"I don’t think we have a language for the in-between, the almost-lovers, the could-have-beens. But sometimes that’s where you find yourself." - Lang Leav
It’s interesting how the things that sustain us can also destroy us.
Water quenches thirst but also fills the lungs to the point of suffocation; fire warms but also scorches.
As a society (especially as young women), we’ve been taught for generations that love is similar in its effects. It can nurture us and fuel our joy, but it also holds the power to destroy us when the weight of it becomes too heavy. It is absolute, all-consuming, tangible and its opposite is hate (so they say).
They say the line between love and hate is a thin one – maybe that’s true. But they never talk about other lines. The line between stranger and acquaintance. The line between acquaintance and friend. The line between friend and family. The line between friend and someone who feels like an extension of you.
The way we contemplate romance is similarly lacking in nuance.
Picture a line: on one end of the line, you have “crush”, on the other end, the word “love”. A crush is a strong, fleeting romantic infatuation; love – often conflated with sex – is portrayed as the highest form of intimacy. It’s characterised by feelings of deep connection and heady co-dependency. We have seen this portrayed in music, literature, and art for centuries. As such, Bronte’s Cathy remarked that “whatever [her and Heathcliff’s] souls are made of, his and [hers] are the same.” Love is associated with something transcendental, intense and predestined. Equally, in poetry, Cummings called his subject his “sun… moon, and all [his] stars.” For those as deeply in love as Cummings, their muse is like those infinite celestial beings, giving them life, safety and guidance.
But a dilemma lies in the following: we all know how we feel when we have a crush, and most people are convinced they know when they’re in love. Somewhere in the middle, we may ascribe the term ‘catching feelings’ or, more simply, affection. What happens though for those who have a penchant for connections that are hard to articulate and even harder to put into these carefully crafted compartments?
Our words will never be able to contain the multitude of the emotions and depth of the connections that we encounter in our lifetimes. It often feels like a fruitless search to describe that space between a crush and affection. For some, to apply the word love to their situation may be too intense, premature. To simply employ the word crush would be reductive. And yet, two parties may not yet have learned enough about it each other for real feelings to have been ‘caught’. It isn’t a mutual knowledge and understanding that keeps them in each other’s orbit but a mutual desire to know and understand. The mutual feeling of an inexplicable yet innate and undeniable connection.
If a crush, affection and love are instead conceptualised as three circles in a Venn diagram, then that the sliver of space in the centre is where this transitional feeling lies. An oval of potential, wonder, and tentative vulnerability.
After all, the pauses in a speech are what give resonance to the words around them.
That feeling exists in that space that the English language cannot yet construe. It’s unlike water in its clarity, but like steam in its imperceptibility. Other dialects have attempted to summate the notion of the interstice. In Japanese, one might utilise the term komorebi — the image of sunlight filtering through the trees. An ephemeral, gentle imposition of that person’s presence peeking through the gaps in your mind and faintly illuminating your world.
That feeling exists in the delicious sliver of a second between the recognition and the unfettered admiration in their eyes when their gaze lands on you. It’s in their sharp inhalation before their smile turns to a laugh after processing your jokes, mirth racing to the corner of your eyes to match.
It’s in the hidden statements between each question the two of you trade:
“How are you?”
I’ve missed you
“How was your day?”
I picture myself amidst your mundanities.
“Have you eaten?”
My ease is attuned to your comfort.
“What are you doing tonight?”
I don’t want us to part just yet
It’s in the bounce you notice between each stride they take. It’s in the space between two hands that never touch but are always close enough to do so if both parties were more bold or more reckless. It’s in the space between two bodies sat beside each other, all too aware of the space that separates them. It’s in the dance of your gaze along each of their facial features – by no means perfect but mesmerising all the same.
It’s anticipatory – the lapse between hunger and the first bite of a long-awaited meal. Like the minuscule gap between the strum and the first chord that rings out into the ether.
It’s arguably in the in-between that a true assessment of romantic feelings can be made.
The truth lies in the quiet calm of initial embers rather than the blazing fury that we are told characterises romance. Intimacy is found in the heartbeat of the silence, in the frequency of stolen glances. It is propelled by what is unfolding, not held at arm’s length for fear of what might be lost. It sneaks up on you in whispers of tremors, does not upend you like an earthquake. In this space, grand declarations and gestures are rare but small noticed moments abound. It’s the softest, imperceptible shift from one state to another.
Nevertheless, this stateless ‘state’ is not immune to its downsides. For one, there is always a cloud of doubt (in the verifiability of both your feelings and the other person’s). It becomes a challenge to exercise patience, and a necessity to confront whether vulnerability is the wise choice. Do we trust ourselves and each other enough to address tension and bridge the gap?
Yet the uncertainty is beautiful – it fuels a consistent desire to learn more about the other person, to reach out towards them every day. Not for a desired outcome, but to nurture a true and natural companionship.
Despite the common demonisation of ambiguity and those who find solace in it, this in-between is not a void or a limbo, but a pristine and fertile ground for a deep connection to be planted and grown.