When you know, do you know?

Our cultural obsession with certainty

There aren’t many things that cause me to shudder, but upon hearing, “when you know, you know”, a shudder comes to greet me. I have an exceptionally high tolerance for most societal ails. What causes a kettle-like eruption in the blood of many, often passes me by with a mere shrug of half a shoulder. Take slow walkers, to me they’re simply being present of their surroundings and in active resistance of the conditioned response to always hurrying. People bumping into you in the street while they’re texting, to me it’s just an ingrained part of our evolved society, they might be texting someone how much they love them; it’s no bother of mine. In general, I don’t really care to ruin the majesty of my day over something insignificant to the greater plot of my existence.

Yet, there are two things where I can really feel my intestines spasm in annoyance. When you’re in a line, be it on a plane or in a shop, and the person behind you is standing so close to you they might as well pitch a tent in your epidermis. The woeful disregard for personal space is one thing, but being so close to me, will not make any difference to how fast you can escape the queue. Back up, beloved.

The second thing, as I said before is, “when you know, you know”. Especially, and actually pretty much exclusively, when it’s said in the context of dating and romantic relationships. My heart, usually a land of softness and delight for humanity, that sings a pleasant hum of, “I hear you”, “Tell me more”, and “I feel…” wants to rebel and scream out, “well no, you don’t fucking know.”

I mean, do we know? Can we know? And why does it aggravate me so?

This all began with the audio-visual catalogue of romantic comedies where the female protagonist lands on her best friend’s bed, lies in her lap and swoons about the date she had, detailing every millisecond of conversation and coy glances. The date often lasts for an eternity, possibly spanning into the post-midnight hours. Breakfast turned into the next breakfast, yet her makeup is impeccable with not a whiff of setting spray misted on. Of course, she doesn’t mention that it takes quite some time to fully be yourself with someone, to see the intricacies in someone, to feel safe enough to be vulnerable. Anyway, she comes to the conclusion that this is now her “person”, with a high level of certainty that he’s officially the one. When best friend asks her why she thinks this is true, the sentence comes with a smug smirk to accompany it, “well, when you know, you know,” at which point I yell at the TV, “girl, you do not know this man.”

Not just reserved to films and novels, I’ve been told this before. Many of us have. Some of us might have spoken these words. The sentence is a full stop. A period. It’s the end of the conversation. You can’t question someone’s knowing, right? That sentence is not an invitation for curiosity, it’s a declaration of alleged truth, that does not care for any unromantic minds to poke holes in it.

It’s even a TikTok trend. Thousands of videos of couples sharing stories of how they met, to the soundtrack of Lana Del Rey’s Margaret. All sticking to the same formula. They met. They knew instantly. Had a fast, rushing to your laptop to get Glastonbury tickets, type of relationship. From people moving in after two weeks, marriage after a few months and a baby imminently after. They detail the proof of their knowing, with a closing remark that says something along the lines of, “now, 15 years, one house, three babies and a business later, we’re still together.” Followed by, you guessed it. “Because, when you know, you know.”

The comments sections are also at max capacity with people sharing how quickly they moved through the stages of their relationship and caveating it with, “when you know, you know.” Finding solidarity in numbers. What interests me, and always has, which I’ve written about before, is why we need to do something with love. Why when you love someone there’s an expectation to externalise it into something, be it living together, starting a business together, having a child together, instead of just existing in that love. Being present in it. Similarly, with this sentiment, it feels like it’s not enough to meet someone and have gooey feelings for them without needing to say they’re the one or your person immediately.

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? 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?

These videos often remark on how long the couple have been together, almost as proof of the when-you-know-you-know-ness. Our dating culture idealises longevity, but a video saying a couple has been together for twenty years doesn’t actually tell us anything. What’s inside the container of that relationship? What’s the substance of it? How does it feel? Its success isn’t marked by the amount of years in, numbers of kids and houses. What does it feel like to be in? What are we prioritising in romantic relationships, is it how long something lasts or what it contains? I’ve always held on to the idea that all things are sacred, whether they have us for a month, twenty years, or a lifetime. Give me one year of beautiful, passion-filled, growth-inducing, inside-melting love over ten years of conversations that start and end with “what did you do today?” and having the same 2.7 arguments on loop.

Pop psychology has oversimplified many things when it comes to our relational patterns, including attachment theory. Where saying if you’re anxious, avoidant or secure in relationships is as common as talking about your sun, moon and rising in astrology. I mean, unhelpful, as it’s incredibly complex, nuanced and specific to the individual, it’s not a “fill out a quiz and find your type” kind of thing. However, due to the discourse of this, and the rise in more people engaging in therapy and self-help; conversations about dating are not exclusively like the rom-com bed scene I mentioned above.

For some of us, in my friendship groups for sure, we’re asking each other if we’re feeling regulated, or if this person is activating our past relational patterns. Are they secure? Is there anything we’re not seeing? In an episode of Couples Therapy, Dr Orna Guralnik said something along the lines of, “when you’re moving too fast, you don’t have time to think.” All of that chat is up for grabs in friendships and family connections that don’t prioritise comfort but instead, each other’s growth. You know what shuts down that level of reflection and curiosity, “when you know, you know (WYKYK)”

Am I a pessimist? Deeply unromantic? Do I just not “get it”. I prioritise hope and joy. My innate disposition is one of joy. I see beauty and wonder in all things. I’m not cynical. When it comes to romantic love, I’m a realist. It’s part of my personality. I also found safety after traumatic experiences by being quite dependant on the emotional, mental and spiritual parts of myself. The physical not so much. Which means I’m well practiced in understanding my emotional capacity, and regulating my emotions, which I know is not the reality or privilege for all of us. So, I’ve always been intrigued as to why romantic love can turn us into beings who forget who they are and accept choices that they would often shun. I include my past self in this too.

