The closest analogy I can think of to Kylo Ren and Rey’s Force connection is not a romantic relationship. I was lucky enough to have a close, fulfilling friendship that became a romance, a relationship where I was and am free to share only things I want to share, opening up at my own pace. I share a lot about myself with my partner because we are very close and talk a lot, but there are still things I choose not to share, sometimes because I’m not sure how to phrase these things myself. There are also things that I just don’t want to tell anyone, and also things I share with other people than my partner because they are not of interest to him and I have other people to share them with. That’s how disclosure works in healthy relationships, by choice.

I know there’s this idea that romance is this all-consuming thing where your entire self is subsumed to a greater force and you have to share absolutely everything, against your will if need be. Anything less is thought to be withholding and inocomplete. I reject that; I know the early infatuation phase of a romantic relationship can feel like that, but it’s not sustainable in the long term. I mean literally, it’s not biochemically sustainable because the brain chemistry that produces that kind of romantic high lasts two, three years at best. Even more problematically, this conception of romance that rejects boundaries sets relationships up for failure. It sets up an unrealistic expectation of romance that leads to disappointment and resentment.

I think this conception of romance as an irresistible oneness that blows away all boundaries is where some people get the idea that friendship and romance are incompatible and that Finn can’t be Rey’s romantic partner if he is her friend. Friendship, after all, is about being two people with boundaries consensually negotiated between them. If you accept that a romance–at least a healthy one–is also about being two separate people with boundaries, the dichotomy disappears.

I have in my life experienced something like the unwilling bond between Kylo Ren and Rey, and not only was it not romantic because it was with a family member, it was not positive in any way. I have known what it’s like to be told my boundaries are not acceptable and that I must share my secrets and feelings. The specific leverage used was our family relationship and guilt rather than the Force, but these powerful ties from an unequal relationship left me feeling as helpless as if I had been tied up, unable to walk out of the room or put down the phone, fearing retribution if I did. I feared being called selfish, unloving, ungrateful, and cold as I had been called countless times since I was a child. I feared that any disapproval meant I was unlovable. These fears were as effective as physical bonds on me, keeping me in the chair while I was needled and pried at, keeping my ear to the phone and my finger away from the “off” button.

In many of these conversations I didn’t want to talk for so many different reasons, but my reasons are always brushed aside. Tell me about your boyfriend. No, because you made it clear you don’t like him, and I don’t want to get into another shouting match. Tell me about your career prospects. No, because you’re just going to pressure me into doing what you want. Tell me what you want to do in life. No, because you’re going to use it against me to tell me how unrealistic and naïve I am, and how that means I have to listen to you. Tell me about your political views. No, because you’ll just make it another indictment against me. Tell me what I’ve done that you hardly want to talk to me anymore? Please? You’re hurting me so much. I’ve been telling you for twenty years, and you have dismissed everything I said. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s finish this conversation. We’ve already been talking for an hour and I have things to do. You’re so ungrateful. Selfish. Cold. You’re making my anxiety and trauma worse, and no I won’t seek treatment because I don’t need treatment, I just need you to do as I say so I can stop being so fearful. Everything I do is for you, why won’t you see that?

I don’t accept this kind of prying invasion, this coerced intimacy, as love–romantic, familial, or otherwise. It is a form of exploitation that wears a person down to be made the more easily into a hollowed-out puppet. Feelings of love, to the extent they are involved, are just another strand–a powerful one–to make the binding the tighter. It’s my abuser’s actual argument that these bonds, the way I’ve been forced to share myself over the years, is a real and healthy love. It’s his argument that I’m responsible for saving and healing him by ignoring all the ways I’ve been hurt and changing my life to suit his need for control. I don’t accept that, not anymore, and I have fought for decades of my life to reject that logic. 

Being made to share your deepest self against your will is not romantic or healthy in any way. A healthy relationship has boundaries and the choice to share or not share. It is choice that makes disclosure powerful and intimate in its risk and vulnerability, like Finn’s confession to Rey, like the message Rey left with Chewbacca for Finn. Without choice the act of disclosure becomes humiliating and exploitative. It is the farthest thing I can imagine from romance.