okay i'm healed! now send me the exact same guy
on recursive romances and the tragic, cyclical nature of my track record so far
As I look through the archives of my old song notebooks and situate certain songs I’ve written over half a decade ago side-by-side with songs I’ve written within the past couple years, I find lines I’ve written about boys I’ve liked and been involved with from both time periods. The words seem to blur together, like I’m saying the same things over and over again — because I am — and like it’s going around in a circle — because it is. I realized that I have always been drawn to the same basic archetype of boy: on the surface, they seem different enough, but at their very core, they share fundamental qualities that have always clashed with my own, contributing to our inevitable end. Some of these qualities include: non-confrontational, only emotionally available to a certain extent, and afraid of commitment.
In other words, guys who think I can fix them, whether they’re aware of it or not. And when I fail to become their catalyst for change, it ends — usually of my own volition, because I know a dead end when I see one. Each love interest might feel a little different at first, but when things start to go downhill, it’s in a way that feels all too familiar, and the realization suddenly hits: I’ve been here before. In my defense, I suppose I don’t exactly recognize the similarities at first — or I do, and I don’t deem them uncannily similar enough to constitute as reason enough to toss it aside. Take a look for yourself at these lyrics from different songs I’ve written about four separate guys (believe it or not). It’s very interesting and coincidental to me that the first and last lyrics are about different muses, yet both are about me feeling them getting bored of me:
May 2017: There’s intention in your eyes / You only love me when you’re bored
November 2021: Always made me wait, knowing I’m impatient
March 2022: Why do you assume I like it when you wait / I’ve always been impatient, so maybe I pushed you away
June 2022: We put down our cards, lay them out on the table
September 2024: You put it all on the table, caught me off guard / I guess I’m used to the fatal conversations that never feel stable
September 2024: Afraid to make a sound, afraid that you’ll be getting bored of me
It’s kind of embarrassing how similar these all are; how I keep finding new guys just to describe the same absence in the end. The contradiction is the consistency. The thing about patterns is they’re fractal; the closer you look, the more you notice them repeating. In how they give me just enough, nothing more and nothing less, as if he’s afraid I might want more. In the ways I make myself smaller, more digestible, less wanting. In the careful way we both avoid using words that imply a future or an us. And then there’s the slow fade of it all, then it all comes crashing down in its own distinct way, yet somehow fundamentally the same as all the ones preceding it. The miracle isn’t that these men — boys, really — keep appearing in my life, it’s that I keep believing each one will be different. Call it relentless optimism, call it hope, but at the end of the day, I think that’s just what I tell myself in order to justify my endless return to the scene of the crime.
Whenever one of my friends goes through a breakup, I feel for them so deeply, and my heart aches for them, but I also know that they’re going to be just fine in the end, because I firmly believe that there are some people in this world who were just made to be in love. Of course, everyone is deserving of love, but I mean the type of person who is just very obviously a relationship person, even if they’re not in one. They radiate love so effortlessly, and seem to have an endless capacity for giving and receiving it. They’re like those determined plants that thrive no matter where you put them, and just grow instinctively toward the light. When they come to me in shambles after a romantic endeavor falls through, I talk them through it and think about how temporary their pain is, how someone new will inevitably be drawn to their warmth. They inherently have too much love to give for them not to give it to someone else for the rest of their lives — the kinds of people who were born with room in their heart for all the forms love takes on.
On the other side of things, there are just some people for whom singleness and being alone is the preference. It isn’t at all that these people lack the capacity to love or to be in love, because they do contain that ability — I think everyone does, to a certain extent. It’s just that they are the kind of person who suffices well on their own, in fact they prefer the lack of a partner. They’re more than content just going about life solo. Serious romantic relationships and everything that comes along with it are a hassle more than anything else.
Sometimes, late at night, because of my unfortunate track record, I wonder if I am this person. Am I just grasping at straws for something that isn’t meant for me in the first place, trying to bend reality to my will? Trying to force myself into a mold of a person who is meant to be in love just because I wish I could be? My family and friends will — and have in the past — contradict me on this, because supposedly the plain act of wanting it implies that I’m capable of true love. But I always doubt that, and circle back to the same conclusions after spiraling too hard about the topic.
My fifteen-year-old sister, Eden, although eight years my junior, is already so much wiser than me when it comes to psychoanalyzing the people around her; seeing right through people like they’re made of glass. Which is a lot coming from me, given the fact that I have a psychology degree. One day, in the car, I had gone on a spiel recounting my unfortunate romantic history with her. I rehashed how now that it’s over, my rose-colored glasses have been lifted and I’ve realized that they aren’t even attractive to me at all (not that looks are everything, but you should be attracted to the person you’re involved with). The thing with these guys, is that I was drawn to them based on how we clicked personality wise and grew into becoming attracted to them physically over time. So, when it was later revealed to me that their personalities actually ended up sucking, you can’t even say, “well, at least he was hot.” Now, he just has nothing going for him, and I’m embarrassed for even giving him a chance. Eden said to me, after my long rant: “Did you know that people go for people less attractive than them because they have a fear of abandonment and they want to be sure that they won’t leave them?”
