Premise: You, who is one side of the relationship

"If you want to be loved, love.
And act lovingly.
" Benjamin Franklin

Situation: “Can I hug you?”

It is a magical word that is abruptly less likely to be said as you get older. The reason I added the expression "magical" is because many of the responses from the opposite sex were a bright laugh of "Is that sudden?".

A friend who had been dating for three years and talked about getting married wanted to start a close-knit family quickly from the beginning. As a result, I was appearing as an existence in various situations that her mother had prepared, as if I were a son-in-law. She said her father was traveling all over the country, building houses, with his two young daughters and wife. Therefore, her mother had to earn money to support her two daughters directly for a long time through insurance sales and so on.

Maybe that's why. She wanted me to fill the role of "absence of her father" and couldn't show me the leeway to confirm my opinion on the future we would create. I loved her very much and wanted to keep her, but in the end we broke up.

But since then, many of the people I've met have experienced the "absence of their father". I don't know if I had a desire to confirm my role and presence regarding similar deprivation(?), but I was interested in and received attention from those who had experienced similar contexts in their relationship with their father.

Phenomenon: ‘Hugging’ and ‘Hugging’ are very different to me.

My question "Can I hug you?" always required courage. It was my own step towards the uncertainty of whether the relationship could continue rather than the beginning of the relationship. To confirm what the other person wants or expects of me, to see if I can accept it, and to see if this relationship can become a relationship where I can stand tall as my parents' child without being crushed in the process. It was a word I thought about and thought about before taking it out.

Therefore, "hugging" when parents with outstretched arms approach their child did not seem like a suitable expression to me who imagined a lover relationship. Instead, although a strange and awkward moment is expected, calmly trying to hug quietly is a signal to calmly accept the beginning of this new relationship, at least confirming each other's breath and body temperature together.

Thoughts: A good relationship may start with my determination

Love doesn't just happen.

It is a state that is continuously filled with moments that two people choose, which can be called a relationship.

The writer Mandy Len Catron, ‘Falling in love is the easy part’In a TED talk titled, she mentioned that she was interested in a social experiment conducted by Dr. Arthur Aron in 1997 that focused on the topic of "Can strangers become friends?". With a list of questions designed to confirm personal thoughts and values, she conducted the experiment directly with a man. And she wrote an article based on her experience that it was effective, and the article caused a tremendous viral sensation.

However, she said she received a lot of the following questions for several months, as much as the fame of the article.

“Are you still dating?”

She says she came to the conclusion that people are more interested in "how to maintain a relationship" than how they fall in love. And she ends her talk with a confession that she still hopes her ongoing relationship will have a happy ending.

Relationships often start with getting lost and excited. But maintaining a relationship is like constantly repeating the process of clashing, driving each other crazy, hurting each other, confirming stability, and being captivated. The reason why the famous words that describe love and marriage, "crazy things", are familiar to us, isn't there a real reason for that?

In that sense, "Can I hug you?" is similar to a quiet version of "Come on, come on" or "Fighting!" that contains determination. At least I argue that.

'Should I hug you?' and 'Can I hug you?',

I suggest you think about which question to ask the person staying next to you today.