Writing while dating

"But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive."

Leaving Anchorage, Jan 2024 on film

Two months into a new relationship and I haven’t written much in that time. Today marks my first trip away from Alaska since it started, and I’m finding words again.

I am at my most prolific when single or over long distance. Weeks full of solitude and calm.

If I’m in the same place as someone I’m dating, I get consumed. My time seems to vanish spent with the object of my affection or otherwise thinking about them.

This can’t be a unique problem, though I do fall hard and fast. I get obsessed. I date people with big personalities and emotional baggage.

I get absorbed in their stories and dramas. I soak it all up and too often lose what keeps me contained.

I also have a habit of dating people I don’t trust will be there if I let up the slack. If I say, hey, I am going to spend this weekend writing instead of hanging out.

This is insecurity. My fear of becoming irrelevant if I’m not always there.

I know that I need time and space to write. I know that it’s healthy to let relationships breathe. And I know that I need to date someone from whom I feel comfortable taking space so that I can focus.

Is it a matter of self-discipline? Making dates with myself and not bailing, no matter how enticing it is to spend time with a partner instead?

Writing this, I feel like I’m 22, not 35. But I also know that we can learn lessons at any age without shame.

I was raised to think that romantic relationships should be prioritized above all else. That starting a family is the prize to be won.

It’s taken me years to learn this isn’t true. Even so, I want partnership. I’m lucky to be meeting people in similar life stages who want the same.

Over the years, I’ve developed another love. A commitment to creative work.

It shocks me how easily I set that aside in favor of romance. How quick I am to abandon.

This is self-betrayal. I do it and then I get resentful. I blame the other person. They’re no good for me, I say, because while dating them I haven’t been able to write.

Where is my agency? As far as I can tell, most people I date support my work. They’re attracted to me in part because of it. It’s not their fault I haven’t been writing.

New relationships take time and energy. It’s natural to need to focus on them for a bit at first. But for my life to be sustainable, I can’t abandon. I need to keep going, even when a shiny object entices me away.

Writing allows me to examine that object. To assess my emotions and take stock of where I’ve been. Writing allows me to be a good partner.

I used to only communicate through writing. I’d leave notes for my mom after we fought. I’d journal obsessively and then, once the internet became a thing, spend long nights on AOL instant messenger revealing my soul to friends and strangers.

I’ve since learned how to speak. To express myself verbally and in real time. Writing is no longer the emotional lifeline that it was in my youth.

Now, it plays a different role.

When I’m really into someone, I stop caring what anyone else thinks. It’s enough to connect with them and them alone.

This gets isolating and can’t last. The thrill fades. The intimacy becomes restrictive.

I want to learn to reorient. To treat both loves equitably. My writing needs time and attention just the same as my relationships.

These words flow now because I have space. I’m sitting alone in an airport.

Is physical distance necessary in order to open me up? Why does the proximity of living in the same city, even miles away, cause me to feel blocked?

I know deep down that focusing on my writing is the only way to maintain a healthy relationship. Unlike many of my dates, writing has not led me astray. I have to learn to do both.

So then, how?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Perhaps the answer will reveal itself in my words. Perhaps the lack of words is an answer, too.

Distance helps.

[subtitle quote from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, to which I am, per usual, quite late.]