I’m absolutely pathetic for my partner. A giggling mess of goosebumps and smiles, the human embodiment of how soft and soothed a hot water bottle makes you feel. Yet, perpetually calm and balanced. The rest of my life and my relationship with myself has remained the same. Did I know when I met him? Of course, not. We were two people meeting for the first time from the internet. How could I possibly know? And what does it mean to know? One of the many versions of my archived dating profile stated, “isn’t it beautiful that we don’t yet know what we’ll mean to each other?”

I stand by that. What’s the rush to write the story up before you even know each other’s dietary requirements? Why’s there such a need to make a soulmate of someone without existing in the insignificance and significance of daily life together? How can we know anything without seeing someone in their pain as well as in their beauty? What I knew on that first date, was that something felt different, and wonderful, I knew I was excited and I’m never excited on dates, unless I see a snail or something. I knew I felt calm. I didn’t know that I loved him, because let’s be so for real, love hasn’t captivated our human consciousness for millennia based on a singular lunch. I knew that my body felt at ease within minutes, as if it were trying to whisper something to me, that this was somewhere I could exhale. I felt a familiarity. I also didn’t know what this was or could be, nor was I in a rush to. I simply knew enough to go on another date with him. Most of all, I knew myself, the self I’ve known for 35 years and in her I trust and know.

The only way I could have ever landed in this WYKYK or calling my friends to say “I’ve found the one”, was if I projected onto him who I wanted him to be, rather than allow him to show me who he was. To put him in a box of expectations and assumptions. The desire to call the search off and simply decide it was him without further information. How can we say when you know, you know, when we don’t know what’s next? When we don’t know how we will both grow? How life will crash in. How time will cook and make us. There is something precious about wanting to commit to learning and discovering parts of someone, and being okay with only knowing what they mean to us at any given time, and everything else, is well, everything else. Can’t we just desire to get to know someone and for them to know us, and continue for however long doing so?

I wonder if when it comes to love, our urge to make meaning out of feeling, or to decide that something is forever, is the fear of it ending. We all believe we’re immune to it, that it won’t happen to us. But, why not us? Isn’t it just beautiful to be in love, even if it doesn’t last forever? Even to say something didn’t work out, does love a disservice. If it worked for a moment or more than a moment, it worked for the time it worked for, it just wasn’t meant to live in what’s next. This compulsion for certainty and knowing, surely has to be the greatest of human delusions. We don’t know shit. Many of us have ended a friendship with someone who we always believed we’d share a life with and could never imagine not being friends with. We’ve got exes whose names we plastered over our futures and planned retirements with, just to break up with them the next year. We don’t know what we don’t know, and it is really okay. We’ve all been there.

We sit in the heaviness of regret and reprimand ourselves for saying that someone was the one for it to end up not being the case. Instead of having self-compassion. Instead of releasing the need for anything to be anything other than what it is. Instead of us labelling things as “not serious”, when we don’t have a 5 year plan with someone or share a name, and opening our hearts to what is here now, and being soaked in that, because now is delicious.

I guess I’m not afraid of endings, because I’m not afraid of life. I’m not tempted to make labels out of feelings, or immediately cement love into buying properties and offspring, because my soul lives in the spiralic nature of our time here on Earth. I’m committed to what I choose to commit to and what commits to me, but I’m not an “at any cost” kind of girl, because losing myself to anything outside of myself is just too damn expensive. I’m here to do the work, my whole personality is doing the work, but sorry, not at any cost.

I really believe that certainty is overrated. It diminishes our agency. Allows us to forget that we are creators of our reality, even when life convinces us that we are simply passengers. When we think we know something, we take that knowing as truth, when what determines truth? What we know or think to be true today, may not be true tomorrow. We become attached to what we think we know and it limits our possibilities for change and growth. We can work towards a potential conclusion, head into a plan or path and we’ll never have certainty because life never promised that to us. When we cling to any one potential outcome, we often eliminate other ways of existing. How expansive would life be if we lived in the unknown? To shift from the idea that not knowing what will happen is something to fear instead of something to get giddy about.

It’s easy to believe that knowing or certainty will give us comfort. It’s comforting to think that we’ll still be with the same partner at 85. It’s comforting to think that our best friends will always be our best friends. It’s comforting to know which career path will be the one we thrive in. We spend a lot of time focused on one way of living, believing it to be the best one, because it’s what we’re currently experiencing, when we have no idea of what life hasn’t yet shown us. It’s easy to live in the assumption that the comfort in the familiarity of how we live, is the right way to live, but what if we chose curiosity and openness? A willingness to be surprised and delighted.

Allowing life to come instead of forcing it into any one particular or defined shape. I don’t need to know anything. I only want to speak words that are infused with intentionality. I don’t want to make definitive statements. I want to honour who I am today, in this moment. I want to hold onto the truth that we are always changing and in flux, and that’s what makes our stay here so incredibly rich.

This might be a story of a throwaway comment about dating that will forever irritate me, but in life there are things that will touch us so deeply that we will know them, but we will never know how long for, what’s behind that knowing, or if we ever knew at all, and ultimately, isn’t it perfectly lovely to not know anything beyond that?