We did it. I’m awestruck and honored that so many of you followed along with me as I took a year to craft and share my experience as I began what I dubbed a romance free year.
If you’re new here, welcome. To recap, in November of 2020 I ended things with yet another situationship. And rather than continue sitting in the “I’ll never find my person” mindset, I decided to push pause on the whole endeavor.
I, like so many of the humans I love, have had an incredibly difficult time dating. Between swiping, coffee shop meet ups and twenty questions, I was realizing how small my particular pool was. There are a plethora of single humans in this world because there are simply more people than most of us know what to do with. So no, this is not me moaning and groaning at the lack of probable contestants. This is me, reminding you, but mostly myself, how picky I am.
Ever since I could remember, people asked me who my favorite Disney prince was, what I imagined my wedding would be like, and what fairytale romance I was wishing on shooting stars and birthday candles for. When others weren’t asking me these questions, they were telling me what a good woman (aka a good wife) does.
Girls who are raised to become women are taught to be small, the smaller the better. We are expected to be quiet with our opinions and courteous with our voices. We are meant to see one another as a threat, not an ally. I was shown that good women hold in their emotions like some do a sneeze. My mother lost her battle to cancer politely.
I’ve never been good at being silenced
I grieved ferociously, suffered deafeningly and felt every emotion in between so wildly they eventually stopped calling me woman. My new titles were eclectic, free-spirited and emotional. None of which were intended as compliments, but I took them each as just that.
At twenty-six, I was a woman who’d been given more feedback than praise, and dating was far from the exception. Suddenly, I wasn’t just bad at being quiet and small, I was rather shit at being desirable. The patience thing was not my friend. I felt too much, too quickly. I was more intense than those at the other end of the screen or the table preferred.
At least, those were the opinions being voiced to me. But none of them were how I saw myself.
While it’s truly the worst to be told time and time again that you’re too anything: too intense, too loud, too passive, too honest, it’s been my experience that changing myself to fit a mold that was specifically designed without my wellbeing in mind is far more painful than any feedback flung my way.
That’s when I decided to stop playing the game, at least for a while. I was done with finding the perfect selection of photos that were sexy but cute, approachable but not intimidating, memorable but not too different. The small talk and get to know each other commentary were truly the bane of my existence. I’d decided years earlier that life was far too unpredictable to waste it discussing where we grew up or what we went to school for.
Until how we go about dating changed or I felt motivated again to participate while using my own rulebook, I was benching myself. And that I did. I deleted all the apps. Then, I somewhat spontaneously flew to see my best friend and emotional soulmate. I blocked quite a few numbers and then received the chance to cross off one of my many lifelong goals.
In a matter of months, I said goodbye to the first home I’d ever built for myself and drove south. I made it to Florida and in a matter of weeks fell in love. It’s all there, which is honestly a gift I wasn’t expecting to get out of this experience.
In short, dating sucks. But only because of how we’ve been taught dating should look. Once I stopped doing what I was told to do and started doing what I wanted to do, everything got immeasurably more enjoyable.
Should I, according to society, be looking to purchase a home with my partner when we haven’t been together for a year or have engagement rings, etc.? Probably not. But that isn’t the question I feel we should be asking ourselves. I think a far more authentic question is, “does it feel right?”. Because if it truly presents itself, whatever it is, as something that brings you joy and hope, why shouldn’t we do it?
My favorite love stories are the ones where I’ve heard the people I’m closest to say, “this is crazy, right?”. Except, we only feel that way because we were taught that there’s an order to romance like there’s an order to anything and everything else. Do you know what I say? Screw the order.
Toss out anything that’s been given to you that doesn’t feel true and genuine and good to your heart, mind, body and soul.
There isn’t actually a rulebook. There are a set of expectations that were written without us that we seem to be told are the ‘standard’. Even though these so-called rules were also made up. Who says that we have to wait a certain amount of time before moving in with someone we love? Where did the idea that there is a right and a wrong timeline to follow come from? Someone, somewhere, decided it was a good rule of thumb and we’ve all basically been blindly going along with it.
If you walk away with anything from this series, I hope it’s that you are the writer for your own playbook
I want to thank the women of YES GURL for giving me the space and the grace to craft this series. And I want to give a special shout-out to all of you for reading and lending me the support you all have.
Love should be wild and unique and genuine and true. Never settle. Know that picky is not synonymous with bad. Take your time or live peddle to the medal. Whatever feels right for you is exactly what you need to do and nothing else.
This is your life, go live it.
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Written by Tori Muzyk
Illustrated by Francesca Mariama
