Better to have loved and lost? Depends who you ask. What we do know is this city is full of fears, concerns and worries about their love lives. Take comfort in the news that behind every happy couple is a knotted tangle of anxieties. We're all in it together.
“I'm going to love someone who doesn't love me back.”
“I will try too hard to please them and do what’s right, and stay together, instead of allowing myself the freedom to explore the world and myself and my sexuality.”
“Not being able to express myself due to constraint. Being checked on constantly by my partner when I'm with friends or other people.”
“That I won't be able to communicate my needs without fear of breaking up.”
“They won’t understand my anxiety.”
“I'm going to be with them for 30 years but we're secretly going to hate each other the whole time.”
“That I'll settle for ‘satisfied’ and never really critically think about what I'm doing (acting out of ‘fear of being single’ disguised as practicality).”
“Being cheated on.”
“Trusting the wrong person with my heart.”
“Even though I feel like I waited to commit to the right one and it feels so, so right and good, that I am somehow less-than or missing out for not dating around more when I was younger. That I've missed out some crucial learning by not being in other serious relationships that have ended. Like, maybe I'm just lucky? But maybe there's something I'm not seeing.”
“That my sense of attraction towards a particular gender is fickle and that my feelings will change without warning.”
“That I’ll put all that time and effort invested into them, and then one day, years down the road perhaps, they’ll suddenly realize they’re not in love with me anymore.”
“That I won't ever have one again. That I was burned so bad in the previous one I won't be able to trust again.”
“I’m afraid I’ll cave and end up with a man. I prefer relationships with women but it’s so easy to fall into a comfortable, if mediocre, rhythm with a man. I’ve never been in a relationship with a man that has been as tender or emotionally vulnerable as the ones I’ve had with women. Going off-heteronormative-script is so freeing in terms of intimacy.”
“Being dumped without expecting it.”
“Marriage.”
“That we'll always feel like we're holding each other back.”
“That I'm not enough.”
“Trusting someone. I've been cheated on in my only two long-term relationships and it'll be really hard to trust someone after that when I meet someone again.”
“Unintentionally hurting my partner; not being able to provide for my partner's needs; not noticing issues early enough.”
“Signing a year-long lease only to have our relationship break down.”
“That I will waste my youth because I think I can fix things.”
“Our lives not fitting together down the road.”
“Being stuck in something static.”
