Modern love is built on a contradiction we feel in our chests, but rarely articulate: we want to feel chosen and free at the same time.
Olivia Dean captures this dilemma with a single lyric. “I’m the perfect mix of Saturday night and the rest of your life,” she sings in the playful track “So Easy (To Fall in Love).” Her words distill a complex, yet relatable truth that I’ve seen play out as a therapist: relationships are meant to hold opposing needs.
In romantic love, we crave “Saturday night”—i.e. novelty, flirtation, and aliveness that makes you look across a crowded room and think, How lucky am I that they’re mine? We want new experiences, a little mystery, the feeling that our partner is still someone we get to discover.