Does Right Person, Wrong Time Exist?

On situationships, forgiveness, and shit - I think my prefrontal cortex just developed

I’ve got one of those migraines that can only be targeted by a concoction of painkillers, a 5pm nap and a prayer to something I’m not sure I believe in. I wake up to see a text from a friend - it’s a screenshot of an ex situationships instagram story hardlaunching his very new girlfriend. I put a pillow back over my head.

I like to think I’m a quite healed person nowadays. Someone that wouldn’t compare myself to another girl - but I find a remnant drag in my stomach as I wonder why I wasn’t good enough when he’d known me for years and her for a few weeks. My friends offer the kind of advice they think I want to hear, quick to say how it’ll never work out for them, or a more forgiving friend says ‘maybe it was just right person, wrong time.’

Right person, wrong time is a kind lie I think we tell ourselves to make the rejected feeling easier to swallow. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me or him - it’s just simply where we are in life.’ I personally have never believed in it, I think if you met the right person, you’d get ready. You’d step up and make sure you didn’t lose them. The lesson here is there is no such thing as a confusing love, if it was right, you’d be together. No ifs, no buts.

I’m telling this to my Mum over a FaceTime a few weeks before after my friend had been a victim of the ‘I’m not looking for anything serious then gets into a serious relationship’, clearly there’s something in the water.

“You know how me and your Dad met, right?” She says,

"Of course.” I say, it’s my favourite love story there is and one I’ve talked about many times like in my essay, ‘what the fuck is a situationship?’ “It was Tottenham Court Road station, Valentines Day 1990” I recount to my Mum.

“No, we actually met a year before. We met through work and he asked for my number and I said no. He then saw me a year later on the tube, and this time round our stories were right, he was living near me this time, I was in a good place. It never would’ve worked if we’d dated earlier,” she says, and I’m shocked, I never knew this.

“Does this mean I just need to be patient and wait a year?” My friend says to my Mum, and we both laugh,

“No!” She answers seriously, “you’ve missed the point. I didn’t wait for him, I carried on with my life and let it go. We just happened to meet again at the right time.”

I meet a new friend for coffee in Shoreditch last weekend, she’s moved halfway round the world to pursue a career in acting. Not wanting to do long-distance she ended her relationship with the love of her life to do so. This act of bravery is quite possibly the only time I’ve ever debated my relationship with the theory ‘right person, wrong time’.

I tell her about this last night on a night out, we’re in a bar so it’s hard to hear her over the music, but she debates my question for a little while before answering.

“I think it was right person, right time?”

“Really?”

“Yeah because without that relationship, without that love and support, I’d never had the confidence to move halfway across the world. He was exactly who I needed at that point.”

“Everything I’ve ever let go has claw marks on it” - Terry Foster Wallace

I think I’ve always had problems with letting stuff go. When it’s not right for me, I’ll force it into being something that works. I wanted to stay in places I didn’t belong and convince them I’m worth something because deep down I wasn’t sure I was. Like scratching at a scab you never really wanted to heal anyway. A secret avoidant because I wasn’t sure I deserved to be with someone that wanted me in the same way.

And if I had got what I wanted, and I had been with these people in a committed relationship, I don’t think either of us would’ve been happy. As without the confusing game of whether they like you, what are you left with? Were your lives even compatible?

Looking back, I imagine these moulding figs of relationships I could have been in, and my agnosticism turns to devout religion as I thank God I didn’t get everything I’ve ever wanted. There’s no point feeling bitterness towards their new partner because the hard truth to swallow is this is the way it should’ve turned out. You get the path you’re destined for, and so do they. It’s not rejection, it’s redirection.

I think we need to accept the route we’re on as the only way things could have turned out, and believe where your feet are is exactly where you’re meant to be in this moment.

Maybe it’s because we attach the idea of them being a good person with being right for us. He’s not a bad person for not wanting to be with you and the growth of that experience has put you exactly where you need to be.

“I wanted it to be you.”

“And when it wasn’t?”

“Then I realised it had to be me.”

-Shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.