Trust me, it's okay to be clingy and intense.

Now that I’m done with graduate school, I realized I now have the luxury of time to meet people and date. Dating someone new is especially thrilling: the blindingly bright future, the peculiarly electrifying uncertainty, the obnoxiously cute attachment. Don’t we all just love how relationships typically begin?

As you get to know each other better, you focus your attention on this new person. You slowly (and unknowingly) tear down the sturdy wall you built—the same wall you intended to safeguard your frailties. While this can be magical, razing this wall to the ground can be a little too scary. Exposing yourself to unpredictability can either result to sheer bliss or irreparable mayhem. Surely rattling but worth it.

Wherever my dating life leads me, I usually just try to enjoy the process and bask in the moment. In the course of time, and with the help of my prying friends, I think I’ve already figured out what works for me when I involve myself with someone. Is it being too clingy (like how I am to my date)? Is it the intensity? Case by case, but you bet.

Unfortunately for me (us?), dating is bound by etiquette—a subjective, arbitrary list of dos and don’ts. To illustrate, sex after the first date. If two people truly hit it off after a fancy dinner, sex can be the perfect night cap. But some may label this as absurd and will easily cast aspersions on either or both parties. The relativity of how things can be construed is very confusing. Are we here to subscribe to vague conventions? Or are we all about pleasuring ourselves in ways not-so normative?  

Assuming there’s a follow through. Communication is constant. The effort is there as well. You inadvertently show deep desire and all of a sudden, you feel like you’re intensely hooked on this stranger. Interpreted as weakness, clinginess picks up its age-old reputation of a baleful manifestation of a failed relationship. We tend to paint a gloomy picture when talking about overeager love—or whatever it is. This, for most parts, simply isn’t fair. A relationship’s success should not be pinned on one’s decision to take the fast lane instead of taking it step-by-step. For me, it’s all about the varying degrees of attachment each one of us is sensitive to. One’s collective dating pattern may be a good basis in determining whether or not hyperintimacy at the onset will result to something favorable. This, however, is not foolproof.

I’m clingy. I'm intense. Marupok as hell. And I don’t think I should apologize for being so. It is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe being clingy and intense’s about being authentic. It’s about showing what you truly feel. It is about giving your all amid the risks. In fact, I can imagine my most amazing relationship right now, and that is with someone as clingy and intense as (I think) I am.

So when does an amazing relationship happen? It happens when the both of you breezily delete dating and hookup apps the moment you imagine having a great future together. It happens when the both of you send clear signals that you wanna date and get to know each other better without intentions of just messing around. It happens when the both of you trumpet each other to family and friends because, guess what, you both want your circles overlapped. It happens when the both of you treat responses to text messages as urgent because that’s just how excited you are to share your days' stories. It happens when the both of you yearn to spend quality time with each other despite hectic schedules. Ultimately, an amazing relationship happens when the both of you do not care about looking foolish in front of each other because you both know what genuine connection can do to you.

I don’t really mind being clingy and intense—if that means being true to myself and expressing what my heart feels. I figured a rapt and positive appreciation of such clinginess and intensity can be the right context for something propitious. 

So, hey, you. Come. Let’s be clingy and intense with each other. Regardless of where this will lead us to.

[Image from: Very Well Family]