Maybe it’s my small kaleidoscopic view of the internet, but to my relief, I have been hearing and reading a lot about decentering romance from your life, especially for women. I am very invested in the discourse. I find myself churning around the ideas in my own mind, wondering what that could look like for me.
Almost a year ago I ended a relationship that left me more drained than I anticipated. It was a long time coming. I had pushed off the inevitable end for as long as I could muster. Toward the end, I had an urgency in my spirit to get out that left me feeling like I was betraying myself. I felt it every time I looked in the mirror. Lying to yourself, telling yourself everything is okay when it’s not, is its own type of poison. It may sound melodramatic but it’s true, I felt a little part of me die every day. I found myself getting lost in a version of myself I had to create to stay where I was, soon I barely recognized the narrative. I hated that for me, I’m horrible at lying. Lying to others is harder than lying to yourself, in my opinion, but neither is sustainable.
I knew I was in a bad way when I felt so emotionally neglected that the thought of a man simply wanting to spend time with me felt foreign and untrue. It felt overwhelming to even think about someone wanting to know about my week or text me often. Those feelings, in particular, scared me. In the past I had felt unworthy of love but that seemed to be a symptom of not knowing who I was, and now that I am and have been getting used to the tumultuous nature of finding myself, I no longer have that feeling. There is an acceptance, I believe, that we have to face as we age, the fact that we will never really know ourselves. Since we are always changing in a world with endless possibilities, a million pathways to travel down, you never fully know who you are or who you could be. I like this version of myself, I liked it in the bad relationship too but what used to be insecurity about what the end of a romance meant for me was replaced with a fear, a fear of what it would look like if I stayed. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to trust again, to have faith in romantic love. Where previously I may have been thinking that someone else may not have found me enough, I knew, deep down, that I was entering a territory where I would never find someone else enough again. These feelings felt inauthentic and strange to me. I want to have faith in people. I didn’t want to lose hope in any of it.
I watched myself change. I felt tired of romance in a palpable way. I didn’t want to focus on it because I was running out of anything to give. Despite the exhaustion, I still didn’t want to give up. I wanted to use whatever energy I had left for this relationship to see if something, anything would change. Romance wasn’t so much becoming decentered as much as it was sliding down a steep slope out of view.
Typically I attract people, not in some sexual way always, but in a casual pleasant conversation kind of way. Occasionally, people will tell me their secrets, even if we hardly know each other. It’s one of my favorite things about myself. I like being a comfortable person for people when I can be. But after 5-years of highs and plummeting lows, I noticed that I was starting to lose my charm. People weren’t as interested in engaging me. What’s worse is that for the last year of the relationship I felt chronically uncomfortable in my own skin. I hated looking at myself every day. I chalked it up to being in my 30’s and just being sick of looking at my own face. I asked other women I trusted, “Do you ever just get tired of seeing the same face every day?” Most of the time they agreed that they felt like me every so often but there was always an underlying concern.
“What is making you feel like that?”
“I just feel ugly. I can’t describe it. I hate looking at my face.”
Reassurance from my loved ones would follow my self-deprecation. I appreciated it, I knew I wasn’t “ugly”. I just had an aura stink on me that I couldn’t wash off and I didn’t have the right verbiage to describe it. Moreover, I didn’t want to let anyone in to how miserable with myself I was becoming, trying to force myself into a version that could make it through life in this relationship, making my actually see myself differently. I was developing a bad case of insomnia too. Something I still deal with but less now that that chapter of my life is over.
Eventually my partner’s actions became so purposely dismissive and hurtful, after dragging my feet, I finally arrived at a crossroads. Leave and save yourself or maintain this terrible lie that you are happy. I chose myself, confidently, gladly, although it didn’t come without pain. I cried when he moved out. I told him I still loved him and I did but I was ready. As I watched him pack up the last of his things and load them into a moving truck, I cried wondering what this new part of my life would look like. In the weeks and months to follow I would occasionally cry wondering why I let myself down for years.
