# 8 – Romantic love

Happy lockdown 2020 all. Hope you’re safe and well.
I took a breather but I’m back and today, I’m writing about dating and our views of ourselves.

Dating, much like all other facets of life, is an endless plethora of options, self-doubt and confusion.

I did not stay in my small hometown in Bulgaria where marriage is an absolutely necessary step towards ‘achieving a good life’. This is an ordered life, with prescribed steps and sequential achievements.

I instead grew up in England – England, where individualism is coveted, independence is praised, success is expected. Here, with regards to the conventional, hetero-normative marriage narrative still found in some places, there is a certainly a lot more variability and freedom. Thank goodness for that.

I had a quick stint in Leeds where I had to recalibrate all I knew of the world at age 7, then I mostly lived in London. We moved a lot in London, so starting over was a skill I had to refine regularly.

Now, I’ve been living in Bristol for about seven years. I am 30, I live in a house share and I am single.

It would be absolutely lovely if I could write a piece that everyone could relate to; a quick summary of how to attain romantic love portrayed with a blanket approach that applies to all. Click-bait culture and our ever-diminishing attention spans for lengthy and confusing content suggest this will attract the most attention…But alas, there are no quick fixes and I refuse to quash the beautiful complexity of human nature in order to make it digestible. That isn’t helpful, nor is it realistic.

I have just ended another relationship. This was a connection that was ignited and extinguished over three years. I guess some would call such a connection ‘toxic’. I wholeheartedly disagree.
Again, I must reiterate how complicated the human psyche is. Do not try to file the contents of your life and personality into neatly-packed boxes, stored away safely deep inside yourself where they are neither retrievable nor available for you to sort through. You are doing yourself a great disservice in doing so.

I have collected many mental scars, opinions and other such abstract trinkets in my boxes over the years. Here are some of their contents that I have carried with me like a heavy load – from one home, season, relationship and age to the next:

• I am broken. There is something wrong with me that cannot be fixed.
• I am incapable of love. I need, instead of love.
• I am inherently selfish.
• I consume and destroy people.
• I have an avoidant attachment style that prevents me from forming and maintaining a meaningful connection. (This last one is in a box I co-created with my therapist).

I would encourage you to make the time to write out what you’ve packed away in your boxes.
It’s these self-inflicted stereotypes about ourselves that we need to unpack, face, challenge and reword.

Now, you cannot reframe them magically. As lovely and sweet as the whole ‘looking at yourself in the mirror and chanting positive mantras’ thing is, it’s another attempt at a quick fix. You can change the nomenclature of a thing but ultimately, that is all you have done.

The truth is that everything worth having is a struggle…A cliche indeed, but one that I can get behind.
My degree was a struggle and it was worth it. My move to a new city all alone was a struggle and it was worth it. My past relationships were a struggle and they were worth it.
There will be countless things you have gone through and come out of that have been a struggle and they, too, have all been worth it. Even (in fact, especially) your failures and your pain.

So here I am again, having ended another relationship that should have been successful based on the labels on the tin. Ah, labels. We follow them so much, we don’t even realise it.

My closest friend in Bristol, we shall call him Tom, was the man I dated on and off for three years. Tom is an amazing photographer, and I am quite a good amateur photographer myself. Tom loves music and going to gigs, I do too. Tom enjoys travelling and so do I. We have been on many, many trips together. Tom is left-wing, so am I. Tom enjoys going for walks, so do I. I could go on.
Do all these commonalities between us mean that we belong together?
No.

Tom was kind to me, he listened to me, he cared for me. Tom understood me and through everything, was patient with me.
Is Tom right for me because of his virtuous and wonderful qualities?
No.

I have been the one to terminate our attempts to ‘give it a go’ in the past. This time, it feels final. It felt painful but clear and, although I do not enjoy being in pain or causing it to someone else, I accept it humbly if it’s the price I have to pay for clarity.

I have always tortured myself over dating. I have asked myself the following questions:

• Why do I always push people away?
• Why do I not love this person?
• Why is this person not good enough for me?
• Do I even deserve love?

What (judgemental) questions do you ask yourself?

Both the cruel things we think about ourselves and the harsh questions we ask ourselves are, overall, more harmful to us than the reality of who we are. So, I’m going to reword them. See below for an amended, more helpful version.

• Why do I fight my gut instinct when it tells me something is missing?
• Why do I punish myself for not producing an abstract feeling I am told I should feel?
• Why do I look at things in terms of who is ‘better’ and who is ‘worse’; who is ‘more’ and who is ‘less’?
• Do I value myself enough and forgive myself properly, in order to open myself up to love?

Now, these questions I can work with. In truth, the answers are not simple but then again, neither are we – so why try to belittle ourselves with definitives when we are ever-changing, ever-growing, ever-learning.

One thing therapy has helped me acknowledge is the affects of my early childhood on me now. We are all carrying so much baggage from that time; it happened so long ago, it’s been woven into the fabric of who we are. There is a child inside us all who still carries the reactions, burdens and fears of our past selves. I believe that a lot of the answers to my (now reframed) questions lie with that child. At it’s very core – and without all the minute details of my early childhood – I believe there are a lot of unresolved feelings to work through. For instance, the feeling of being alone and so, settling. The fear of losing someone (as children do when they are moved around constantly) and therefore clinging on to people. The low self-esteem that encourages us to look at our place in the world in terms of comparisons with ourselves and everyone else. Lastly, of course, the external pressures.

These questions are what I will be working with for the next chapter of my life. I encourage you to do the same. We are not broken and irreparable so please, give yourself some credit and the opportunity to explore who you are, not who you think you are.

Side note, as I mentioned avoidant attachment styles. Attachment styles are interesting to explore but please, do not do so in isolation. If you go down that route, look at them in the context of your life and respect your own feelings. I tried to force my relationship with Tom because I was believed our incompatibility was probably due to my attachment style. Meanwhile, my gut was telling me otherwise and I’ve now, three years later, finally listened. I’m going to try to tune in with it more and I hope you can too.