Edition 04: The expectations of love

& the things I learned from infiltrating Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's fandom.

He looks up at me as if my pupils are globes he is curious about travelling through, his eyes resembling those of ancient story-keepers. So intense and knowing is his gaze, it’s easy to forget how new he is here. I’ve liked many a baby before. I’ve felt such love for children I don’t even know, that I care very little about whether they have dwelled within my own womb. Yet, this baby, my best friend’s baby, feels different. Sidney is profoundly personal to me, in a way that I didn’t expect; which I attribute to the all-encompassing love I have for his mother.

Whenever I mention how much I adore him, I hear the excited sentiments that feel as gooey and tender as the middle of a microwaved cinnamon bun:
“Oh, does this make you want to have a baby?”
“Being a mother looks so good on you.”
“I can totally see you having a baby.”
“Has it made you broody?”

Living beings and organisms touch me so intimately that I cry when I think too much about mycelium and raise a hand to my heart when people are being kind to each other in comment sections. I am utterly, completely and full-bodily moved by all that exists on this planet. From ants to antelopes, meerkats to mountains, supermarket workers to friends I cherish, people I sit next to on a bus for three stops to my very own grandparents. It doesn’t matter. A life is a life and that thrills and delights me beyond measure. I want to bathe in the detail of people’s hidden thoughts and drink in the diversity of their experiences that I will never encounter. So naturally, I love babies just like I love everything else.

Kids are a delight. We get on spectacularly. I considered being a doula for a long time but as a manifesting generator in human design, my brain is always juggling four potentialities of how I can ride out my existence. I read books on embryology and casually watch detailed videos of childbirth while munching on salt and vinegar crisps, as if it’s an episode of Friends. I’m not bothered by the unending noises they make or the excretions that seem to expel from their every orifice without warning. Yet, I’m not sure if I feel the need to have one of my own, to express my love for them.

I have the joy of watching Sidney’s eyebrows grow from week to week. I’ll see the manifestation of his muscles growing strong enough to hold his head up. I’ll get to see his taste buds try to understand the sour wince of trying his first lemon. I have the experience of loving him. Him and all the children the people I adore might have, as well as the billions of children on this Earth who deserve to be loved just because they’re here. I don’t need to own one to feel all of that love.

The same goes for romantic relationships. I don’t feel the need to get married to someone, or even move in with them, just because of the love we shared. There’s endless reasons why I could, but love as the predominant reason hasn’t really landed with me. In our society, we have so many expectations and ideas around owning everything. This desire to make a possession out of things. To claim. Personalise. Stamp our initials all over it. Lest we have a journal or overnight bag that doesn’t declare to the world that we paid £5 per letter to infuse it with our identity.

I once walked past the New Look shop in Westfield Stratford, and a sign plastered in the window, declared, “go on buy it, so you can stop thinking about it.”

Which, for sure is just how cravings work, right? But, also how capitalism, consumerism, material culture and the ever-increasing fast paced nature of fashion, food and social media trends work. We see it, we have an emotional response to it, we decide that we need it now, we consume it, it doesn’t always satiate us in the way we hoped it would and then we do the same thing all over again.

The same feeling is then applied to how we’ve been taught to relate to each other. You see a baby, you feel love for it, then you decide that the love you feel must mean that you should have one of your own. You meet someone, you fall in love, you then decide that the love you feel means they are “the one”, and you must begin the list of should’s and milestones that we believe constitutes a healthy relationship.

It’s almost as if we have a water jug designated for how much love we believe a human can hold. When the love threatens to spill out of the top, we feel this need to pour it into these glasses labelled with, “proposal”, “buy a house”, “get married”, “get a dog”, “have a child” and so on. Almost as if the sensation of love becomes too much, that we need to contain it, do something with it, have a plan for it. Instead of just letting it spill out and make a sopping, sacred mess on the table because we’re just allowing ourselves the experience of savouring all that love is. Without needing to do anything with it.

I’ve seen this play out in the reaction to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s relationship. Which hits close to home as he was actually my pretend internet boyfriend, long before they started dating (see below for the receipt). I watched his American football podcast on YouTube, because I’m clearly a trend forecaster for eligible bachelors that I will never meet. I walked so Swift my Sagittarius sister could run her way onto that field and get her man.

