For a few days now, I've been trying to find what the essential quality of a committed relationship, being together, is to me.

I've often expressed how "being together" contains components like a willingness to spend time together more than you would otherwise, a willingness to share your lives with each others, a willingness to express and accept some expectations from each others, a hightened connection... and while these components are important, and while there is a need to talk about them in a new relationship, they don't really reach the depth of what being together really mean, to me. They don't explain the excruciating pain of a close and important relationship that comes to an end, this feeling of having parts of your guts ripped out of your body.

A friend and I talked earlier today, and while I can't quite remember how this came about, there's this one word that stuck to my mind. It's a word I know very well, I've heard it before... and yet, I've kept forgetting it, I've kept forgetting its existence.

Belonging

Belonging with someone(s), this quality that fills my heart and my body... and leaves a hole when the relationship ends.

Why has it taken all this time to accept this word (or has it, have I just forgotten?)? I can't really say for sure now, but... I've shied from expressions like "you're mine", "I'm yours" before, in fear of feeling caged in, in fear of having my oh so important freedom taken away from me. But really, this sense of belonging doesn't really say more than that. It doesn't automatically mean that you have to act according to certain standards. It doesn't inherently mean exclusivity, living in the same home, spending all evenings together. The choice of what we want to do together, with each others, is still a choice, something to express and agree upon.

I think I'm finally realising that expressing a sense of belonging doesn't take away my freedom. It doesn't change my actions, my reasoning, my emotions. It's simply a quality of how I feel when I'm with somebody.