How to Build a Life with Your Chosen Family

Chaotic. That is how Rose and I described ourselves the summer we became close. We were each reeling from different breakups. I had left my partner of almost four years, and she had left her spouse. And now we were alone, flinging ourselves at anyone and anything that seemed sticky enough to hold us for a minute, just a minute. We didn’t want to be held for very long, just long enough to remember that we could still feel the distinct blend of power and possibility that comes from bumping up against someone new—then we wanted to be free to leave.

It seemed like almost everyone we knew was breaking up that summer, or had broken up that spring, or was finally recovering from a breakup that had happened last winter, or was inching toward a breakup and teetering on the edge while we all stood below, exuberant, waiting with joyful single arms to catch the latest member of our club.

Chaotic breakup energy is the language we gave to the feelings we held, or refused to hold, while we figured out how to exist again. We were in our late twenties. We had each chosen paths for our lives in the years prior that seemed as though they would solidify into The Truth—and they did until they didn’t anymore.

When I told my ex-partner I no longer wanted to be with her, she reminded me that we had talked seriously about marriage, had spoken very recently about how to acquire sperm. She was right; we’d been planning one kind of life together, and in the breakup, I said: No thank you, I think I will choose a different kind of life. I did not blame her for feeling unmoored. I was unmoored too.

The most confusing part about being the person who leaves a relationship is that the world demands a good reason. But the world has a bizarrely narrow list of reasons that qualify as good. I spent a long time feeling guilty about going when nothing was outrightly wrong. So many of my friends in our breakup club had been cheated on, lied to, abused, dumped unkindly, unceremoniously left. My partner did not do any of those things.

But our relationship was not right. It had stopped working, and we hadn’t noticed. Or we’d noticed too late and though we tried, we couldn’t fix it. I used to say, I could have stayed, but the truth is, I could not have stayed. It would have been an unkind lie. It would have been worse than being alone.

And now we were alone, flinging ourselves at anyone and anything that seemed sticky enough to hold us for a minute, just a minute.

Rose is the one who left in her relationship, too. You are a specific kind of person if you are the one who leaves, I think. You are choosing yourself. We recognized that in each other. We liked it.

*

These days, I text Rose every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed. I haven’t done that with a romantic partner in two years, not since my breakup, though I’ve had many dates since then and have even been somewhat serious with a few of them.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that, in the beginning, I wanted to fall in love with Rose in a romantic way. It would have been easy. She’s beautiful, and funny, and talented, and kind, and brilliant. We met and remained in each other’s orbits for six years before we smashed together, similar bodies feeling similar brain-heart feelings at a similar time.

We were on a group vacation with some friends. One night, we got drunk and kissed. She pushed me against a wall and giggled, played with my hair and cupped my chin in her palm. We’d been friends for years, but never like this. Suddenly, that shift happened, that imperceptible breath when all at once you are in the exact right headspace to ever-so-slightly, and often unconsciously, change the terms of your relationship with a pal.

We didn’t live in the same state, but after that vacation we started texting more. Then we shifted to the phone or FaceTime. One night I FaceTimed her from my backyard, high on chaotic breakup energy and the stifling heat of July, sitting in the kiddie pool my housemate had blown up and filled—glass of wine in one hand, iPhone precariously in the other.

I told her about a stranger babe I’d made out with on the dance floor the week before, who kept texting me and then flaking; I’d invited them to join me in the pool that night, but they’d predictably canceled at the last minute. I actually didn’t care because it meant I had time to call Rose and trade gossip about our dates.

She told me all about her current situationships, then asked to hear about mine. I told her about T, about W, about M, about this hot new Tinder match who also followed me on Instagram and DMed me minutes after I posted a complaint on my story about Cancer season getting me down.

I just want someone to spank me until I can’t feel my feelings, I posted, and their message popped up soon after: I can’t make that happen tonight, but I’d love to schedule something for later this week.

Telling Rose about my dates was, in some ways, even better than interacting with them directly. When Rose and I shared our dating stories, they became one more thread that held us together. I’ve read that humans struggle with deciding between long-term relationships and casual flings, because we want both security and novelty, to feel safe and sexy. The issue seems to be that the very sense of grounding we crave kills off the spontaneity required to fuel desirability.

But that summer, I solved the problem: Rose was my constant, my dates were the excitement. With my ex, I had felt stuck, punished for wanting to prioritize my own needs. Rose loved me because of my independence. She was independent, too. We could be alone together. I felt invincible.

I was already in love with all my friends. I knew it more clearly then than I had ever known anything in my life. But in my newfound singleness, I was falling in love with them more deeply, more intentionally. I realized my life did not have to take the shape of The Truth that I had been drifting toward, aimless and begrudging, with my ex. Now it was time to make choices, to figure out what kind of life I actually wanted, what kind of relationships I needed to prioritize to feel fulfilled.

One night that summer, I jokingly asked Rose to marry me, but it wasn’t really a joke. She gently pushed the question aside, and I decided in that moment to change my mind. I wasn’t falling in love with Rose like that. I was falling in love with her like this. It was better like this.

*

Rose and I went on vacation together in January, just the two of us. She searched places we could stay and sent me a list of options because she knew I was overwhelmed with school. When I looked through them, I could tell she had prioritized aesthetics in her search to accommodate my love of dramatic photo shoots. I booked the accommodation and handled most of the administrative tasks that go along with planning a trip to save Rose the hassle during what I knew was a stressful time for her at work. Love is many quiet, caring gestures stacked up over and over again.