After all of this, I decided to decenter romance from my life, not completely drop it, although I have come close. There is a lot you can look at online about this as people, especially women, exit the dating scene in droves. There are a million clips of women happy to take romance off of a pedestal and find peace with themselves and their community. I found perspective and comfort in those clips sometimes. What I didn’t find much of were discussions about the reality of how painful it is to decenter romance, especially for people who desire romantic partnerships. That is saying a lot, you can find really anything on the internet. You can watch Ferngully for free on YouTube! I used to have to rent it from the video store.
Everyone loves different, which is a wonderful thing because it means that we can have a plethora of different experiences depending on the partner. In real life, there is a lot of gray but online, which is becoming more a part of our daily lives by the second, it’s a lot more binary. I tried to search for someone speaking neutrally about decentering romance but couldn’t find much. After looking up anything that has to do with romance, especially in heterosexual spaces, you will find pseudo-spiritual advice that hugs traditional values tightly mixed with other videos of purposefully rage inducing content. The moment I crossed into this part of the internet I got the ick. That’s why I wanted to write something. I wanted to write about how I felt a little part of me dying while another part of me grows. I just wanted to put it in writing that it’s okay to feel like that. I wanted to speak candidly about my experience, hoping that maybe it gives someone a bit of peace knowing that there is someone else that feels like you too. Even if I were alone with my feelings about this, which seems unlikely, I still find the experience of putting them in writing a worthy endeavor of self-reflection.
I’ll put it as plain as I can. Decentering romance, as a woman, has made me feel free in the potential of life and simultaneously incredibly sad at letting go of and watching another part of my life die. I want to add, that watching it die for now doesn’t mean for forever. I am reminded of how plants die and bloom when it is their season. My mom had an orchid that she thought was dying. She tried so hard to keep it alive and tended to it even when she thought the little bulb would produce nothing. Over time, she saw the bulb begin to grow. That’s how I feel about my romantic life. Because life is often a game of chance, there is a possibility that I never rekindle anything romantic with anyone again. I am blessed to have wonderful friends and other relationships that make my life feel enriched and full. That doesn’t mean though, that when I want a warm hug or someone next to me in bed I don’t feel the gravity of making the choice to not open my heart up to romance for now. Often, it seems, that people act as though decentering romance is a simple as unplugging a lamp.
I wish it were that simple for me. It’s not. I find myself wanting reassurance that the messiness of the whole thing is normal. The same thoughts can trigger different emotions depending on the day. Sometimes I feel hope, anger, warmth, and coolness about love all in the same week. Despite being in my thirties, there are times when I still crave reassurance that I am not alone with this emotional soup. When I was younger I always thought that I would have found the love of my life by now. I always thought that I would be swept up in the waves of a vast deep love, happy to drown myself in it. Throughout my twenties I watched long term relationships come and go, hoping that the next one I landed myself in would be “the one”. Yet, I find myself single again, not hating it for once, but upset at having to let go of that dream that I had when I was a little girl. One thing about me is that I love a fantasy. I love to dream. It’s complicated because I don’t feel disappointed by any parts of my life despite not finding myself in the romance I once dreamt but there is a sadness in letting go, especially for someone like me, a person who likes to plan out my life. I can’t control this journey. This wasn’t part of that plan at all. One thing that life will teach you is that there is no guide to any of it. I know we hear that all the time but it’s another thing to live in it. The older I get the more I realize that wisdom isn’t about some sort of other worldly ability to predict the future, it’s about having the agility to adapt faster and accept that we actually know very little.
If you’re reading this and feeling disappointed, angry, or uncomfortable at letting go, you’re not alone. Remember that letting go isn’t as easy as switching off a light, despite appearing that way online. We all need the reminder, including myself. Shifting your focus is a challenge and while the outcome may be rewarding, there are still a million little crappy steps to take. Even though I should know better, I still have to remind myself to embrace the process. The road to self-contentedness is long. It’s designed that way. Life should be about learning, about growth. During times when I find myself disappointed, I still look at my life with fondness at the path it has taken me down so far, and trust that I will know when to change directions. I try to take a breath and remind myself to be flexible in what the future looks like for me. Letting go of a childhood dream may not be an end, but the beginning of something I didn’t have the ability to dream of at the time.
Currently reading: ‘Communion: The Female Search for Love’ by bell hooks
The Elle Note 
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