The chaos of a relationship vocabulary

Once upon a time, when I was waiting for coffee to be brewed in my favourite coffee shop, I spotted this: 

Through my giggles on pointlessness of sand, snow and coffee vocabularies, it suddenly hit me that the treasure of phrases we have for romantic or – perhaps more appropriate – intimate relationships should not be underestimated either. Just based on the expressions I have heard recently, I can compile quite an impressive list.

It all starts with ‘meeting someone’, having ‘a crush’ or perhaps slightly more dramatic being ‘blown away’ or ‘swept off your feet’. Then things get going by ‘hooking up’ or ‘getting to know each other’, which is suppose to be a pre-stage of ‘dating’. Dating again comes in different shapes and forms of seriousness and might be more appropriate to be labelled as ‘going out’, ‘seeing each other’, and even ‘kind of seeing someone’. Which would be what exactly?

Then, there are as popular as ever ‘casual relationships’, ‘nothing serious’,  ‘just a fling’ and I even came across a ‘random London thing’. Apparently, if you are not a Londoner, you cannot understand. Other for me hard to understand forms are ‘complicated relationships’, ‘open relationships’, and ‘rebound relationships’. And if we get sick of them, we just go on a ‘break’. Needless to say, all these relationships are very likely going nowhere, but as Paulo Nutini sings in his Last Request:

Sure I can accept that we’re going nowhere

But one last time let’s go there

Oh, yes, let’s! Just for the fun of it… Because there is also such a thing as ‘having fun’. A principle that underpins no strings attached ‘one night stands’ and ‘booty calls’, which might extend to ‘friends with benefits’ (I will refrain from using a synonym of we know what kind of ‘buddies’), ‘fooling around’, ‘sleeping with someone’ or even better  ‘sleeping around’. Speaking of which, there are also ‘affairs’ and ‘open relationships’. All is fair in love and war, right?

If we finally venture into a territory of actually being ‘in love with someone’, then we get to a ‘real relationship’, ‘full-on relationship’, ‘serious relationship’, ‘exclusive relationship’ (oh, don’t even get me started on the whole exclusivity thing!), ‘committed relationship’, ‘long-term relationship’, ‘living together’, ‘practically married’ and let’s not forget a classic of postmodern times a ‘long-distance relationship’.

In this rich vocabulary, the real deal of ‘engagement’ and ‘marriage’ seems to be as rare and out of fashion as black coffee and espresso. And perceived just as equally boring, unexciting and flavourless.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said: “The borders of my language are the borders of my world.” Just from the top of my head, I counted 40 different expressions for relationships (sincere apologies if I missed any other important one, which I'm sure I have). These words are not just extending the boarders of our world, but are also creating picturesque landscape, in which we eventually got lost. With different meanings to different people and in different contexts, the above expressions confuse, rather than enlighten. Not surprisingly, more often than not in a relationship we ‘don’t know where this is going’. While relationships became more important than ever, they are equally impossible to pursue.

By naming and engaging in all those forms of relationships (what comes first a relationship or a name for it is pretty much a chicken or an egg type of question), we made our lives complicated beyond comprehension. When in essence the meaning of a relationship should be as simple as one of my colleagues put it: “A certain person is the most important person in the world for you and you are the most important person in the world for them." In the light of this realisation, the pointlessness of a relationships vocabulary reaches its full potential. There is a relationship or there is no relationship. And that might as well be the happy ending. 

Why did I start blogging? A special someone, anxiety and PhD

I am sure that there are as many reasons why someone starts blogging as there are bloggers out there. Here is mine. It was not an instant decision. The idea was rolling around in my head for a while, but somehow I just didn’t feel ready for it. Until one day I met someone (as you would!). Someone, who simply through our incredible conversations, but without ever mentioning it, triggered me to start entertaining the thought of writing again.

If you read between the lines, you could probably see that this person is very special to me. So special indeed that blissful happiness drove me right into anxiety. I knew the feeling of unexplainable panic and dreadful fear for no rational reason whatsoever, I had it before. I also knew I had two options: 
1. run away (what I usually do best)
2.   google it and try to understand

For the first time in my life, I took the option two and googled 'relationship anxiety'. Not much useful came up; a few websites with brief explanations on what it is, zillion symptoms, which gave me the impression that one suffers from anxiety pretty much all the time, and – make no mistake – contact details of specialised advisers, who can help you to get over it, for a good price of course. There were also a few forums, where, interestingly enough, mostly men were describing how they feel and sought advice on how to snap out of it. As much as it was an amusing read, none of it was of a particular use to me.

However, it did make me realise that what I was feeling was not that uncommon. We just rarely talk about it. Probably because it is so insignificant and silly. How can you obsess and be in an unreasonable state of agony over someone you just met? There are worse things in life, right? Well, you tell me. My situation is even more bizarre, because my special someone (obviously completely unaware of my emotional state) is about to move away and my already mastered strategy of running would have probably worked just as well. Once again I learnt how the universe might not always play fair, but at least it has got a hell of a sense of humour.

More importantly, I realised that I want to write about it. I want to write about what seems to be very silly, yet also very serious experience and feelings, which frame my thoughts and views on life. And here we are, at the concept of framing again. I always somehow end up here. It must be related to the fact that it represents a central concept of my PhD, which is taking way too long to complete now. Anyone who has ever had a go at a PhD probably knows, what I’m talking about.

It happened at the airport in Paris where I found this postcard. The beautiful sights of Paris in a frame that selects and emphasises certain aspects of perceived reality in one way rather than another. And that is when framing took over my life… And my PhD.

It was during one of the late night calls when my other special someone, who was doing PhD at the time, but moved to Australia a few years ago (yes, my special someones have tendency to move away – another one, for example, moved to Yemen, and no, I did not pick that up from Friends), asked me how I would title my book, which I would publish in what is called a post-PhD period. I instantly said Framing Everyday Life. Since it seems that I am as far from the book as I am from having Tiffany’s ring, I figured I would lend the title to my blog for now. Just to see how it works.

That leads me to the third reason, why I started blogging. I always liked writing and sharing my ideas with others. During my PhD (have I already mentioned that it is taking me way too long to complete it?) I developed a strange fear from displaying my ideas outside my computer screen. The more I thought about it, the scarier it got. Just imagine… You write something, publish it and then someone reads it, perhaps remembers it, quotes it and worse of the worst, might criticise it. But the day of PhD submission is near, so I might as well get used of sending my thoughts and ideas out into the world, waving them goodbye and wishing them good luck with finding new friends.

I found this quote in one of the beauty magazines recently: Feel the fear, but do it anyway! And here I am, feeling the fear, but pressing the ‘publish post’ button anyway. 

Goodbye my first blog entry! And good luck with finding new friends!