We shared a bed in the cutest, weirdest bed-and-breakfast I’ve ever stayed in. When I woke up on our first morning of vacation, Rose was sitting in an armchair by the bed, already drinking coffee and typing on her laptop. I had kicked the covers off and was lying starfish in my underwear.

Do you want me to take a picture of your butt to send your dates? Rose asked sweetly. It looks so good right now. I said yes, and we laughed about how hard it is to take a really stellar picture of your own butt.

The point of the trip was simply to spend time together, so we did not have a strict agenda. We meandered to a coffee shop so Rose could get some work done. We soon befriended the barista who informed us there were three pigs outside in the courtyard and we should feel free to go say hi. The idea of meeting three large pigs was not particularly appealing to me, but when the most aggressive one pushed his nose against Rose’s calf, her face shone with such delight that I found myself mentally filing the pigs away as a highlight of the vacation.

We ended up splitting a bottle of wine with the barista when she closed the shop—our new friend was dealing with a tumultuous breakup. I let Rose guide the conversation. She asked thoughtful questions and offered blunt but validating advice. I sat quietly, admiring her . . . loving her. I hoped she could feel it.

Later in the day, we ran a bubble bath in our tiny bathroom and Rose took out her Polaroid camera, humoring my deep desire to create an elaborate photoshoot that involved me, naked, drinking pink wine and eating beignets in the bathtub. Why did I want this to happen? Honestly, why does anything in this life bring anyone joy? I delight in loving my body by posing naked and documenting my fat curves. Rose loves me enough to not only humor me in this act, but finds her own joy in it, too.

We spent more than an hour in the bathroom, laughing and laughing and laughing while Rose directed me to find my best angles. She took more than twenty Polaroids, and I chose my favorites to send to a few dates. E wrote back to me first with the appropriate degree of appreciation but then followed up with a question that made me and Rose laugh: I don’t understand how Rose could take all these photos and then you two don’t have sex? Like I just don’t get it?

Maybe one day we will, Rose mused later, after we had talked about serious things and frivolous things and congratulated ourselves on being very hot and also very good at vacationing together. For a while, I felt really certain it would happen, I said, but now I feel like it probably never will.

Maybe when literally every aspect of our lives aren’t so intertwined, she said, and I nodded. But privately, I thought to myself: I don’t ever want my life to be less intertwined with yours, so maybe never.

I love you, I said. I know honey, she replied. I love you too.

*

It has been almost two years since I first fell in love with Rose, but it feels as though we have been family for decades now. I know queer people move through the world in that way; I know that friendship means so much to so many of us. Now, I can feel our relationship shifting slightly again.

You are a specific kind of person if you are the one who leaves, I think. You are choosing yourself. We recognized that in each other. We liked it.

The thing about chaotic breakup energy is that it cannot last forever. Eventually, you get tired. I’m dismayed to learn that what I was feeling the summer Rose and I became close wasn’t special, wasn’t something that set me apart from anyone else. It was just a regular reaction to a major life change.

Rose and I are both less chaotic now. We each have other people we might text good morning, or good night. We still talk every day, but I’m starting to accept that what we have been to each other over the past two years was not just a simple kind of friend, the kind you have when you’re a kid, where the point of the friendship is just fun. Rose and I have relied on each other for certain acts of care society tells us we can only expect from a romantic partner. We were able to provide that to each other, in some ways, because we both did not have romantic partners. What happens when that’s not true anymore?

I tell people that friendship is my north star—and it is. But just because friendship is my fixed point, it does not actually mean that any friendship itself is a fixed point. If our friendships and non-sexual and non-romantic relationships are just as important as our sexual romantic relationships, we have to accept that they are also just as complicated. Building a life with someone naturally accounts that there will be movement, that things will ebb and flow. I often encourage folks in my life who have more recognizable romantic relationships to accept that inevitable uncertainty when they think about marriage, or civil partnerships, or moving in together, or even just theoretically planning for a long future of sharing a life.

When you build a life with your friends, you need to remember that, too.

Rose is a genius, and so it’s unsurprising that she was unsurprised when I brought some of these thoughts up on our vacation. Of course she’d already thought about it, the way building a life with friends is a beautiful notion and a more complicated reality. She lives with her other best friend, and they make up a small family. I sometimes wonder what will happen if one or both of them decide they would like to move in with a romantic partner down the line.

As we get older and add more threads to our ever expanding web of community, of love, of friendship, we must navigate how a friend family can shift if (when?) new individuals are introduced. We have to all agree to want to weave something new.

I know that we won’t always be able to be as close as we’ve been these past two years, I say to Rose, the night she takes Polaroids of me in the bathtub, the night we talk about if we’ll ever sleep together. Like, one day you won’t have space to text me as much as we do now, and we’ll still be close friends. I’ve accepted that.

She smiles, bemused. What can I do to make you feel secure in our friendship even if things change?

Oh, you don’t have to do anything, I say. Things just change. I’ll handle it.

She rolls her eyes at me. Okay, she says. You don’t have to tell me right now, but will you think about some things that might make you feel secure in our friendship, even when things in our lives change, and let me know when you’ve thought about it?

I nod, suddenly shy. I have always worried about being disposable, about the people I love realizing they don’t need me after all if I am not good enough, if I am not perfect, if I mess up, if they find someone new.

I don’t yet know the answer to Rose’s question, but I've been thinking about it a lot. It feels nice to think about. It feels like the opposite of chaos.

• 0