(this post is about putting all your time, energy, and care into one relationship, about staking all your happiness on a romantic relationship, effectively making the entirety of your joy and stability dependent on one person who could exit your life for any number of reasons no matter how great the relationship seems. it’s about the societal expectation to build your entire social life around one long term relationship, putting all your eggs in that basket, so to speak, instead of tending to larger social network and maintaining a variety of strong connections so that even if one very important relationship comes to an end, you won’t be losing your whole social life in one fell swoop.)