To be with someone suitable enough Translation
2026-03-10
Info
The content was translated from the Chinese version by Generative AI. The author has carefully reviewed the content.
Background · I
A few days ago, while chatting with a friend, she brought up a dating experience she’d had some time ago.
When she mentioned that she’d rejected a guy who genuinely liked her for the reason that she didn’t feel strongly about him, she sighed: “I don’t even know if I did the right thing.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because someone told me that relationships eventually boil down to weighing pros and cons… and I do think he’s a good person,” she said.
She’s never been in a relationship before and firmly believes that first love profoundly shapes one’s view of relationships.
But I couldn’t help thinking: if first love were a relationship rooted in calculation rather than passion, that’s hardly what any of us would hope for.
Background · II
In early October last year, as a freshman, I and LCX (my then-not-girlfriend, who is in her senior year of high school) had already made our feelings clear to each other and were considering whether to get together or not.
Info
The senior year of high school in China is a very stressful time, as students prepare for the gaokao (college entrance exam). It’s often seen as a critical period where students need to focus on their studies, and relationships can be viewed as distractions.
At the time, Yu Jiaying (a nickname which can be translated as reed and sakura), advised me to back off for my interest:
“If love becomes a matter of weighing options—leaving room to advance or retreat—then there’s really no point in pursuing it. This is about feelings, not transactions. You have to have the courage to take the first step before worrying about gains and losses.”
“The firmness of choosing to love shouldn’t be questioned.”
I didn’t fully understand her words back then. Intuitively, I thought weighing pros and cons was normal—something I did, too.
Yu said: The reason your past relationships never lasted is because you were always weighing the pros and cons.
At the time, I neither fully grasped her meaning nor agreed with her. But now, I’m starting to gain new insights.
Background · III
I can’t remember when I formed this view: Love is a deeper form of friendship; there is no essential difference between romantic relationship and friendship.
Many things led me to this thought. One memorable incident was when a close friend once admitted she’d feel jealous if a good friend spent more time with others. This made me realize that many elements supposedly unique to love might not be so special after all.
When I shared this view with Lěngcángxiāng, she asked a question I couldn’t easily answer: If there’s no essential difference, how do you explain loyalty in love?
To answer that, two things need to be considered:
- First, few people talk about loyalty in friendship (and when they do, it’s on a completely different level than in love). Is loyalty truly unique to love?
- Second, I don’t believe altruistic behaviors based solely on “duty” can exist long-term or universally. So what is the reason, or motivation, behind loyalty in love?
Pondering the second question led me, by accident, to understand Yu Jiaying’s words from a new angle.
IV
As a child, I heard people compare marriage to “finding the other half of one’s life”. I thus believed that love meant finding the most fated, most suitable person in the world.
Yet the world is vast, and countless life choices lead us in wildly different directions. Mathematically, it’s clear: finding the “absolute most suitable person” is impossible—let alone being with them.
So what is the meaning of marriage, or a long-term stable relationship? Perhaps, we are looking for someone who is “sufficiently suitable.”
V
If we accept this, we can view loyalty in love from a new perspective.
You’ll never find a perfect person. No matter how wonderful your partner is, you’ll always meet others with one or more traits better than theirs.
Some say you should cut off contact with the opposite gender after starting a relationship, depriving yourself of other options. Others try to control their partner’s thoughts, forcing them to acknowledge their superiority. These inhumane approaches are unrealistic.
If you believe you need to find the “absolute most suitable person” for you, weighing options becomes necessary. But once you start comparing, the relationship can’t stabilize—when you curiously explore someone new, you’ll inevitably discover their merits and traits that make you two suitable; a well-known partner can’t offer that “feeling of freshness”.
Thus, I believe the fundamental source of loyalty is believing your relationship with your partner is sufficiently suitable and cherishing the efforts leading you to this point. Conversely, it means not wanting to sacrifice your existing relationship for an unknown possibility.
You may still appreciate the people around you, acknowledge their excellence, and may even feel drawn to them. But this appreciation is no longer purposeful—they’re no longer potential options for you.
To sum it up in one word: “contentment”. True freedom isn’t having unlimited choices, but deciding which choices to stop considering. [1]
VI
Yu's “weighing” referred to “whether to start a relationship,” while the earlier discussion of weighing related to “whether to maintain a relationship.”
These concepts may not be identical, but their underlying principle is the same: We care about the person themselves in front of us, not their ranking among all possible options. In other words, we choose a relationship because the person themselves is sufficiently suitable—not because they’re the “most suitable person” in the current time and space.
This sentence was generated by ChatGPT 5.3. Since the prompt is not convenient to disclose, no link is provided here. ↩︎