It's like swimming in the Caribbean Sea when nobody has ever asked whether you can swim.

If you try to keep yourself at the shore, you will never know how the water is good for your body, and you will missed out the fun of it. But if you push yourself to swim, you might have to risk yourself drowning.

And maybe,

nobody will come to rescue you.

Apparently, dating in this era has stage of everything. It's not as conservative as I remember. People become too scared to be committed, they want to keep the options open. They want to take things very slowly, getting all the advantages of being in a relationship, but non-committal.

Talking. Dating. Seeing each other. Seeing each other exclusively. It's as if we've become so afraid of naming our feelings that we've invented an entire vocabulary to avoid saying the obvious. Which feels like a very modern way of saying, "I only want you. I don't want to lose you. Let's hand each other every possible opportunity to break our hearts. But let's not make it sound too romantic."

It has become too clinical. Careful. As if we're trying to place our feelings in a container before they become too large to hold. It's like saying, "I love you. But not really. Let me get back to you in 150 business days and see if I still do."

The first time someone told me we were seeing each other exclusively, I thought it sounded less like romance and more like a software update.

But the funny thing is, none of those labels seem to matter when it's 2 a.m. and he's the first person you want to tell about your day. Or when something wonderful happens and your hand automatically reaches for your phone before you've even thought about it. Or when you start measuring time not by days, but by how long until you see him again.

Nobody in history ever wrote poetry about "seeing each other exclusively." Yet people have spent centuries writing about exactly what it feels like. The anticipation. The comfort. The quiet panic of caring too much. The strange realization that someone else's happiness has somehow become tied to your own. Maybe that's why I keep laughing whenever I hear the phrase. Because what we're doing might technically be called seeing each other exclusively, but what I mean is much simpler;

I save stories because I know you will laugh. I notice things because I want to tell you later. I catch myself looking forward to ordinary Wednesdays because they will include you.

And somewhere between the good morning texts, the teasing, the jealousy we pretend not to take seriously, and the conversations that somehow make the world feel smaller, something happened. Something that sounds much older than modern dating terminology. Something that existed long before people started inventing labels for every stage of affection.

Trust. 

Because trust has never been careful. 

It is hoping they never feel the need to use the knife you have them. It is knowing exactly where they could hurt you, how capable they are of breaking your heart, and choosing to stay anyway.

And maybe that's what we are doing. 

Not just seeing each other exclusively.

Not just choosing not to see other people.

But choosing to become vulnerable in only one direction.

Choosing one person whose words can ruin your day or make it infinitely better. One person whose absence suddenly changes the shape of a room. One person whose opinion matters more than it should.

So tonight, come here.

Sit beside me.

Take this knife I gave you the moment I started caring.

Keep it with you. 

You are free to slit my throat with it anytime you want. 

Because as conservative as it might sound, I think I'm falling in love with you.

Not exclusively. 

That's too modern.

I think I'm falling in love with you.

Conservatively.