34: Self-worth and the painful fall off the pedestal
On confusing broken boundaries with emotional intimacy
A note from Anna & Haley:
Hi all! We just wanted to check in and give everyone a heads-up that Thanks, We Hate It will be taking a summer break for the entirety of August. Anna is returning to London this week, and Haley is currently staying in a WiFi-less cabin on the shores of Lake Superior and will continue to be in and out of Minneapolis throughout the month. We’ll be spending this time off with our loved ones, hopefully reestablishing a better balance between work, writing time, and free time. We’re well-aware our posting dates became increasingly less and less likely to fall on weekly Wednesdays like we intended… We’re hoping this will be the reset we need to get back on course.
Anyway, we thank you for reading even when we post late or skip a week—your willingness to stick with us pushes us to continue making work we’re proud of, and we’re eternally grateful to all of you. Thank you so much for your readership and support. Now, we’re endlessly happy to feature Meg Ruocco once again as the perfect end to this current cycle of writing. Enjoy Meg’s writerly loveliness and know that we’re looking forward to hanging out with you here—same time, same place!—in early September.
Hey besties! Your favorite guest writer is back, and this week I’m talking about self-worth and accountability in relationships.
Look, I’m no relationship expert. I’ve never been in a long-term relationship—hell, I’ve never made it past a third date. When I get to date two, little wee-woo alarms go off in my brain screaming Alert! Alert! Commitment ahead! Run bitch!
But I love love. As someone who considers herself a hopeless romantic, I’ve spent the better part of this past year untangling my juxtaposing desire for partnership with my deep fear of commitment. And that process started because of Ryan.
I first noticed Ryan* (*name changed, I’m not a masochist) in the bottom-floor hallway of a UW-Madison academic building. Our other classmates were around us, I think, but all I remember is that I liked hearing him talk about his past summer jobs and bad TV.
One night, our class decided to bond the only way college students know how: getting drunk at a dive bar. I wasn’t particularly excited about going. I recently returned from a day trip to Chicago where I endured a soul-sucking, three-hour long interview with a company based half a mile down the road from my childhood home. The end-of-college jitters were setting in, and a small voice in the back of my head began to whisper that maybe I wanted a different, riskier future than what I had planned. Maybe I wanted to give this whole “writer” thing a try.
My anxiety about the looming future manifested in my hesitation to go drink with my classmates—nothing says “Forget about the crushing weight of your future!” like making small talk with acquaintances—but my roommates encouraged me to go.
“For an hour,” they said, “and if you hate it, you can make up an excuse and bail.”
So I went. When I walked into the bar, I saw Ryan sitting there in a sweater knit with muted blues that complemented his eyes, and the knots in my shoulders loosened. Our group meandered over to a karaoke bar later that night, and I watched Ryan as he sat across from me, flipping through a binder of songs and refusing to pick one to perform.
I knew from our earlier conversations that Ryan had a similar sense of humor to my own, so I said in a jokingly stern tone, “If you don’t choose a song, I’m gonna lose it.”
And he met my eyes and replied with a grin, “I would really like to see that.”
Damn, call my bluff then.
The rest of the night passed in a tipsy blur. Suddenly it was 3am, and Ryan and I were walking back to campus together after dropping one of our friends off at home. The outer edges of the school were still, and it felt like the world was just the two of us and the summer breeze. I remember Ryan asking me about why I was late to the get-together, and I recounted my horrible interviewing experience.
“I’m starting to think that if I really want to pursue screenwriting, I kind of need to stop kidding myself and start now,” I said.
“You want to be a screenwriter?” Ryan said, his eyes lighting up.
“...yeah, kind of.”
“Oh my God, you would be so good at that!”
I looked over at Ryan and was taken aback by his confident smile. He was so sure about his statement, so sure about me, that I felt my chest bloom. I failed to consider his brazen assuredness may have stemmed from the multiple drinks we’d had that evening. All I knew in that moment was how much I liked making him smile.
After that night, Ryan and I became fast friends. It was natural to see him multiple times a week. He seemed eager, hungry almost, to learn things about me. He encouraged me一more than anyone had at that point一to pursue my quiet hope of becoming a screenwriter, and I quickly began to rely on that support. He asked me about everything from my favorite authors and musicians to my most embarrassing stories, and what was even more impressive was that he listened to my answers with rapt attention.
Over those weeks, I felt the familiar combination of anticipation and excitement eddy in my chest. Shit, I thought, I really like this guy. More surprisingly, it seemed that this guy really liked me.
So imagine my surprise when on one of our many nights out a friend of mine asked Ryan if he had a girlfriend and Ryan replied, “Oh, uh, yep.”
