Don't let a YA-style autocracy put a damper on your relationship! Try these time-tested tips to making sparks fly without compromising a historic revolution.
Manage Your Expectations
We all hope for happily ever after, but Cinderella never had her earth salted. Remember that you and your partner were born into Sector 67: an all-teen agrarian colony razed by secret police. No way prince charming escaped that hellfire! With casualties in the hundreds of thousands, just be glad you're dating someone that’s alive.
Love Them For Who They Are
It’s a huge mistake to think you can change your partner. Instead, you must love them for being a garbanzo farmer turned revolutionary vanguard surviving Orwell’s wet nightmare. Appreciate their talents, such as condemning public neuterings and demanding justice in the face of robot juries programmed to chant “GUILTY.”
Create Excitement Through New Experiences
By now you're sick of the ol' “dinner and a protest.” Try exhilarating new dates like toppling effigies of the Supreme Despot and kidnapping technocrats to exchange for family. Family dead? Spend an evening finger painting banned words like “Love,” “Peace,” and “Pinto” on government reeducation centers. Rebels who get caught together, stay together — except when they’re separated for questioning.
Put In the Work
It takes effort to keep your relationship moving forward like the gears of the prison industrial complex. Carve out time every day to check in. Do they miss happy pills? How do they feel about these gender treachery executions? Are they eating their gelatinous protein bricks? Look them in the eye when they answer. This shows you care about identifying micro-cameras implanted in their corneas last time they were abducted by secret police.
Find Common Ground
Reconnect with the many things you have in common, like not remembering February. Discuss whether this is another mass memory wipe or if the Supreme Despot reordered the months again to throw off rebel plans. If you can't agree, bond over the consensus that this is not a world into which you should bring kids, then wonder how nobody in your teen colony aged into an adult.
Keep Hot and Heavy
And this doesn’t mean throwing Molotov cocktails! Oxytocin released during sex brings you closer than ultranationalism and fascism. More importantly, it’s also an act of defiance against moral decency laws. Every time you fuck, it’s a fuck you to state eugenicists! Remember to keep your heart rates low, lest your InsuraCo health chips sense a blood pressure spike and raise your premiums.
Get to Know Each Other
The person you fell in love with is constantly changing just like you. You may even need a refresher on things you thought you knew. Can you still name what their favorite book was before it was burned? Have you memorized their serial number in case their face is rendered unrecognizable? These facts are easily forgotten in the heat of siege, and it would be super embarrassing if you cry cradling the wrong body.
Understand the Need to Make Sacrifices
You can’t have everything your way, which is why you need to sacrifice your significant other if they’re taken prisoner. The revolution for basic human rights is bigger than any of us.