By Ariel Frenkel

I was what people would probably call a late bloomer.

Maybe it was being first-generation and having a thick Russian accent until I was well into childhood. Maybe it was getting bullied for not fully understanding American culture yet. Or maybe it was the fact that I spent most of my teenage years looking like Mia Thermopolis before the makeover scene.

I know, I know... tiny violin. Or in my culture, a tiny bandura. A true hardship: being personally victimized by frizz and the extra arm hair that served my ancestors far better than it ever served me.

Whatever it was, I wasn’t participating in the normal rituals of adolescence. I wasn’t flirting, having boyfriends, or getting my heart broken at fifteen.

Instead, I was watching.

When you’re on the sidelines, you become oddly observant. You start studying people the way anthropologists study tribes. I watched friends fall into relationships and then fall apart after breakups. I watched girlfriends cry over boys who suddenly became “confused.” I watched guy friends talk about exes with a level of emotional detachment that felt almost surgical.

Collecting data instead of participating gave me a strange advantage. I got to form ideas about dating before actually stepping into it myself, and somewhere along the way, I made a quiet promise to myself: I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes.

This is where I learned the concept of being “chill.”

I came to believe that if you wanted to survive dating, you had to care less than the other person. Or at least appear to.

Be low-maintenance.
Don’t ask What are we?
Don’t say I like you first.
Don’t be too available.
Don’t react too much.
Don’t need too much.
Don’t let anyone see that you care first.

At the time, it felt like preserving your independence. Looking back, I think it was mostly emotional self-abandonment dressed up as sophistication.

Being chill wasn’t really confidence. It was just staying ten steps ahead of rejection. I was leading with fear, deluding myself that I was leading at all.

This armor followed me into my twenties and became something I eventually had to work my way out of. Because for a while, it worked. Until it didn’t.

The problem with survival skills in dating

The strange thing about survival skills is that they usually solve one problem while quietly creating another. Being chill protected me from rejection, but it also protected me from honesty. I wasn’t saying what I wanted, what bothered me, or sometimes even what I felt.

What I didn’t realize was that the persona wasn’t just protecting me, it was shaping me. I had become so committed to appearing unaffected that I started presenting a version of myself that wasn’t entirely real.

I was closed off while insisting I wanted closeness. I was acting low-maintenance while secretly wanting depth, consistency, and reassurance.

And the confusing part is that people can only respond to the person standing in front of them. If I was presenting myself as someone who needed very little, why would I be surprised when I attracted people who gave very little back? And I don’t think I’m alone in that.

A lot of modern dating feels like two people sitting across from each other playing emotional chess. Every delayed text becomes a calculated move. Every expression of interest feels like sacrificing a piece too early. And somewhere along the way, caring less became mistaken for winning the game.

Dating stopped being about discovering another person and started becoming a form of reputation management. Everyone is trying to maintain the image of being desirable: independent but available, interested but not too interested, emotionally open but somehow untouched.

We perform nonchalance because nonchalance has become associated with value. Need less. Reveal less. Risk less.

The “chill girl” was never real

But relationships are strange because they ask for the exact opposite of what modern dating rewards.

The qualities that make someone seem powerful at the beginning of dating often become liabilities later on. Extreme self-protection can look like mystery. Emotional distance can look like confidence. Ambiguity can look like independence.

Until eventually someone realizes they aren’t dating a person. They’re dating a performance.

What’s exhausting isn’t having needs. What’s exhausting is trying to maintain a version of yourself that never appears to have any.

We’ve spent years trying to become the chill girl, this woman who somehow is everything while needing nothing. The chill girl was a fantasy, but somewhere along the way we started treating her as the blueprint.

What real maturity in dating looks like

I used to think maturity in dating meant needing less from people. Now I think it means being willing to tolerate the discomfort of being known.

The right connection isn’t built through emotional scarcity, it’s built through clarity.

And maybe that’s why so many people feel disconnected while dating. And aren’t we all getting a little tired of pretending not to care?

