Timelines

I’ve been grappling with this one for a while now. I am conflicted because I feel as if I have been in a space where I could envision the future, but to be with someone who doesn’t have fantasies like I have, who doesn’t have the what-if talks like I have with myself, it’s been odd. I always knew that – I love to plan and have things booked in advance if I can; he sometimes struggles with thinking two to three weeks ahead. It’s not to say that one is doing it better than the other. He is more about the present and I like to look to the future.

But now we’re in that space in our lives where we’re “supposed” to be doing things that frankly, I don’t think we’re both ready for. As he eloquently put it the other day, we both want the same things but at different points in our lives. (Might need clarification on what his “things” are in comparison to my “things”…). In essence, isn’t that what most long-term relationships are about? That you’ll eventually be ready for the same things at the same thing and who’s to say that just because someone is ready for one thing now that the other needs to hurry it up to get with the program? Then I wonder if the roles were reversed – if he was more ready to move forward and I wasn’t, would I still be pressured to catch up?

Then the bigger question, why in the world are we being told to hurry it up? Daddy gave me a talk the other day and basically told me that I don’t have forever to wait and I need to get moving along in this relationship of mine. That was unexpected because I never thought he would ever encourage me to settle down, etc. I knew it would come from mother, but not Daddy. But why? Why am I being questioned constantly about whether or not this “waiting” is right for me? In a way, I want to rebel and tell everyone to fuck off because they can’t possibly understand the dynamics of the relationship without being in the relationship. (Unless you’re trying to psychoanalyze, then maybe, but even then, it’s still speculation.)

We shouldn’t have to follow a timeline and I wish that others could understand that. Only we can create those timelines for ourselves and it’s our responsibility to have that discussion to figure out what does and doesn’t work. For now, it is working just fine for me. I don’t need a ring, I don’t need a house, I don’t need kids. I need to take things one step at a time. I need to figure out who I am in a world that doesn’t revolve in expiration dates. I need to have a partner in crime who’s also allowing his timeline to settle and when we want to reach our relationship milestones together, then that’s when our timelines will coincide. Not when my parents want them to. Not when the world wants them to. When we want to.