How many people these days are falling in love with people they’ve never met? Never even had a single two-way interaction with?
I have a proclivity for falling in love with people (and one may argue also objects and ideas) that are incapable of loving me back. So whether or not I fall in love with people I’ve never met is not a particularly useful gauge of anything. But technology has created a very robust category of one-way parasocial relationships, that can come in many flavours. Romantic love is surely one of them.
I wonder how many people, today, are hoping for something impossible. And how many are, secretly, perhaps even to themselves, glad of the impossible. And how many are wondering if, maybe, just maybe, the impossible is possible after all.
Because sometimes it is. But you can only be known if you let yourself be known. And, sometimes, for that, you must make yourself known.
One way relationships are safer than the alternative. I have fun hiding in them all the time. My brain has been delighted by all the excellent people it can watch on a screen from the shadows. But I don’t want that to be the peak of my experience. I don’t want the best relationships I’ve ever had to be with people who didn’t even need to know about them. I want more. And for that, I need to let the impossible be possible. I need to show myself to someone capable of seeing.
Of course, what comprises that capability has always been the conundrum. But my part in it, at least, I have some say in.