“We’re talking.” A phrase concurrently vague as hell but so universally experienced in today’s dating culture everyone knows exactly what it means.
Also referred to as the talking stage, “talking with” someone mainly means you’re doing relationship things with someone who won’t commit to you only yet. (Or possibly ever.) The talking stage means you’re happening dates, texting and calling day by day, constructing emotional closeness, sleeping together, and staying the night at their apartment but with none labels or idea of where the 2 of you’re headed in terms of each other.
It’s exhausting.
Because if the talking stage is anything, it’s a game that has no real technique to keep rating. The endgame is “idk maybe.” The talking stage is actually a contest of who can care less and be (read: come across as) the least attached. The talking stage is about attempting to win the opposite person over without ever needing to say that’s what you were doing. And truthfully, it’s all bullshit.
The talking stage has made us all cowards. We’re all so rattling frightened of commitment that we’ll literally act like a pair with someone for 3 months and deny we ever cared because we never put a label on it. You can’t lose what you never had, right? After all, you were ✨ just talking ✨ and there’s nothing serious about that! It’s pathetic. But mostly it’s just so lonely.
I’m done with it. I’m uninterested in not saying what I want because I’m afraid of coming across as an excessive amount of or clingy. I’m sick of pretending I don’t care when I do. I’m so beyond over confiding in someone I’m not entirely sure will text me back the following day or simply leave me on read for the remainder of my life.
I don’t get how we got to this place in our society where wanting to like and be loved has develop into this shameful little secret. Why is wanting a real connection so bad? What’s mistaken with commitment? Why would searching for these items make us weak when it’s what we’re literally wired as human beings to do?
I don’t find out about you, but I’m done acting like an individual without feelings. From now on, I’ll be showing up and asking for what I want and being who I authentically am. I will communicate openly and truthfully. I will demand respect. And if that makes me “too much” for somebody, then I’ll know that they’re not the proper person for me. Because anyone I’m meant to be with will take me as all that I am.
So, that is me breaking up with the talking stage. This is me getting in with an open heart and mind. While this will likely make me more vulnerable and vulnerable to heartbreak, so be it because at the very least I can say I tried. At least I can say I was brave. At least I can say I was honest. At least I can say I don’t have any what-ifs.
I don’t have any talking stages left in me. I want the true thing.
