Thread by @Mrpossidez

I have this friend-turned-stranger I haven’t spoken to in a long time. But it still doesn’t feel real. Their voice lives in my internal dialogue. You know how some people stay so alive in you that the idea you haven’t spoken to them feels absurd?

Only recently did it occur to me that I’d been hallucinating their presence. Didn’t know because I remember our conversations so vividly, my brain had started treating them as current. Until it plateaued. Memory turned cold and I recently accepted I had lost this person.

I randomly thought of her today, as I was mulling over an idea we once discussed 3 years ago. She had this spiritually edifying personality that transcended romance. Her questions, mature reflections, retorts, and mannerisms were deeply stimulating for my psyche.

Quite funny how as you grow older and become more layered, you begin to realize how few people can truly meet you across all your dimensions. And how adult life quietly discourages trying. Social and romantic rules nudge you toward narrower, neater boxes.

The architecture of adult life just gets more rigid. Responsibilities deepen, expectations harden. And the space for expansive, soul-deep connection shrinks. So you start settling for fragments of yourself in different places and you make peace with solitude.

If you’re lucky, you find someone you’re both romantically drawn to and multi- understood by. But even then, it’s rare for (and unfair to expect) one person to meet every shade of you especially if you’re atypical, layered, or worse, emotionally complex.

Yet, the deeper you move into intimacy with one person, the more you’re expected, whether by culture, norms, even your own fears, to shrink. To consolidate the fullness of your relational self into one sanctioned role: partner, spouse, soulmate. That’s all.

You accept the idea that one person must be enough. They can meet your emotional needs, intellectual curiosity, spiritual hunger, sense of play, existential ache, creative longing, and physical desire. And if they can’t? Well, you have to try harder. Expect less. Be grateful.

We convince ourselves that losing rich, rare connections is the cost of loyalty. That sacrifice is maturity. But the truth is that we are relational beings. Polyphonic. And some parts of us only come alive in contact with very specific people.

Some of those people may never be your partner. Or even anyone with a defined role in your life. But they are significant. Spiritually. Emotionally. Existentially. Their absence feels like a light went out in a room you didn’t realize you were living in until it was put out.

Some people walk into your life and unlock something spiritual in you. And when those people fade away, the grief is hard to name. There are no rituals for it. No funerals for fading friendships. No ceremonies for silent disappearances.

What’s worse is they rarely leave due to harm or betrayal. They leave because of structure. Because of time. Because “boundaries.” Because our society has no grammar for deep, non-romantic intimacy that coexists with committed partnership.

I think often about those people, men and women, I’ve had rare, layered connections with. Some endured, most didn’t. And I remain grateful for those experiences. I understand now that the fatigue of adult life can make you even stop trying. You just…cope.

And I get it. If you want to have a family, structure matters. You either find ways to maintain these soul connections in silos that won’t destabilize your primary relationship or you let them go. Sad, but… it is what it is. The truth is never easy.