[Catwoman]

While those ominous words 'we need to talk' were never explicitly uttered, we had a much needed series of conversations this weekend. They began and ended fluidly over two days, and I think we've hit a resolution.

He was feeling pressured. He felt the relationship had entered the typical '2-year' stage: woman wanting more, man not knowing what's supposed to have changed. He was happy, but woman's recent emotional instability, combined with what he perceived as clingy jealousy, led to feelings of entrapment and loss of freedom. He wanted to feel free to chat up other girls without woman crying every time, and insisted he doesn't want a full-on relationship.

I don't know why I've put that in the third person.

So, I absorbed the above points with some difficulty but managed to fight through my emotional resistance/denial and accept it. He doesn't want a relationship.

As I expected, as soon as I actually accepted it, it changed. Well, not entirely, it's still true, but my feelings changed and enabled me to see a lot more clearly.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to write this down.

Well, the truth is I don't want a typical 'relationship' either. We both see freedom in our futures, not a life trapped by committments or 'should and shouldn't's' (have you ever seen that many apostrophes at once?). Learning about life is much too important to both of us to restrict it by imposing rules upon ourselves. Yes, that all sounds very hippy and unreal but this is actually true for us.

What I mean is, we can both feel free to live every moment with no restrictions. If I meet an enchanting stranger, I can enter his/her world with no guilt, until the magic ends. If I see an opportunity, and want to move away, or fly to Mongolia, I can. If he finds himself in a similar situation, I will hold no ties, he can feel free to do whatever he likes with his life.

If it happens that doing whatever we like means being with each other, all the better. If not, oh well. I can accept it, and with that acceptance comes a huge range of possibilities that never seemed quite so possible.

Once I had realised this, he felt free to open up about his feelings without giving me false hope of a more secure relationship.

Having established our feelings for each other are more or less the same, I felt a huge burden lifted - I could now concentrate on any real problems, not an endless spiral of 'he loves me, he loves me not'.

So I realised, while I've been complaining and crying, I've been having the kind of relationship I've always dreamed of. Right now.

And it is what it is. I won't hyperbolise. It's not fountains and fairytales, it's just real. And I'm happy in a way I think will last, whether he does or not. I feel like I've realised something more important than this relationship, that things are what they are, and that I'm incredibly lucky in being able to see it.