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Diary of a Separation (Curiosity Killed the Cat, But It Needn’t Kill Us)

The start of a new relationship is both frightening and exciting at the same time

Mario López-Goicoechea
3 min readJun 17, 2021
A café/bar’s stacked up tables always offers the possibility of “business as usual” the day after (photo by the author)

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 — Saturday 7th September 2019

In our younger years the mystery of a new relationship is what lights up the flame of desire. As we mature, we add other elements to the mystery. Curiosity is one of them. Faced with a new partner, sometimes we react with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of how we’ll measure up. But the more we live, the more we equip ourselves with handy tools to navigate these pre-relationship choppy waters. Once we overcome these obstacles, we’re left with a childlike curiosity.

Unless you kill your inner child as soon as you reach your teens (I didn’t!), curiosity in middle age affords you the privilege of embracing your potential partner’s otherness.

This doesn’t happen overnight. There needs to be a process whereby we cast off the urge to control everything, we open ourselves up to unknown possibilities and we hold on to the power of eroticism. In regards to the latter, I’m not referring to former top shelf material, or cheap online adult content, but the complex space between curiosity and vulnerability.

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