On Cloudy Nine
I'm having this undefined thing with this great woman I see just about nightly. She ended a toxic relationship seven months ago, and I'm still recovering from a terrible breakup. We're great friends, crack each other up, are extremely honest with each other, and have great sex. Should we try to label this? I worry this free love/no-strings-attached approach can't last.
--Troubled
Zoos have cages so the lions don't wander through suburbia, snacking on children and labradoodles.
Commitment serves a similar boundary-establishing function, though out of the worry that one's partner will sneak over to the hot neighbor's for a nooner, not lunch on them with a side of purse dog. Also, once two people spell out that they're a "we," the parameters of decision-making expand accordingly: "What works for us?" instead of "What's best for me?"
But sometimes, people still licking their wounds from their last relationship have the close-to-perfect next partner show up inopportunely early. They could push that person away with "I'm not ready now," which could turn out to be "goodbye forever." Or...maybe they could have a "not-quite-sure-what-this-is" thing until they feel ready for a relationship again.
There's a challenge to this loosey-goosey approach, and it's how disturbed we humans are by uncertainty: a lack of information about what might happen. The murky unknown revs up feelbad emotions like anxiety and dread over our inability to narrow down the various ways things could go toiletward.
Different people have varying levels of what psychologist Mark H. Freeston and his colleagues describe as "intolerance of uncertainty." To decrease yours (and the angsty feelings that come with), spell out what you can -- a likely worst-case scenario: for example, a woman you've grown attached to tires of you and takes to Tinder like a duck to those little goldfish crackers. Painful, yes. But, as you've shown, survivable -- if temporarily deadly to the ego.
Understanding this should help you avoid any temptation to rush things -- possibly blowing up the relationship in an attempt to relieve the tension of uncertainty. To help yourself stay on the straight and ambiguous, keep in mind that this uncertainty-alleviating impulse is the business model for horror movies. Without it, they'd be horrifying bores that fizzle out at the three-minute mark -- when the teens hear unearthly growls coming from the basement of the abandoned house and one says to the rest: "Yeah, whatevs. Let's just stay here upstairs playing strip chess."
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
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