Ask Anahit: Hopelessly Delusional
In this month's advice column, one reader wonders whether to trust in feelings from the past
Sometimes I think about this guy from my past who I didn’t date, but had a weird romantic entanglement with. It feels like we are always brought back together in strange ways. How do I know whether I should trust this feeling or whether I’m being delusional?
Babygirl, all love is delusional! Like, really!! Not in a bitter, jaded way – although let me tell you, I have every right to be a real bitch about it – but in a genuine, Lauren Berlant, all-love-is-a-product-of-fantasy way. It’s impossible to separate out the desires we harbour within ourselves and those that occur towards a particular person. At a certain point, the distinctions collapse and they become a singularity: a person as a site of possibility. It’s beautiful, in a way – this fundamental act of optimism, that an entirely other person could be what you've always wanted. I mean, horrifically stupid too, of course. Fantasy is fantasy, after all. But it’s inevitable that delusion enters into love somewhat – it’s what sustains the great improbable project of endurable attachment.
I, personally, love guys I didn’t date but had weird romantic entanglements with. That’s my sweet spot. I love telling their stories, like I’m recounting the events of a decade-long marriage, and not a handful of Instagram messages and a surreptitious nervous breakdown. I honestly think they say something far more significant about our desires, what we want and what we are afraid of, than actual relationships. For me, my big resolution this year is not to let the fantasy overtake reality – this means I have to ask these weird romantic entanglements out instead of just imagining dating them in my head, and I am, so far, having a terrible time. But truthfully, the only way to know whether to trust your feeling is to act on it and see what happens. Not doing so is the delusion, the idea that you can keep the promise of the person alive within yourself with zero risk.
It can feel scary to make moves in unstructured relationships, because there is no narrative to keep us safe. But even that narrative is a fantasy. It’s all a risk. You just have to try and separate out what that person is, and what you want them to be, and see if there’s enough left at the end to make it worth it.
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