There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. -– Vincent van Gogh
perception of a partner
Aristotle famously said that friends are our mirrors, showing us our moral qualities in ways we can’t discern on our own. Consider then, the magical mirror of Tolkien’s elf queen Galadriel, which reflects “things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be.” We tell ourselves stories about partners to live with. They become characters in our personal mythology - the one who saved us, the one who destroyed us, the one who showed us who we really were. But the truth is more unsettling: a partner is simply another human being carrying their own narratives, their own delusions, their own capacity for both tenderness and devastation. They are a mirror in which we see ourselves most clearly, and most distorted.
They are the ones that made “rupture and repair” possible - someone to cry, disappoint, or annoy and still continue with. The relationship wouldn’t fracture at the first conflict.
A partner is someone whose flaws become “your whole life” - not in the suffocating way, but in a sense their quirks become woven into your daily life. Their snoring, their way of loading the dishwasher wrong, their tendency to repeat stories you’ve heard before - these small irritations are paradoxically part of what makes the connection real and durable.
A partner is someone who makes you “toss and turn throughout the night” - not because anything is wrong, but because their presence in your life has become significant enough to disturb your equilibrium. They’re the “pea under the mattress” that makes you unable to rest easily in old patterns. Not in an obsessive way, but their light would make your day a bit warmer.
A partner is someone you are borrowing time with each other, the duration unknown, and that uncertainty makes it precious.
With essence, a partner is someone you choose to keep experimenting with, under whatever conditions possible. When one iteration of the relationship doesn’t work, you try another. You adapt and evolve together, knowing that, as “the true shape of things” puts it, “no one, no matter how prescient, can predict all the challenges that will emerge over 20 years of loving someone.”
Consider the moment you realize someone has become your partner. Not the formal declarations or ceremonies, but that subtle shift in consciousness when their presence in your life becomes both ordinary and extraordinary. When their particular way of stirring coffee or humming off-key while washing dishes becomes essential to your understanding of the world. The partner is both witness and accomplice to your life’s narrative, though they may be writing a completely different story in their own mind. It’s this disconnect - this impossible attempt to fully know another consciousness while being trapped in our own - that makes partnership both necessary and perpetually incomplete.
what’s rly happening here?
The line between friendship and love isn’t a line at all. It’s more like water seeping into soil - you never quite know where one ends and the other begins. Since writing that essay, I’ve noticed something shift, like a photograph slowly developing in darkroom fluid. The image isn’t what I expected.
I wrote it to capture gratitude - for how she made 2024 gentler, more navigable. But others saw something else: a confession masked as appreciation. It wasn’t until they mentioned it that I recognized the undertow in my own words.
Here’s what I know: I love her in a way that defies categorisation. It’s the kind of love that would cross continents for a single afternoon together. That remembers her nut allergy with the same vigilance I remember to breathe. That wants to send her pictures of interesting rocks found on morning walks, or screenshots of ridiculous luxury watches I’ll never buy. It’s love that manifests in tomato soup when she’s sick and memes when she’s sad.
What draws me isn’t desire but, her mind. The way she dissects problems. The way she makes small things meaningful just by observing it. The way she smiles, and tend to others. I find myself unconsciously adopting her frameworks, seeing the world through her lens. Like water taking the shape of its container, I’ve begun to see things in her silhouette.
By every metric I’ve constructed for an ideal partner, she fits perfectly - the person I could build a life with, share silence with, grow old beside. But maybe that’s the trap. Maybe I’m pattern-matching against the space J left a year ago, trying to fill that particular emptiness with this particular friendship.
The question isn’t whether I love her - that’s beyond doubt. The question is whether I’m confusing the safety of deep friendship with romantic love. Whether I’m mistaking the comfort of being truly known for something else. As Ava would say, “When you love someone, their beauty acquires a different kind of meaning.” But does that meaning have to be romantic?
Like those eight-foot ropes binding Montano and Hsieh - romantic love is accepting both the connection and the space between, the togetherness and the separateness, the harmony and the discord. It’s choosing to remain tethered while maintaining individual integrity. Perhaps what I’m feeling isn’t love transforming into something else, but love expanding beyond my ability to categorise it. Something that exists in the space between friendship and romance, in that undefined territory where souls recognise each other without needing to name what they are.
What I know is this: she is the first person I want to tell things to.
Maybe that’s enough knowing for now. Maybe, I have caught myself falling for her, again.