After having coffee with a close friend, I found myself fully awake at midnight. Shocker. Being awake late at night causes my mind to reel, and from it come my analyzations on life, relationships and coffee. Enjoy.
Starbucks has pretty much made a business of facilitating the meticulous meet-ups with our girlfriends where we overanalyze every date and relationship tiff we’ve ever had. And people always wonder why there’s a Starbucks on every corner. The reasoning is simple really. Starbucks planted a shop on every block to capitalize on the relationship woes of women everywhere. It’s kind of genius when you think about it. There’s always a Starbucks down the block so meeting with your girls in a central place is always easy; coffee (as opposed to mid-morning alcohol) is a socially acceptable drink to discuss emotional context over; it’s a cheap enough expense for you not to feel guilty about it (what’s a four dollar coffee when you get to spend 2 quality hours with your girls extracting the meaning of life?); and coffee is still considered sexy as opposed to a full meal where you might be tempted to throw off your latest diet plan.
So what’s the problem? In addition to the emotional adrenaline you’ve built up from examining your relationship dilemma, you’re adding caffeine to the mix, creating a hyperactive love life that never really gives you the chance to slow down. While you don’t have to give up caffeine rush from coffee (because really what girl could actually live without?) you can lay off the adrenaline from overthinking every little blip on the relationship radar. Not everything means something bigger than what it is.
As girls, we sometimes rely too much on creating relationships with each other exclusively through venting about our love lives. For some reason women bond over analyzing men; clearly Starbucks understands that, but do women?
So here we are, women of the world all hopped up on emotions and double macchiatos wondering when things got so complicated and messy, completely oblivious of the fact that we made them that way (with the help of the delicious but potentially deadly coffee slurpee fondly referred to as the Frappaccino). We rush through our love lives expecting to figure it all out in minutes and then go about the rest of our days at work.
In understanding how to slow down the part of your mind that runs rampant on relationship qualms, you have to realize that things are not always symbolic of something else. Sometimes an argument about what movie to see is just an argument over what movie to see and sometimes an “off day” is just an awkward day. Instead of getting high on symbolism it’s imperative to remember that not every moment in your relationship lends itself to something “bigger.”
Not every cup of coffee needs to keep the company of a relationship woe and not every relationship woe needs a cup of coffee. Use coffee as a spark for your workday but don’t look to coffee dates with your girlfriends to overanalyze your love life. It’s time you slow down and spend more time living your love life, rather than talking about it.
