The Relationship Is Moving, but We Keep Passing the Same Fountain

A relationship can be wonderfully busy without going anywhere, which is one of its more charming tricks.

You are seeing each other. There are dinners, messages, weekends, private jokes and enough affectionate activity to make the whole thing feel reassuringly in motion.

And technically, it is.

And after a while, something about all that movement starts to feel oddly familiar. You keep circling back to the same conversations, the same questions, the same little patch of scenery. At which point the relationship begins to resemble a beautiful old carousel.

The horses are polished, the music is lovely, little lights are glowing overhead, and Sir has chosen one with a particularly handsome gold saddle.

Off you go.

At first, movement feels very much like progress. The scenery passes, the horse rises and falls, and you are having a marvelous time, so nobody is particularly concerned that the ticket booth remains approximately twenty feet away.

The First Lap Is Lovely

On the first lap, nobody is asking to see a map.

He calls, makes plans and introduces you to his favorite bartender. A toothbrush appears somewhere. He says things like, “We should go there sometime,” which sounds wonderfully promising until you remember that sometime has no known position on a calendar.

Still, the carousel is moving, and for a while that is enough.

A month becomes three, then three becomes six, and one evening you pass the little fountain again.

How pretty.

Funny how a few other things seem to have made the lap with you. He still does not quite know what he wants. Meeting his family remains oddly difficult to arrange, and any conversation about where this is going produces a thoughtful expression followed by something about enjoying the present.

Fair enough. Around you go, the music begins again, and a few minutes later the fountain glides back into view.

Goodness. That looks familiar.

The clever part is that the whole thing can look terribly busy while staying exactly where it was. There can be romantic dinners, excellent weekends and enough daily messages to fill a small novel, while the future remains sitting politely outside the gates.

The Fountain Is Becoming Difficult to Ignore

After a few more laps, you begin getting rather familiar with the landmarks.

There is the little gate where you once asked whether you were exclusive, and the painted bench where he explained that labels can ruin something beautiful. Then comes the fountain where you mentioned meeting his parents and Sir suddenly found the carousel music quite fascinating.

By now, you recognize the route. The awkward part is that nothing is exactly wrong, which is why the carousel remains so persuasive.

If the horse collapsed or the music stopped, the situation would be wonderfully obvious. Instead, everything keeps working beautifully. He is affectionate, you laugh together, and plans are made quite happily—as long as nobody becomes reckless and makes one too far into the future.

Soon you notice that all this lovely movement keeps delivering you back to the same conversation. You ask where this is going, and he wonders why everything has to be rushed. You ask what you are, and suddenly labels seem terribly restrictive. You ask whether he sees a future, and he would rather know why the present cannot simply be enjoyed.

Sir has become unexpectedly philosophical for a gentleman sitting on a painted horse.

And still the carousel turns.

Madam Is Starting to Recognize the Scenery

By now, even Madam has to admit she knows the scenery rather well.

The fountain is practically an old friend, the ticket woman may as well send you a holiday card, and that little gate has seen things.

And because there is still so much movement, you keep assuming a destination must be coming along any minute. So you take another lap, enjoy another lovely weekend and have another warm conversation about the future in which nobody manages to supply a single coordinate.

After enough laps, even Madam begins to see the joke.

Nobody lied about the carousel moving. It moved beautifully. The horse went up and down, the music played, the lights sparkled, and you covered an astonishing amount of emotional mileage.

You simply kept arriving at the same fountain.

The carousel had never claimed to be transportation.