Remember the lockdown love story I told you a couple of weeks ago? 

I managed to get into a relationship during lockdown and it was one of those love stories that couldn't be more romantic. I also mentioned that I was conscious and very aware that it was a social lab experiment and that we needed to see how we would work together in the "wild", when the lockdown ended. 

It turns out that my gut wasn't so wrong after all. We didn't make it and while the reflection process will still take a bit of time, here are three immediate things that I realize:

Good ingredients don't lead to good cakes.
Relationships are like cake baking, you may have really good ingredients (this one ticked off quite a few boxes like similar backgrounds, cultural openness, stable person), but it doesn't mean you know how to bake a good cake together.

In particular with this one, the oven was a bit too hot and not only did the flour rise too quickly but also the edges got burned pretty fast. In other words, the relationship was under a pressure cooker during lockdown (we saw each other too often, talked way too serious to soon), and we jumped from being colleagues to feeling like being in a six-year long relationship, skipping the dating phase. Moreover, we didn't blend well and didn't find a communication wavelength that worked for the both of us.

The gist: A good relationship needs some good active flour stirring and time to build at a lower temperature. Literally.

Trust your gut. 
I cannot repeat it more often, but TRUST YOUR GUT.

By now, life should have taught us that what we want and what we are willing to negotiate is reasonable. We need to listen to ourselves, and trust that what we think —or rather feel— has some ground (otherwise we wouldn't think it, right?).

Our gut feeds on life long experiences, pain and growth momentum and is like our internal warning system. We MUST listen to it. 

I often fall into sabotage mode. First, my gut tells me something like "He is so different from me", "I don't feel anything when I am with him" and then my brain plays a narrative like "You cannot have it all, you have to be more open-minded", sabotaging how I feel or should think about it. I try to find the flaw in my own thinking. It's a wrong and awful feedback loop.

Yes, there is a calibrated balance to hit in a relationship on what is realistic (he won't be perfect) and what is required (I need to be able to connect intellectually with him), but we need to trust ourselves more that our gut is realistic and that when we have negative feelings that it means something doesn't meet our requirements and we must understand why we feel this way rather than try to ignore it or overwrite our gut feel.

I suppose this is true not only in love but in general in life.

Actively stirring life.
Yes, breakups suck, even the shortest or the once that were difficult from the get go. I am not willing though to sulk in depression or sadness. Perhaps it is the mere fact that with the pandemic, the uncertainty of our jobs and economies, the trapped feeling that we cannot travel, I strongly believe that I need to remain composed and strong in my mind. I literally don't have energy to open up the rabbit hole of starting to doubt everything I believed in or suffering over what life purpose is. We always have a choice and I choose to be happy.