This leads me to one of the conclusions I constantly come back to: do I just want to be loved? To feel important and wanted by someone? Sometimes I worry that being loved matters more to me than truly feeling it for the person I choose. The truth is, every time I meet someone new, I find myself running calculations in my head. Will this person be worth the investment? Am I attracted to them or the idea of being wanted? But at my core, I’m a hopeless romantic. It’s in how I’m wired, no matter how much I could try and pointlessly argue against it. I only started to really lean into my lover girl nature over the past couple years, being less afraid of admitting out loud that I want to be in love; no longer viewing wanting love as a weakness, or a lack of self-sufficiency. But most of all, I want a love that doesn’t require deciphering. I’m tired of the cryptic; the nonchalance that men these days seem to exude. I want a love that doesn’t need to be interpreted, one that simply arrives — softly, then all at once.
But time and time again, I find myself drawn back into the familiar dance of maybe and almost and not quite. The realization always comes at the same point in the story, no matter who the love interest is. It’s that moment when they understand I’m not the cool girl who will float in and out of their life like a dreamy interlude between their real relationships. Each time, I watch as it happens gradually, like they’re suddenly seeing me for the first time, and what comes into view scares them. Not because it’s frightening, but because it’s too real, too solid, too much like something they might have to rearrange their life around.
These boys are still in love with the idea of their own freedom, still collecting stories for some future version of themselves to tell, and maybe I represent a fork in the road they’re not ready to take — a future they can see but aren’t prepared to choose. They want to keep living in the middle chapters, where everything is possibility and nothing is consequence. Speaking from experience, there’s a particular kind of loneliness in being the girl who’s too much by virtue of being exactly enough. Too sincere in a world of ironic detachment, too ready for something real in an age of carefully maintained ambiguity.
My friends always tell me this quality of mine is a good thing. But with one failed endeavor after the other, I’m starting to think that being a keeper isn’t always a comfort. If I were really someone they couldn’t bear to lose, they would find a way to keep me. All my qualities that I frame as too much would be exactly right if they just liked me enough. The right person wouldn't need to be ready for forever; they would just be afraid of a future that didn’t have me in it. The thing about being the type of girl someone wants to end up with is that it doesn’t mean they want to end up with you. At times I’ve wondered if I’m just a placeholder for the actual love of their life who will come later.
The boys of our generation seem to have perfected a specific art of maintaining relationships in soft focus. But I’ve perfected an art, too: the ability to transform simple disinterest into theories about timing and readiness, and the complex psychology of modern dating. Maybe when they pull back with fewer good morning texts and more vague references to “being really busy”, it’s not because they’re afraid of how real it’s becoming, they’re just not that interested in keeping it real with me specifically. I watch them pull away, and I frantically craft narratives about how I’m just too real for their carefully maintained casualness. But sometimes I think that’s just another way of protecting myself from the basic truth. All the theories about generational dating patterns and commitment fears feel like intricate frameworks built around a simpler structure: sometimes you can be exactly what someone says they want, and they still don’t want it with you. If they wanted to, they would. Because when someone likes you enough, your permanence doesn’t pose a threat, it would be a promise.
The irony is that in trying so hard to be enough, I sometimes fail to consider the possibility that I’m already more than enough, which is what might cause them to retreat. They’re not running from my intensity; they’re running from their own inability to match it. And that’s fine — maybe there’s a certain grace in being the girl who knows what she wants, who refuses to shrink herself into someone else’s idea of manageable.
These patterns only hold power until I see them for what they are: not a prophecy to fulfill, but a practice run. Every song that bleeds into the next one and every boy who couldn’t quite stay — they weren’t failing me, they were teaching me how to recognize what real love might feel like when it finally arrives. Not because it’ll be perfect, but because it’ll be different in all the ways that matter. The right person won’t make me feel like I need to fold myself into smaller spaces or speak in softer tones. They’ll notice the pages upon pages of lovelorn lyrics and prose I’ve written and say write a love song about me instead. And maybe all of this hasn’t been about learning to be less, but learning that I should be with someone who wants all of me. Somewhere between all these almosts, I’ve realized that being too much for everyone other guy is really being just right, exactly enough for the one who’s been looking for exactly this kind of love all along.
when you said “it’s that moment when they understand I’m not the cool girl who will float in and out of their life like a dreamy interlude between their real relationships” it cut right through the heart. loved this all the way <3
Everything you write is like straight out of my journal!