally meeting someone.
I know I could move there and still be single. I could move there and still feel lonely. But the idea has become symbolic of possibility. Where I am now, I sometimes feel like I'm standing in a life that has already been established for me. When I think about moving, I imagine building one of my own.
I know that isn't a guarantee, and I don't want to make one geographic move responsible for my entire romantic future. Maybe the healthier way to think about it is that New England could give me a different environment in which to build the life I want. It could give me more opportunities, new communities, new experiences, and a chance to become more of the person I want to be. Whether love happens there or not is something I simply can't know.
I Don't Know If Love Will Happen
This is probably the hardest thing for me to admit: I don't believe the sentence "You'll find someone someday" anymore. I've said it too many times and attached it to too many two-year timelines. I don't want to make another prediction, because I've already watched enough predictions pass without anything changing.
I don't want to tell myself that by 2027 or 2028, everything will finally make sense. I don't know. Maybe I will find someone, and maybe I won't. I don't have enough information to know, and perhaps for once, "I don't know" is allowed to be enough.
I want love. I want the good parts and the difficult parts. I want the stupid arguments and the inside jokes, the excitement of realizing someone likes me, the person I can text when something ridiculous happens, and the feeling of knowing that someone chooses me. I want to experience the parts of life I've only watched other people experience. But I'm tired of trying to convince myself that it's definitely coming.
So maybe I don't have to. Maybe I can simply admit that I want it, I don't have it, it hurts, and I don't know what happens next. That's more honest than pretending I know.
For now, I can keep building things, keep traveling, keep baking cookies, keep planning events, and keep thinking about New England. I can build a life that belongs to me even while there is still a part of it I wish I could share with someone else.
Maybe someday someone will come into my life. Maybe they won't. I don't know.
But I think I'm beginning to understand that the fact that it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean there is something wrong with me. It doesn't mean I missed some deadline or that everyone else received instructions I never got. It simply means that this is one part of my life I haven't experienced yet.
And I still don't know what happens next.