Being with him feels easy in a way I don’t really have to think about.

There are no expectations sitting behind everything. No pressure to define it, no pressure to turn it into something more, and no pressure to explain what anything means. We talk every day, we check in, we laugh, we flirt, and then we go back to our lives. It doesn’t build into something heavier than what it already is. It just stays where it is without becoming complicated.

That’s what I need right now. Just something simple I don’t have to overthink or carry emotionally. This is all I can handle in this season of my life. Anything before this either felt like too much emotion or the wrong kind of emotional balance, like I was always either giving too much or not able to give enough in the way it was expected of me.

With Daniel, it was too much inconsistency. Too many words that didn’t match actions. Too many moments of certainty followed by moments of nothing. It became mentally draining trying to keep up with what was real and what wasn’t. There was always a conversation, always a reassurance, always a buildup that didn’t lead anywhere solid. Over time, it just wore me down.

With Randi, it was too much emotional expectation. Too much being asked of me emotionally when I didn’t have it to give. Too many conversations that required depth I couldn’t access anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what was being asked, it was that I couldn’t meet it in the way it was being asked of me. It started to feel like I was constantly trying to reach a version of myself that I didn’t have in me at the time.

With this new person, there’s none of that pressure. No emotional expectations. No obligation to be deeper than what we are. No need to constantly define or explain anything or turn it into something it’s not. It just exists without needing to be analyzed or figured out.

We talk. We spend time together when we can. Then we give each other space without it turning into something complicated or heavy. There’s no overthinking it, no questioning it, no trying to assign meaning to every interaction. It doesn’t spiral into something bigger than what it is in real time.

That’s what makes it work for me right now.

I don’t need intensity. I don’t need emotional extremes. I don’t need something that pulls everything out of me or leaves me feeling like I’m constantly behind in how I’m supposed to feel. I need something steady. Something simple. Something that doesn’t require me to constantly process or explain myself inside of it.

With him, I don’t have to do any of that. I can just be in it without overanalyzing it, without carrying it beyond the moment, without it turning into something my life doesn’t have the space for right now.

It fits into my life instead of taking it over. It sits beside everything else without adding weight to it.

And if I’m being quite honest, that’s all I have the capacity for right now.