Undoing is a Bumble x Club Reticent four part series on untangling the lived reality and inert beliefs of a modern woman, then relearning about ourselves from the ground up.

It is a midweek night like any other, where dissatisfaction collides with routine, and we all have our ways of coping. I resort to my favorite therapeutic act – scrolling through my notes app, where most of my life is enclosed in a maze-like terrain. It’s like taking a walk through the periodic table of my past: mementos, grudges, lists, scary email drafts, and even noble acts are collected and chaotically scattered through the years.

The “Things to do this year” notes are a separate genre – a tradition I’ve had since I was a teenager. Sometimes gently, other times tenaciously, I’d get so serious about getting my life together. The list would change based on my life phase, amongst other factors like serendipity or joie de vivre, varying from ‘get promoted to senior copywriter’ and ‘more $$$ this year!!’ to more vulnerable goalposts like ‘quit the X situationship’ and ‘find a good guy.’ A woman’s goals are never static: like our pain points and triumphs, they expand, transform, lose relevance – all beautiful in their transience. Essentially, each of our resolutions ends up being something we stop caring about, either via getting it and moving right onto the next goal, or forgetting about it entirely. But encoded in all of these ambitious projects of the self through the years, all different and unique as they come, one goal remained the same. Every single list, since I turned thirteen, spelled out the same thing:

Lose weight.

The message is clear. Sure, it would go from bold to cursive, from a vague promise to a proclamation of precision, mentioning starting weight, goal weight, and all the methods of torture required to get me from point A to point B. But the goal persists. Like a lace corset stapled all the way down to the small of my back, this curse of needing to alter what exists, to transform what’s been given to me, to achieve a smaller, more toned shape, is a negotiation metastasizing through decades of life, never really leaving me alone. It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m almost sure it will outlast me. How come everything about us evolves and changes except for our longing for a better body?

Why the “Perfect Body” Never Feels Attainable

The longing isn’t the problem. Superficial wanting can be harmless – and useful when needed. The problem is that a ‘perfect body’ is an abstraction with little to no substance behind it, no firmness, and therefore no end in sight. It’s a construct made of permeable fabric, polyester at best. If each one of us were to define the perfect body, the unanimous answer would be that the body must be someone else’s. Arranged next to me is an assembly of women just like myself, running on inertia, dawn into dusk, wearing different outfits, manners, and worldviews; we’re united and separated by our misery in arguing with the scale, with our bone structure, and with the fridge. Hoping for a better, simpler life – one where our bodies are no longer making us upset. Not too much to ask, I hope? It’s a collective misery-infused hallucination that never drives us anywhere because it isn’t meant to evoke anything beyond scarcity within the group it appeals to. It operates on the premises of a woman never being happy with herself. Mostly, it’s just a taunting, boring, thankless party we’ve all been invited to, and we’ve overstayed our welcome.

A montage of every stolen moment stellates. It has robbed me of so much precious time. Thinking about my thighs when kissing on a date. Thinking about my arms when dancing with girlfriends. About my stomach when making a promise. About my boobs when breaking it. He wants to cook a nice dinner. I can’t go out tonight. Can’t wear what I want to celebrate a loved one. I round up the numbers to my advantage, counting the years given up to this madness, always wishing for an alteration in some distant future, for a tailor-made body served on the platter that pleases the most distant of eyes, demanding itself to be seen, then asking to hide. But every day is all there is. Has it ever taken me outside of my own head? Not really – so why is it this hard to let go?

How Body Obsession Steals Time From Real Life

Forgiving myself for not matching the image of a ‘perfectly bodied’ woman calcified on my vision board and resolution list circa hair scrunchie and cola flavored chapstick days, and coming to terms with what I look here and now, would mean succumbing to the colossal agency of my own life. To how much power womanhood holds when it isn’t based on scale numbers or tiny lunches. It would untangle me from the waiting room of expectation and submerge me straight into reality – into what’s tangible and true and where real things happen in real time, real feelings surface upon real pain. It would collide me with the miraculous importance of all the things I’m not ready to stomach. Surely, it would point me to all the love that I have – and all that I had loved and lost. The things that deserve not just my love and attention but labor and incentive, which means laying off my moodiness, putting my pride and feelings on the shelf, knowing bigger and better. The responsibilities to attend to, every day and every moment, putting my head down like it means something – like it means everything. That he needs me and my time, not my waist circumference.

