A Healthy Relationship

Have you ever been in a healthy relationship? She asks herself this often, almost afraid of the answer.

In high school, she was one half of the perfect suburban love story– Baseball Boy meets Newspaper Girl and they look beautiful together at prom. When college rolled around, Newspaper Girl moved across the country and Baseball Boy fell apart, eventually admitting that she had never treated him the way he felt he deserved.

Newspaper Girl took it to heart and reevaluated everything she'd ever believed. Was it truly a healthy relationship if she had been in charge of the entire thing? Was it truly a healthy relationship to look down from her pedestal and dictate commands to the soft, vulnerable boy at her feet?

In college, Newspaper Girl became Sorority Girl, and Sorority Girl met Fraternity Boy. And it was never a question that this relationship was unhealthy. After a year of emotional suppression, under-communication, and nasty words flung back and forth, Sorority Girl had broken and couldn't admit it.

When the relationship ended (via Fraternity Boy, mind you), Sorority Girl was left with emptiness, anger, and a boatload of trust issues she had never experienced before.

Sorority Girl went to therapy, met Older Boy, dated Older Boy, was broken up with by Older Boy, graduated college, became City Girl, got back together with Older Boy (after he had "matured," of course).

Older Boy (2.0) made her promises she almost felt stupid not to believe. He promised her a life and to be better and to love her better and to care for her forever and to blah and blah and blah. City Girl obliged. She had no choice, she felt.

Where was all the love to go, if not back to the person she felt it for? Where was she to go, if not back to the home she had created in him?

Now, she sits in Older Boy's tiny apartment on a rainy Sunday evening, absentmindedly watching football with his roommate, while Older Boy burns himself on the hot oil cooking whatever gigantic hunk of meat he's chosen for "Sunday Night Dinner" – a new tradition they've created.

Is it a tradition? Or a kneeling to the pressures of becoming "more adult," "more mature." Is it fun to sit at home on a Friday night, or is it only because he no longer enjoys going out–and City Girl caves to his every ask.

City Girl knows Older Boy loves her. He holds her with such care and fragility. He cooks for her and carries her bags and wipes her tears (even when they don't mean anything). He tells her she's the only one, he plans a life with her, he offers her stability and sweetness.

Is this a healthy relationship? she often asks herself. Is a healthy relationship giving up wild and free for stable and homey? Is a healthy relationship worrying about his every move because if he scorned her she would fall apart? Is a healthy relationship having a contingency plan for said scorning? (Send scathing text, show no mercy for apologies, pack up, move back home, find job in Europe, get the hell out of America, never look back).

Isn't a healthy relationship one you don't have to debate when you're so high on weed that your thoughts begin to spiral out of control? I don't think you're supposed to feel an immense pressure in your chest when your Healthy Partner doesn't text you back fast enough on a night out with his friends.

I don't think you're supposed to have a contingency plan for a healthy relationship.