on hope and desire

19 Apr, 2024

bear with me, this one is a little more personal than what i’d assume most people are comfortable with. i just wanted to touch a little on wishful thinking in romantic relationships.

i’m currently in a relationship with someone i think is an incredibly beautiful soul. it’s a bit of a shame that they don’t recognise it themselves but apparently neither do i according to them. it’s not a perfect relationship and we argue sometimes about stupid things but it’s a precious dynamic and i couldn’t ask for a more kind and caring partner.

i re-read a fanfic recently that i once read a while ago,¹ and it made me realise just how much of it i’d want to experience myself. the first time i read it was quite a while ago, and back before i started dating my partner. i remember how i yearned for the sweetness and care the author wrote about (if you’ve read it you’d know a lot of it is the opposite of kind but the good parts are GOOD GOOD). i find it funny and a little ironic that i still yearn for it but in a different way.

i was friends w my partner before dating them, we were classmates throughout high school and have a very playful dynamic, the kind with a lot of teasing and friendly "bullying" but you know both sides are fine with it. When we first started dating properly the dynamic changed and became more serious, we were more careful and didn't mess around too much, didn't say things that were too unhinged. Now that it's been a while, we're back to how we were as friends, just with the occasional romantic gesture.
getting together wasn't easy either, we had a lot of troubles internally as well as with third parties within basically the first year of the relationship so our story is a little silly, a little stupid and sometimes so strange that you can't help but laugh.
while i love the level of comfort we have now, i do miss having more moments of pure affection. we're still in our early 20s (with controlling parents) so finding the right time and place for even simple affection like cuddling or having a heart-to-heart talk in person is difficult and incredibly rare.

while i do read fanfics for the writing, sometimes it's also for the romance- a sort of "living vicariously through the characters" thing. i noticed i read a lot less after we started dating, i stopped playing otome games as much too but now i'm getting back into them. not to say that the relationship is lacking or unfulfilling but sometimes you hear or you read stories of other couples or other characters getting to know each other and growing together and compared to your own their stories seem so bright and sweet. your own story can look lackluster and even rough in the face of such pure love. i don't truly wish for it but i do sometimes let my mind wander, what if we had a proper high school romance like in the countless shoujo manga i've read? or what if we had more romantic milestones like confessing over a private late night call or even in person rather than while playing a mobile game (i'm not saying which one cause it makes me want to curl up and hide in a hole it's SO embarrassing)
reading such sweet, quiet moments in that fanfic also made me wish they were easier to have in real life as well because it's so pleasant. life would be a little easier to get through if those small moments of downtime from worries and the rest of the world were more common, more accessible.