we need to decenter the “click.” it’s that signal in your heart and mind that tells you when you want to spend your life with someone. some of us spend years in a relationship without ever feeling it, yet stay in it in the hopes that it will manifest. or we delude ourselves into thinking that it happened already because we want that person to be “the one” so badly. or we hop from person to person looking for the “click” in an odyssey of the heart.
i’m in my late 20s, and the people around me are coupling up and breaking up at equal frequencies. my friends have asked me questions like, “how much time does it take to move to the next step?” and “what does it feel like to want to take it further?” in a world where brevity is king, our feelings get flattened down to “you’ll just know.” add on any arbitrary metric of time by which we schedule our feelings. waiting to define the relationship after 3 months without knowing what you’re looking for within those 3 months is a waste of time. when you go through the dating motions (sex by the third date, meeting the parents, first fight, etc) without knowing what you’re actually looking for before you meet someone, it makes sense to look outward for guidance. it’s easy to believe the common wisdom of “when you know, you’ll know.” it’s easy to wait for something to happen. it’s much harder to think deeply about what you’re looking for.
pitfalls of the click
i felt the “click” for the first time with my college boyfriend. about three months into our relationship, he sent me a snapchat of him making a goofy double chin while wearing swim goggles he had found in his dorm room that day. the second i opened the snap, i thought, “i want this man to be the father of my kids.” that was the click. i hinged the next 5 years of our relationship on that.
we flew out to see each other between boston and chicago. we moved in together during the pandemic and adopted a dog. when my boyfriend told me that he didn’t know if he would ever get married, i didn’t take him seriously. i thought i could convince him. after all, i felt the click! i convinced him to buy a house with me. i felt like an engagement would naturally follow.
decoupling from that relationship was the hardest thing i’ve had to do. i was scared of being wrong about the click. if i was wrong about him, how could i trust myself in the future? i was attached to the familiarity and comfort of that relationship and afraid of the unknown. he was perfect on paper. he made me laugh. i wanted that to be enough, that we could fix everything else.
looking back on it now, i spent that whole relationship trying to fill in emotional gaps—i was trying to heal his divorce trauma, i was trying to heal fractures in our own relationship. we reached all the logistical milestones but barely moved past the emotional milestone of falling in love. blinded by my belief in the click, i couldn’t develop deeper awareness of myself and our relationship challenges until i was retrospecting on my own.
beyond the click
i don’t fault myself for believing in the click so strongly. my ex boyfriend was super goofy, and that’s one of many desirable qualities for me in a partner. for some, the click comes when they watch their loved one make pancakes on sunday morning. that’s the person you can enjoy the everyday with. or they feel the click when their loved one lets out a big fart and belly laughs. that’s the person who doesn’t take themselves—and therefore life—that seriously.
the click is a surface-level signal that this is the person you’re looking for, but what is beyond than the click? does this person live out the values you expect in a partner? do they emotionally hold you? do they make you feel safe? when i think about qualities, values, and behaviors that are essential for a relationship, i also need to mature my understanding of my desires over time. what does it mean to have a partner who is open