For as long as I can remember, I’ve been bored in my relationships. I never thought I would be bored, but they always seemed to me like a long, steady stream of mundane events which, if I had enough space in the world, I’d never be bored by. I never thought my relationships were boring when I was with my friends; I thought my husband’s were.
This is the first time I’ve discussed my suspicions of boredom with someone else, so I’m defining boredom as an adult tendency to doubt the future of a romantic relationship. Adult boredom is not the same as child boredom, I’m sure, but I don’t know of any child of my age who doesn’t talk about relationships the way I do.
We all want to be in love. We all want our love to last. Most of us say we don’t know it will last, but we all want it to last because we’re afraid it might be a bad idea. We think we know what the future brings, but we don’t. We think we know what the past brought us, but we don’t. The future may be tainted with regret, but the past is largely unfiltered.
It is possible that I’m boring you with my thoughts, my experiences, and my perceptions because I don’t think I know how I would have handled things had I been able to move on. It is possible that I don’t believe in boring people. Yes, I believe they exist, and they make up the majority of couples therapy sessions.
It is possible that I just don’t want to talk about it.
But I want to know. I want to know how you think and feel. I want to know what works and doesn’t work in your relationships.
I just think that sometimes we don’t know, and that can be confusing.
But I do know that if I step back and try to see things from your perspective, I find that I’m able to be more curious about how I want to be loved and how I want to be loved. I think that is the key to making space for interesting and new relationships in my life.
Learning to be curious is the secret. Sometimes, it is the hardest thing to do.