I’ve been with my boyfriend for six years and we now live together. The problem is I don’t know if I’m supposed to be in a long term relationship at twenty two. Does independence equal more growth? How do you know if you’re supposed to be with someone through the growing years? – Anonymous
An astrologer of mine once compared relationships to two dancers spinning across a dance floor. By holding hands and leaning back together as a pair they could achieve greater distance than either one could solo. If you lean back and spin solo you fall. You crash. You cannot achieve that momentum. A pair is stronger. A pair can use each other’s weight to find balance.
Through this lens there is a lot of growth to be achieved within a relationship. There’s no doubt that we can learn and grow and expand with the right partner in the right relationship; a partner who will water you so that you may bloom. In this sense, independence doesn’t necessarily equal more growth. It depends on the type of person you are, it depends on the type of growth you want to achieve, it depends on your partner’s ability and aptitude at tilling your soil. Every boy can play in the dirt, but not every boy can bring the land to life.
I will say that this level of commitment at the age of twenty-two unnerves me a bit. Twenty-two was the year of Jagermeister and heels clicking against granite counter tops. Of dizzying views of the rest of your life spread before you. Not to say twenty-two should equal partying and indecision – but I’m not sure twenty-two should ever equal moving in with a boyfriend.
But let’s look at the facts. You have moved in with the boyfriend. And you’ve committed to him and you’ve presumably committed to a lease. And so there you are with your boyfriend and your dried ink and so I would ask…now what? Where do you go from here? Where can you go from here? You’re in a bit of a holding pattern, so to speak, until marriage? Until kids? Until a shelter puppy who pees all over the floor? Yes, you have forsaken a bit of your knighthood here, you’ve given up just a bit of the journey.
Our twenties are an immensely important time of our lives that get swept under the Snuggie as an awkward phase between the sweet recklessness of teenagedom and the soul sucking boredom of adult life. But as Ph.D Meg Jay purports in the next book on your summer reading list The Defining Decade, our twenties are a hugely important period of our lives that set into motion who we’ll be and what will eventually become of us. The decisions we make, the lessons we do or do not learn, the places we travel to or only wish that we did, all of these small bits of life accumulate into the person you will forever be; into the life you will wake up to day after day. It’s tough to change after thirty. If you’ve been with the same person for six years how confident are you in the person you really are without him? If you make all of these decisions and engrain all of these shared life experiences beneath your skin – how much of you is you and how much of you is not you? And what happens if it doesn’t work out? Where will that half of you go?
I think having relationships in your twenties is important because practice makes perfect, or whatever. But I also think, and am coming to learn, that a diversity of relationships is almost more important than none at all. Like a forest, or a garden, it is the diversity of life that keeps an ecosystem thriving. There are so many different types of people in the world and you will find that you become a different person in each of their eyes. Allow the Universe it’s ebb and flow and let go of the edge of the pool. You will not drown; you are buoyant and in bloom; you will float.