To quote Love Island UK, I was gutted. I began to think I’d completely misinterpreted our interactions, and I reframed the boundaries of our relationship in my head. I wasn’t about to pursue someone else’s boyfriend, and surely Ryan would change his actions toward me now that his “secret” was out.
Big Shock Alert! He didn’t. Ryan continued to seek me out, and although he set boundaries while we were in group settings (“I would never hang out with you or text you one-on-one, that would make my girlfriend uncomfortable”), he quickly broke those barriers with me.
With each boundary he battered down, each text he sent, each walk home from the bars together, I felt my resolve wither away. I disregarded my friends’ protests to keep my distance. I mistakenly confused his continued disregard of my boundaries with a form of intimacy, because I wanted to believe that someone who was willing to get to know me at any cost couldn’t possibly be toxic.
As someone who had gone my entire life being implicitly and explicitly told that I would have to change in order for someone to want me, I’d become intoxicated with Ryan’s approval. The emotional intimacy I received from him was the closest I’d ever come to a romantic partnership, and I subconsciously feared that if I lost his validation, I would never come close to that type of partnership again.
Ryan never made a move on me, nor did I make a move on him. But he put me on a pedestal and, against my better judgment, I let him. To Ryan, I was infallible, ethereal, and enough. He saw in me what I so desperately wanted to see in myself, and (to paraphrase BoJack Horseman) with my rose-tinted glasses on, all his red flags just looked like flags.
Then, one night, Ryan told me I made him happier than his girlfriend. My rose-tinted glasses cracked, and the wee-woo alarms set off in my brain screaming Alert! Alert! He’s gone too far!
A few days later, I confronted Ryan about what he said and his actions toward me over those weeks. I was quiet, tentative, and demure, because even in all my rage and hurt I feared that if I lost the ability to make Ryan smile I would never feel like I was worth anything again. He was apologetic, but our relationship inevitably strained after that, and eventually we stopped talking altogether.
I hit the ground hard after falling off the pedestal Ryan put me on. I’d grown dependent on his validation, so when he pulled away, I worried that my greatest insecurities were true. Maybe I wasn’t good enough, and never would be.
That despair held true for a while. I had to move through my feelings before moving past them, and moving through them felt like wading through waste-high molasses. But I pulled myself out of there eventually. And when I looked back, I understood that (Big Shock Alert #2!) what I was grieving wasn’t the loss of Ryan and his friendship, but how he made me feel about myself.
While it was great that Ryan saw the quick-witted and joyful side of me, that was the only side of me he knew, the only side of myself I was willing to show him, and those traits are not all that I am. I am also someone who carries rage and grief and fear and doubt, and I shouldn’t feel like I have to dismiss those emotions for the sake of someone else’s comfort.
Ryan, for all his shady-ass antics, helped me see the person I could become. In losing him, I realized that my self-worth comes from一Big Shock Alert #3!一myself. My joy, and the belief I have that I am enough, comes from me, for me. I don’t have to pretend to be perfect to be loved by another, nor do I want to. I want someone to want me simply because they want me. I want to want someone simply because I want them. Not because we need each other, not because we’re infatuated with only bits and pieces of one another, but because we are self-actualized people who just want the other person around. That sounds pretty rad to me.
I don’t know if this story will resonate with people the way my last piece did. But I wanted to give context for my philosophy on relationships now. Often, when I’m asked about dating and romance today, my answers feel too trite and simplistic to capture the true heartache, pain, and ugly accountability I had to face to understand how I contributed to the failures of my past halfway-relationships.
Understanding my past behaviors has allowed me to loosen those knotty feelings I have surrounding relationships. Through my own journey of self-acceptance and self-worth, I feel more comfortable letting people in because their validation is no longer vital, but it is appreciated. It feels vulnerable, and a bit scary, to not have my old protective barriers up anymore. But I’ve found, this past year, that the best form of protection comes, not from playing a role of who I think I should be, but holding steadfast in the belief that I am enough, exactly as I am.
Ew. That kind of sounds like the end to a bad Disney Channel movie, huh? Whatever. Hollywood, here I come.
My skincare routine! I don’t use many products, but one of my go-to’s has become the Youth to the People Superfood Cleanser. And yes I bought it because Emma Chamberlain told me to, but in my defense it is a genuinely fantastic cleanser.
The Furyborn series. For all my Throne of Glass readers out there who have burned through every last Sara J. Maas book, here’s your next series. Claire Legrand builds a phenomenal world over the course of this trilogy filled with forbidden love, intricate magic, and queens separated by thousands of years fated to either save the world or destroy it. Try to buy local if you can!
Love Island S7. Would it really be a “Things I Don’t Hate” list if I didn’t include this season of Love Island? If you want to watch a group of funny, smart and emotionally intelligent women develop shoulder problems from carrying the entire season on their back, you’ll love this latest installment. Plus, it’s so fun to do the accent.