“How Do You Know?”
It's the million dollar question.
I mean, just the topic is sure to elicit chills from the spines of lesbians who consider a successful second date as grounds for an appropriate reply. Wrong. That, unsurprisingly, does not make you an expert on the topic, nor does knowing how to keep up with you on a dance-floor during a night of drunken revelry. Nope. Not even missing the person a lot when they're not around. Sure, those are certainly signs that you have feelings for the person of a positive nature, but they're not signs of the “one.”
I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but, relationships end. Sometimes, it just doesn't work out. People want different things or meet someone that they think is a better match (I'm not advocating cheating at all. Honesty is truly, the best policy. However, it would be intellectually dishonest to disregard the fact that it happens often). In fact, it's often the subject of lesbian confusion and disarray, since we're all hard-wired to be Ellen and Portia (or Rosie and some new ho):
“I can't believe Kim and Selena broke up.”
“I know, right? They always seemed so good together.”
Seeming good and being good are two very different things. Sharing a life with someone requires more than someone who can make you laugh or just drink with you. All that being said, I'll ask again...
“How the hell do you know?”
As a person who has had my share of ones... I can say you never do, and then you just do.
Stay with me here.
One day, you're doing everything exactly the way you planned, and BOOM! Something terrible happens. Next thing you know, you're grabbing the phone and you're calling somebody. Maybe nothing terrible has happened. Maybe you're lying in bed, and you keep thinking about someone (Maybe you're lying in bed with someone else, and you're thinking about... Not them). In any scenario, let's say you're grateful for somebody. Sometimes, that's when you know.
In life, bad things happen. It helps to have a group of people around who are going to love and support you no matter what. But, when you're neck deep in dog crap and someone jumps in just to get you an oxygen tank and they don't have to... Something else might be there.
Maybe you never know. Last week, I mentioned that many people substitute money and other things for love. Some people tend to mistake having feelings, that are different from anything they've had prior, for love. That's a tricky spot to be in. I'm of the school-of-thought that every significant relationship is new, so you're going to feel different every time you have one. Unless it sucks. But I can recognize that caring deeply for someone can only go so far before it's something else.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all relative.
One of the best answers I've ever heard to the question was simple and direct:
“So, how do you know?”
“I just do.”
It's always been an answer that I've remembered, respected and hoped someone would say about me, when they're inevitably asked how they got such a fine piece of blogging off-the-market?
“I just did.”
No matter how you know, there is one universal truth: there's no such thing as simple or easy love.
My feeling on the perfect combination of two people is this: you should come together and make the world a better place. You should create something that wasn't there before, and it shouldn't just be an extremely long and hyphenated series of last names.
So, let's think about it in the term I do well: morbidity.
We're all playing in this game of life, and we're all going to die. If you knew you were going to play a game you had no shot at winning, wouldn't you want the best possible player beside you? Right. And I'm pretty sure that isn't who you're with right now.
So, the ball is in your court, kids. But deep down, in my heart of hearts, I want to know that the woman sleeping next to me will grab a shotgun and a chainsaw when the zombie apocalypse happens. I mean, seriously. Could you count on this person to board up the windows and rock some pasty, undead ass or would they Forrest Gump you the first chance they got?
That sounds like the only way to REALLY know, if you ask me.
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Kristina Villarini is a writer, blogger, and editor to multiple outlets across the “Interwebs.” Each week, she'll examine the complex, bizarre and just plain illogical aspects of lesbianism. While she may not ever have all the answers, she'll prove without a shadow of reasonable doubt that she's a bigger fish out of water than you.