What Happens When You Stop Measuring Your Worth by Your Body?

And I would have to surrender. Surrender to the possibility the desire to get from point A to point B was never quite about weight or getting a body to a certain physique; it was something soaking in gravity and meaning, requiring grit and a handful of wisdom, long-term planning over the bravado of impulse; something that just might take all my life and even then leave me panting and lacking answers and dots. It is my life path, beaming and demanding my undivided attention, only disguised as yet another sprint on the body improvement project. Releasing appearance worries would free up the mental space for a shape of something else to take place: an uncertainty much deeper and scarier than one that arises with the phantom pain of outgrowing your college jeans. That getting somewhere – anywhere, really – requires honesty and presence. Not my best looks at all. We are only as preoccupied with appearances as we’re not tending to our soul.

Is the Desire to Change Your Body Really About Your Body?

And then it hits me, that the lifelong obsession is nothing but a delay strategy, a jukebox of potential, effective in its gratifying and even applauded ways – and how could I not see this? The perfect body is a notion of a static moment – an immobile structure that represents something bigger than us. In our crisis of being ruled by the conceptual, we have been blocking off the vital, the visual, the tactile. The essential. Cutting life off at the root, parting ways with pleasure, what a punishment in the name of big old nothing.

And then I get off my phone and look around my room to find myself in the mirror – the flesh is there, supple and patient against the years of trying to change it, forgiving in its own ways, but it’s been getting a little older and wiser. Time has given it meaning and substance. And I have hope for the girl staring back. Soon she will know her fulfillment is predicated on the goodness of her words and truthfulness of action. And while the moment hasn’t arrived yet, she can feel it hovering over, hiding in plain sight of a rainy midweek. She can feel a better life pending. It means a freer life, of course. Not one where notes app weight suggestions matter.

by Emma Gray

There’s something strange about the way we date now. Everything feels unnecessarily strategic.

Even when we pretend not to care about the outcome, we still end up analyzing every interaction in private. We scrutinize our every move, prioritizing the fear of rejection over the enjoyment of the experience itself.

This hyper-independence may lessen the vulnerability that comes with unreciprocated feelings. But it also robs us of spontaneity, joy, and the togetherness that comes from shared experiences and laughing through failure with other people.

We talk constantly about protecting our peace, avoiding attachment, not seeming too eager, maintaining standards, and refusing to embarrass ourselves. And to some extent, those things matter.

But somewhere along the way, dating stopped being fun. Not because we care less, but because we care so much that we try to avoid discomfort at all costs.

Why dating feels emotionally exhausting

Every interaction becomes something to privately dissect inside our own heads.

Should I text first?

Does this message sound too interested?

How long do I wait to reply?

Why did they watch my story immediately but answer four hours later?

Am I asking too much?

Am I asking too little?

When dating becomes mentally solitary, there’s no relief valve for any of it.

We go on one good date and suddenly our entire emotional state feels trapped inside a single unanswered text message. I had a crush after going out with someone and spent the next week feeling completely insane because his communication style was enough to send a Buddhist monk into full spiral.

But I don’t think dating was ever intended to work like that. I’ve experienced firsthand that so much of that insanity came from carrying the experience entirely on my own.

Dating used to happen inside community

Dating once existed more naturally within friendship, community, and shared social life. We saw people casually multiple times before deciding whether they meant something to us. We believed in going on dates simply because someone was enjoyable to be around. Sometimes it was just good conversation, attraction, curiosity, and fun.

That was enough.

