Today, I saw an article. This article jumped out at me like someone had just punched me in the face. Staring at the title, I couldn't believe what I was reading - a writer from The Tab named this article "Why your 20s aren't meant for relationships" - and I couldn't stop looking at it. I stared at it, opened it, and read the first few lines:
"First, let me preface this by saying: there is nothing wrong with being in a relationship. Being in a successful relationship is an amazing thing. To blend two lives together is no easy task. If you’re in your 20s and you’re in a committed, healthy relationship, I commend you. However, this article is not for you."
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Being a writer of The Odyssey, I respect and indulge in The Tab, especially The Tab's "Babe" series. I would like to respond to this article, not out of dislike for the article, but to be able to express my opinion on it from a different point of view. The Tab article explores asking many 20-something year olds why their 20s isn't for committed relationships, so to give my perspective, I'm going to break most of these down and debunk them.
To give a back story on me, Reader, I am a psychology major at a four-year University. My University has about 40,000 students and is arguably one of the biggest party-schools in Pennsylvania and the Northeast, in one of the biggest and best cities in the country. I am in sorority, dating someone in fraternity, and I just turned 21 years old a few months ago. I have been in said-relationship for almost a year now.
As I read through the responses to the question, "Why do you think your 20s are not meant for being in a committed relationship?" I laughed because some of the responses were confusing to me. Ranging from, "It’s super time consuming. It’s like taking three extra credit hours," to "You can focus all your time on being a good friend,”none of these stuck out to me quite like, "The first thing that comes to mind is typically, in your 20s you are still trying to find yourself... When you add a serious relationship in there you expect that person to be your rock through the whole process."
I sat on this, trying to articulate why that response was so marginalizing to me.
It is, in fact, OK to be co-dependent. Yes, I know what I just said.
I used to dabble in this idea a few years ago, and I still question, why is there the perception that someone can't possibly find themselves in a relationship? What if being in a relationship actually helped us find ourselves more than being single did?
While reading this article, it looked to me as a list of "hurt people hurting people," made up of both women and men, who didn't feel worthy of being in a relationship and experiencing falling in love. Before you say, "Olivia, don't be so critical, you don't know their stories," hear me out.
I go back to a video by internet personality Jason Silva, who says in his video Why Do We Fall In Love?, that we do everything to deny our creaturely-ness and to deny our own decay. He questions, can you blame us for wanting to seek out comfort in eachother's cold soul space and to say 'please tell me you will not leave me?' He ends by saying, "We say 'oh, we're co-dependent, we're weak, we should be independent, but c'mon man... it's ecodelic. We are all one. We're not alone, it's OK to be co-dependent. It's not a bad thing."
This idea is that we choose to see a connection, one that is supposed to be whole, as a weakness, in turn refusing to see that there is immortality in co-dependency. It's fascinating.
We can learn so much spiritually about ourselves when we relieve ourselves of the stigma of falling in love. When we voluntarily choose to dive in the abyss of love and heartbreak, we open our hearts up to the possibility in sharing in something that is irreplaceable.This experience, positive or otherwise, is one that transforms us in ways we don't understand right away. This experience is not comparable to any other phenomena in the world - not the same as a three credit course and not the same as a friendship. This experience, is one that transcends us mentally and emotionally, imprinting on us another human's feelings, passions, and ticks, leaving us with more than what we started with. It is the comfort of coming home to someone who knows your darkest moments and your best days.
It is the closest to transcendence of the human form before heaven. We slowly find ourselves through discovering the soul of someone we love, and that person can expose to us the better part of ourselves that we may not love yet. That person can show us the person we refuse to see - our self who is better and brighter than how we once them. That person can show us our flaws, the ones we never come to terms with and the ones that have destroyed relationships before. That person can show why we are indeed deserving of something that is only described as magic, like the phrase, "it was love at first sight." Our partner becomes our looking glass self, a spiritual mirror who is with us every single day.
Even when a relationship goes poorly and ends, we take away that perspective, allowing us to build onto a new perspective with a new partner. Eventually, we can finally see who we truly are, away from our egos and defense mechanisms.
To me, a relationship isn't putting myself on hold. It is me, not finding myself on my own right now. It is me, finding another way to find myself.
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Taylor Swift shines on stage in a sparkling outfit and boots.
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