Sent to my friend on 15th February 2023 (T.S and T.K might have started dating in July ‘23, FYI)

For the unfamiliar, Swift’s fandom are called Swifties and as someone who doesn’t engage in parasocial relationships, nor do I listen to her music apart from, ‘Welcome To New York’, I find her fans incredibly fascinating. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to engage in a self-initiated study of observing Swifties’ online behaviour as it pertains to this particular romantic relationship.

I have immersed myself in the fandom as a silent witness, which means I am seeing everything about Swift that her fans are. From the very creepy whereabouts of her private jet and the blurry photos of her and Kelce taken in restaurants to lip readers deciphering the couple’s whispered conversations.

Everything I’ve learned from the frenzy surrounding the idea that Kelce is “endgame” has made ruining my algorithm worth it. Swifties haven’t come to this conclusion from actually knowing the reality of living inside of their private relationship, of course. They have simply watched videos of them and highlighted certain behaviours, such as the way he holds her hand. How he looks at her. How he “leads” her. Protects her. Makes her feel safe. Makes her feel small because he picked her up at Coachella. The internet has decided that all of this means he’s the one, they’re obviously in love and thus, they must get married.

Told ya it was a serious research project.

But, why?

Why are people gagging for them to do something with their love? Why does it have to be poured into a glass with “she said yes”, scribbled on it for everyone to understand or rationalise it? Why can’t they just be in love? Isn’t that enough? I’ll be speaking about marriage and the wedding industrial complex in another newsletter, but why can’t we just be in the emotion of love without transitioning it into something?

To me, it diminishes love. As if we can’t make sense of it unless it comes with these cultural confines that we use to legitimise its existence. It’s like the TikTok girlies saying they’ll never hard launch their man on their grid, until they have a ring on their finger, because we have come to symbolise a ring as a marker of your relationship being safe, stable and certain for time immemorial. I just saw a well-known author share that the same day she posted her engagement announcement on Instagram, she found out that her fiancé was cheating on her. We also have the idea that you’re just playing house with someone and your relationship isn’t “serious” until you have an external responsibility together such as a pet or child.

This is also true of the impact our anthropocentrism has on nature. Where we see humans as the most valuable beings and explains how extractive we’ve been taught to be. We have such a desire to own and consume instead of just being and living alongside it all. Witnessing it. Experiencing it. I mean, how many business ideas have we had after simply enjoying the existence of something? We eat a great croissant, we love croissants, surely we should open a croissant café. We go to Lisbon one time, we like it, of course we should move there. We’re deeply conditioned into making permanent decisions from temporary emotions, instead of living in the beauty of fleeting presence.

It’s understandable as naming, feeling, explaining and communicating our emotions wasn’t on the curriculum at school or in many households. So whether our emotions are the ones we like to feel such as joy or love, or the ones we don’t such as fear or anxiety; we aren’t as culturally articulate as we could be, in understanding how to really be with them, without the need to immediately do something with them. It makes sense that with an emotion as vast and palpitation-inducing as love, that we struggle with just letting it be what it wants to be, instead of forcing it into pre-formed shapes and structures.

What would happen if we allowed love to breathe? Where we slowed into it and released the weight of needing to fit love into socially-made boxes? How would it feel if we weren’t always thinking about the next milestone to reach and just enjoyed the existence of love? What if we didn’t make assumptions about someone else’s love based on what actions they’ve taken or not? How would our relationships to all things deepen if we didn’t feel the need to possess it and instead we could just be present with it all?

What if we found contentment and oceanic depths of satisfaction from just existing in the abundant overflow that love and life have to offer us?

Listen to this…

I wrote a short piece on this a while ago, so take a little moment to pause, catch your breath and listen to what I’ve recorded for you below (there’s music and everything y’all). I think it’s pretty beautiful, if I do say so myself. Rest, reflect and see what arises as you listen.

The Existence
Words by Giselle La Pompe-Moore
Music by Syouki Takahashi