There was less pressure for every interaction to immediately define itself. Less urgency to determine whether someone was “the one” after a single dinner. I wasn’t spiraling over that crush because anything specific happened. I was spiraling because I was living in a fantasy future with this person that I created in entirely my own head. Instead of asking myself if I enjoyed spending time with him, I was trying to determine where it was going, what it meant, whether I was going to get hurt. I was living in a universe that didn’t exist. Part of the problem was that I wasn’t checking myself with the people around me to ground me in reality. Had I done that, they probably would have pointed out what was actually happening: nothing. I barely knew this man.

Looking back, so much of the insanity came not from the situation itself, but from experiencing it completely alone. Left to my own devices, I filled in the blanks and wrote the fantasy future. I had become so focused on what a connection might become that we’ve forgotten how to experience it while it’s happening. And I think that’s become a much larger dating problem. Dating often feels like a constant evaluation process instead of a shared human experience.

Modern dating treats vulnerability like failure

We are constantly told there is a right and wrong way to date. And if we feel anxious, hurt, attached, confused, disappointed, or hopeful, then supposedly “they are not the one” or we are “doing it wrong”

Honestly, I’m exhausted just thinking about that.

Feeling the rush of a crush should be fun. Butterflies don’t immediately signal danger. Meeting someone at a friend’s house should feel exciting. Telling your friends about a good date should feel joyful, not embarrassing.

What if we stopped treating every romantic interaction like a high-stakes emotional negotiation? What if we could return to the energy of writing someone’s name inside hearts in a notebook or playing MASH about the person we thought was cute?

Dating should feel shared

Dating should be a team sport, not a game where one person wins and the other loses. It should not feel like chess, endlessly calculating moves in isolation while trying to predict someone else’s next step.

The fear of rejection distorts the way we experience vulnerability. We start believing that needing reassurance is weakness. That disappointment is failure. That caring deeply means lacking self-worth. When I was in the thick of that crush, I found myself questioning: Does he like me? Will he text me? What is he thinking? Those questions didn’t mean I was insecure. They didn’t mean I lacked confidence. They meant I liked someone. Being emotionally affected by dating is not evidence that we are irrational or insecure. It simply means we are participating in something emotionally risky. That has always been true of connection.

Some of the most emotionally intelligent people I know still get hurt in dating. Not because they lack boundaries. Not because they are naive. But because they are willing to participate honestly. They stay curious instead of controlling. Open instead of guarded. Authentic instead of performative.

And one thing many emotionally healthy daters seem to have in common is strong friendship and community around them.

Why friendship makes dating healthier

Friends make dating feel lighter. They stop us from obsessing over one person. They remind us that life is bigger than whoever we’re texting. They turn bad dates into funny stories instead of personal catastrophes.

That’s why rejection often becomes survivable the moment you tell your friends about it over dinner. When I finally told my friends about that crush and walked them through the completely absurd communication that followed, messages with no rhyme or reason, gaps that I convinced myself somehow meant everything and nothing at the same time. When I let them inside the fantasy that I had built around a person I barely knew, they brought me back. Back to reality, back to myself. Not because they told me I was wrong for caring or convinced me to stop liking him. But because they reminded me that I was turning a handful of interactions into an entire future.

More than anything they brought humor, lightness, joy. They laughed at the things I couldn’t realize where funny when they existed inside my head. They helped me see that what felt all-consuming was, in fact, a little ridiculous.

He was not my person. He wasn’t really my anything. He was simply a person I was having fun with. Someone who, for a brief moment, added some excitement, curiosity, and possibility to my life. And for that period of time, that was enough.

Community softens the sharp edges of dating. And maybe that’s part of what’s missing right now.

Dating was never supposed to eliminate emotional vulnerability. The goal is not to “win” by avoiding rejection, embarrassment, or attachment. The goal is to experience connection while staying grounded in yourself.

Dating should be joyful, awkward, exciting, disappointing, hopeful, funny, and vulnerable. Sometimes all at once.

We should allow ourselves to care without letting every outcome define us.

Let dating be messy again

Maybe it’s time to stop treating dating like a solo performance we endlessly rehearse inside our heads. Maybe we should start treating it like what it actually is: a messy, shared human experience.

