trivial post #6

"The third year of a relationship is the most challenging. A lot of people told me that. Didn't believe them. Turns out it's true."

Last night I was talking to my friend about the end of (what I thought was) her great relationship with her boyfriend. Considering that the two of them were like gold together, their breakup was pretty worrying. Like my friend, I have always just dismissed the warnings surrounding Year Three as pure fiction, but their recent breakup in their third year freaked me out. There must be something about Year Three that causes even the strongest of relationships to falter.

So what is it? What is it about Year Three that causes couples to break up?

I didn't know, and the thought deeply troubled me. So of course I turned to Rap to voice out my concerns. And our conversation went something like this:

      I'm worried.
      Why?
   
      Because they say the third year of a relationship is the hardest.
      Why are you worried about that?
      
      Because ours is going to coincide with med school.
      So?

      So it's going to be doubly hard for us.
      Wait, what? How long have we been together, anyway? 

      Two years, doyyy!
      No! We've been together for three!

      No, it's two.
      Are you sure?

     Yes, I'm sure!
     Oh. It's felt like three. 

     Well it's two.
      It's okay, Aims. We'll be fine. 

I thought about this conversation before I went to bed, and then I realized the flaw in my logic. My assumption had been that since our third anniversary wasn't until April, our third year together would begin in April, too.

But anniversaries (and birthdays, actually) mark the end of a year. A baby's first year of life doesn't begin on her first birthday; her first birthday signals the beginning of her second year of life. For the baby, Year 1 is the span of time between the day she was born and the day of her first birthday.

So my third anniversary with Rap will actually mean the end (and not the beginning) of our third year together. It will also be the beginning of our fourth. Mind-blowing.

So after all my worries about whether we would survive our third year, it turns out that the answer, hiding in plain sight, was yes. I have unwittingly been living out Year Three all along. And hey, it's not so bad. Actually, it isn't bad at all.

How anti-climactic! It feels weird, like I forward-warped through time, skipped over all the pitfalls of Year Three, and instead jumped to its conclusion. Like knowing the final score of a basketball game before it even started.

Okay that analogy makes no sense. Blog post over.