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Relationship, connection + bounce, [contract optional]

Patrick Westöö
5 min readMay 17, 2022

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I have been through my rounds of relationships/hookups/flings during my 34 years on this earth and I have thought a lot about what it means and how it changes you. Because I think often people think of relationships in purely contractual terms. I have made the full journey from being younger when you listen to your inner voice, to being an adult when you listen to society and back again to my inner voice.

The official contract is meaningless. A relationship is connection + bounce.

My first serious girlfriend, whom I dated when I was 18 told me one day, “if you meet someone else, I will be over between us”. That was the only exclusivity contact we had. In reality it’s not whats spoken it is what is felt. With her I felt it. I have sense bonded with three girls, I have dated many others but what matters is the bond.

The bond is the weight that they put in your heart and in your soul. The impression they make, an impression that stays with you for the rest of your life. As we grow older our souls become moulds of the events that have shaped us, the weight of love that permeated into the deep reaches of our soul and made a foot print.

Often people are grown up to think about relationships in the terms of contracts, we are together or not together. It’s formalities that don’t matter in. What matters is the bond.

Humans have a deep need for connection, like water we cannot live without it. We don’t need numbers of people we need people who understand us for who we are. Just a few. People who know when we are sad or angry without having to ask. People who see and appreciate the sides that we most like about ourselves. It is a connection between two souls. It’s when she have reached so far in that she makes a dent, a dent that will last until death. The soul has been permanently touched by another human being, a footprint has been made on your soul.

Bonds sometimes happen instantaneously, for me they always do but they intensify over time. For a bond to be strong you need to be at some point completely vulnerable to the other person. It is the warmth of the other person that opens that up for you as you lean in and share. As you peel the layers off between your inner self and the outer-world. Like layers of clothes they can be dropped over time or all at once. A bond for me is entirely mental and being there with the person in the same room, helps but it’s not necessary. It is…

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Patrick Westöö
Patrick Westöö

Written by Patrick Westöö

Aspiring writer and contemplator of life's events!

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