Now that it’s autumn, I can finally append the following title to the summer of 2008: “The Summer of Break Ups.” I mean sure, in June, I attended two beautiful weddings, both of which appeared to me to be healthy, well thought out unions between two people whose goals are to assist each other in leading a happy life for the rest of their lives. But placing those two unions aside, I think that all but one of my friends who lives within twenty miles of me, who entered this summer in a serious, committed relationship, broke up with their partner this summer!
One friend was dumped via text message, another was dropped under the ruse of ‘inner-personal-ambiguity’ (I’m coining this term), a few of my friends had lovers who went ‘psycho’ on them, a few fiancés even called off their weddings, and the rest were just hit by a train that they didn’t see coming.
But last week, as I was studying Spanish, I learned about a Spanish concept concerning relationship development that is linguistically inherited, and I’m going to make it my mission to revolutionize the American relationship process by spreading the word. As an added bonus, I will also save myself from assisting friends with broken hearts, relationship humiliation, and ‘inner-personal-ambiguity’ of feelings.
The best part of this relationship revolution is that since I got it for free, I’m going to pass it on to all of my readers for free as well! (Well, technically, I had to pay twenty dollars for the text book I’m using, and the two lines that I read consisted of one fifteenth of a page in a book with a little over four hundred pages, so rounded down and then pro rated, this groundbreaking relationship advice actually cost me approximately one third of one cent, but, uh, who’s counting, right?)
Let’s analyze the prototypical evolution of a relationship in America. Typically, here in the States, when you meet someone, assuming they don’t rub you the wrong way, you’ll refer to them as a friend, and in reference to them, you’ll use the verb “to like” to describe your relationship.
For example, one might say something like: “I just met Amelia, she’s a nice girl, and I like her.” Or when speaking directly to Amelia, one might say, “I like you, Amelia.” And it should be understood that there is no platonic over or under tones given to the simple word “like,” sub textually speaking (se gustar, en espanol).
Now, let’s say that after several weeks of hanging out with Amelia, she and I begin to develop a physical relationship, something as simple as a good night kiss after a night at the movies (read: full on make out session near a dumpster in the alley behind a dive bar at two a.m. after slamming five shots of whiskey and three pints of beer). At this point in our developing relationship, a typical American may move on from using the verb “to like” to the second of the three phases of relationship-developing-verbs that we Americans use, which is “to want” or “to need”, as in “I want you, Amelia, please come home with me tonight, I need you!” (Querer o necesitar, en espanol.)I feel quite strongly that this is precisely the point at which most American relationships seem to fail; at the point where partner A expresses to partner B that they no longer like them, but now want (or need) them. To want and need are scary, powerfully loaded words that oftentimes scare someone away from someone, because most normal people don’t go immediately from liking someone to needing them – it’s kind of creepy.
Feeling the need for something should arise only after a prolonged exposure to it, and you should only assert your personal need for something after giving yourself enough time to truly examine the power of the object that you are claiming to need. I’d argue that it takes almost two years of exposure to anything before you can correctly deduce whether or not you truly need that thing, hence I claim that the verbs “to need” and “to want” each carry an awfully heavy connotation! But on the grand list of things a human needs, love does come in fifth, right after oxygen, water, food, and decent health.
Before I introduce the magical second verb that Spanish speakers use in their relationship development, let’s jump to the final verb phase of both the English and Spanish speaking relationships. This, of course is when the verb “to love” (amar, en espanol) comes into play. “To love” is the ultimate verb that we can use to express our devotion and dedication to someone. Personally, I like to use this verb quite casually in reference to inanimate objects like chips, salsa, and my guitar, but when applied to the singular subject of I (as in “I love you”), and spoken to someone that you are in a relationship with, it is aptly used to mean, “I love you, and love no one else in the way that I love you, so this could be forever.” Yeah, it’s heavy stuff!
So what did I learn in my Spanish book that could revolutionize the American relationship? What I learned was that in the Spanish language, there are four verbs to be used, in a clear, evolutionary order, to represent one person’s growing affection towards another person. In America, we only have three steps, and I feel that everything goes wrong in the early stages of an American relationship because of our rush to get away from holding hands and saying good night, at the “ I like you stage,” and into the hot, steamy, emotionally elevating realm of the second “I want you/need you stage.”
This American notion of moving directly from liking to needing is about as natural as trying to shift a car directly from first gear into third; sure, technically, it can be done, but if you do it, you are trying to create new power without the necessary torque, and in the process, you are potentially causing permanent damage to the car’s engine – the very thing that you need to keep a relationship (or car) consistently working in the future. (And don’t forget about the asparagus-urine smell that accompanies a bad shift!)It is my belief that Spanish speakers save themselves from overly committing and freaking out their partners by moving a little slower than the English speaking cultures, by adding a key verb into their relationships before jumping into the commitment riddled conundrum that is the American second phase of wanting and needing.
The Spanish simply add a phase in their relationships wherein one acknowledges that someone is important to them, but that they don’t quite need them in that wanting way, just quite yet. They do this quite seamlessly by using the reflexive verb “se importar,” which in conjunction with the personal subject of I, can be used as follows: “Amelia, you are important to me.” This verb is beautiful because it perfectly connotes a smooth elevation from the lackluster affection of simply liking someone to giving that someone a little something more, but it is also important (pun intended) in that it can’t really worry the recipient, because being important to someone else should not induce the sort of paranoia that often accompanies the feeling of being ‘needed’ by someone.I’m going to go out on a limb and claim that many American relationships end before they need to because one of the partners prematurely claims to need their partner before the other partner is ready to be needed. Oftentimes, this is ironic, because the speaker isn’t even sure that they need their partner either, they just need something more powerful to say than “I like you” to develop the relationship further.
How many times have you been with a partner whom you really liked, both physically and emotionally, and therefore needed to replace the verb “to like” with something more, but you weren’t quite ready to send them signals that inadvertently say; “Hey, if you want utter commitment from me, I’m ready?” Because this, according to my theory, is precisely what telling someone that you need him or her, usually conveys.
But in all actuality, what you really meant to say was: “I really like having sex with you, getting Chinese food and eating it naked in bed while we chain smoke and make fun of the local news, but I’m not ready to start buying you tampons, to talk about future commitments like weddings, holidays and meeting your parents, and I certainly don’t want you to start nagging me about how I hang out with my friends too much!”
Yeah, I know, it happens to even the best of us. So the next time you more than like someone, but you assuredly don’t need them, and you really want to take things to the next level without sending them the wrong signal, follow the Spanish lead: Pick up the phone, call the person up, and say “I just called to say, I more than like you, because I find you important, but I don’t yet want you or need you, and I certainly don’t love you, so let’s just take it easy, and see where things could go from here, without any pressure on either of us, okay?” You know, just like in that famous Ray Charles song. And with advice like this, I guess I can see why so many people wonder why I’ve stopped dating…