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Anyone who’s dated long distance or fallen in love on vacation probably knows about the bump, the shift in context when you go live somewhere together. Can your love withstand the mundane chores, the sickening transit, the real, explosive, hideous stress? Good signs that they’re pleasantly suffering together (in a position that seems vaguely familiar), discussing long-term decisions, and that Will is quick to side with Eve and her road rage. |
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Hold up, I'ma use this comments section to tell another personal story.
My wife is French. Like "grew up in the Paris suburbs and moved alone to the city when she was seventeen" French. I met her on OkCupid (at which I worked, and at which she was goofing around taking funny internet quizzes) in March 2006. She was 3000 miles away, and both of us were like "this is dumb" and within a couple of weeks we were chatting for hours every single day. In May, I flew to France to meet her in person, because I couldn't wait the extra month for her move to NYC in June, a decision she'd made in part because she knew I was there. I had to be with her THEN. I didn't speak French and had never been further out of the country than Toronto and Montreal. It remains one of the best decisions of my life.
Her move to New York went well, and things between us went well, and then very suddenly something didn't go well, as she experienced a particularly NEW YORK problem: after a heavy rain, the ceiling in her bedroom collapsed, and "water bugs" (aka: cockroaches the size of your fist) started falling out of the hole into the friend's bedroom she was crashing in. She was, correctly, horrified and asked if she could stay at my place for a few days until her lease on her new apartment was finalized. I lived in a 350 square foot studio apartment. I said, "sure"
She never left. She had her own studio, which she went to sometimes to cook because the kitchen in mine was a travesty, but we lived together in my apartment starting about six weeks after she moved to the US.
All of this to say: in certain contexts, the "bump" Meredith describes is a very real thing – all of a sudden you have this person in your life at all hours, and there's no possible way to hide yourself from them. You can't be all the best parts of yourself that you put on display early on, and because of the situation, you can't totally ease them in the way a couple who dates for years before moving in together can do. You have to just take the plunge and see how it goes. Sometimes it goes really well, and while I don't KNOW how it goes for Will and Eve, I've always hoped that it works out for them in the end.
Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Your story is adorable and sounds like it should be a comic or a movie or a book or something! <3 <3 <3
Aww thanks! For a movie version they'd have to change it though so there was some conflict. Everything just kinda … went the good way. Except the cockroaches. That part was gross. 😀
This is exactly the sort of magic, world changing thing I was seeking when I moved to NYC at age 29.
That was 10 years ago. I'm now almost 40 and have done a lot of dating over that time. Amidst (all this gesture) I've been thinking a lot about getting over the bump and transitioning from a person being a desire/fulfillment/dream to being a human. Seems hard? Seems harder every day? I can't tell if my transition from a romantic to a realist was inevitable with age or just a product of the pandemic. Or whether therapy has finally started working and suddenly I'm a pragmatist instead of an anxious mess. OK personal story got too personal, goodnight everyone.
It may have helped that I met her after a year of random dating in NYC, at which point I was so exhausted and frustrated that I just took some time off from dating entirely. The initial distance was probably a positive factor for us – it gave us time to get to know each other with absolutely no pretense of a romantic relationship (we met on a dating site but she initially contacted me because she wanted to read my books), and it wasn't until a couple of months in when I realized I was staying at work till 8 PM and she was staying up till 2 AM because neither of us wanted to stop chatting that I was like "oh, this is a thing."
At any rate, I wish you the best of luck, and I do recommend pragmatism. My story sounds very romantic but at its core it's mostly just the story of two people who liked each other enough that they decided they could live with each other's rough edges.
"Will is quick to side with Eve and her road rage."
Eve's road rage?
I've never driven in NYC (and plan to never), but the other guy, way back in line, is leaning on the horn, trying to make the car ahead of him go someplace it just won't fit.
The day I knew I made the right decision marrying my guy was the day I accidentally ran a red light (unfamiliar town). The guy behind me exceeded the speed limit to catch up to me, roll down his window, and scream at me; and my guy rolled down his window, leaned out and taunted his road rage until he gave up and backed off. I was technically in the wrong, but he stuck up for me anyway and de-escalated. I fell in love with him all over again just for that moment.
Now I wonder if the way human relationships work has really recovered from when we switched from walking the Earth to living in permanent settlements.