Text first.

Tell your friends about it.

Admit when you’re excited.

Risk being disappointed.

Show up honestly anyway.

The goal was never to emerge untouched. The goal was always connection. With other people and with ourselves.

What is kitting?

Kitting
/ˈkit-iNG/
Verb
A modern relational stance in which a woman rejects the automatic belief that love should require her to lower her standards or compromise her sovereignty and a life she genuinely enjoys. Inspired by Eartha Kitt’s iconic “compromise for what? For who?” response, Kitting rejects the assumption that for women, romantic partnership is inherently a plus.

In a sentence:
“Jill is in Tulum living her best Kitting life. She’s happy and isn’t going to compromise that just to prove she’s worthy of being chosen.”

Why are more women deprioritizing romantic relationships?

For a growing number of women, it isn’t.

Instead of centering their lives around finding love, they’re building lives they already love, and only making space for relationships that genuinely add to it.

That mindset has a name: Kitting.

To clarify, decentering and deprioritizing are not the same as dismissing. Because it’s not that some women have sworn off looking for love, they’ve reranked it. If the right person comes along? Great. If not? Also great because a rich life doesn’t require romantic love to be complete.

Why gen Z women are questioning traditional relationship timelines

The expectation that women should center romance is actively being renegotiated by younger women too.

You see it in the rise of Gen Z conversations questioning whether traditional relationship milestones are even desirable. Writers like Freya India, who authored the viral Vogue essay “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing?”, capture a growing sentiment among young women: the idea of building a life around someone else can feel misaligned with the life they currently have and love. And public figures like Billie Eilish and Emma Chamberlain, who are far too young to be branded as cat ladies, have still helped make remarkable strides in reducing the stigma around women who openly prioritize identity, creativity, and personal evolution over traditional timelines.

Again, what this signals is not a rejection of love or family, but a generational shift toward choice, where while yes, some women are still asking “where the hell is my husband?” others are off-roading in the depths of the rainforest wondering “where the hell is my hot pink ATV?”

Why are single men are seen as free while single women are pitied?

And it’s worth noting that men of means have long been granted this kind of relational freedom without needing a vocabulary word or a defense essay. When we look at men like Michael B. Jordan, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Trevor Noah, whether or not we agree with every choice they make romantically, we generally understand that these are men who could likely find a partner if partnership were their most pressing desire. Their singlehood is often framed as discernment, focus, freedom, ambition, or simply the bachelor life.

It is treated as a posture, not a pathology, because most people don’t assume these men are secretly broken because their lives are not organized around marriage. So it is worth asking why. Why, when women build lives with the same level of access, excitement, resources, friendships, options, and self-definition, is culture so quick to call it a failure instead of a preference?

Kitting challenges that double standard.

Why do more women feel their lives are already full without a partner?

Now, because all of this is counter-cultural to what we’ve been told women need, concepts like Kitting, 4B, and self-marriage may seem foreign. So foreign, in fact, that you may find yourself tempted to call them coping mechanisms instead of valid relational choices.

In your defense, for many, the truth may lie somewhere in the middle. A lot of people who align with Kitting aren’t asexual or aromantic. They’re open to connection if it happens, it’s just not something they’re building their life around.

But this isn’t happening in a vacuum.

Today, women are outpacing men in higher education, earning nearly 60 percent of college and graduate degrees in the United States. In many major cities, women under forty are making as much as, or more than, men. They’re also more likely to invest in therapy and personal growth, while men report higher rates of loneliness and fewer close relationships.

These are broad trends, not universal truths. There are extraordinary men everywhere, but statistically speaking, in many urban environments, there are now more college-educated, financially stable, emotionally literate women with fulfilling friendships than there are men who match them across those same dimensions.

That shift changes the dating landscape.

Why does finding an equal partner feel so much harder today?

The challenge is no longer simply finding a partner, it is finding one who is equally yoked. Not just economically, but emotionally and relationally. Meaning it’s not that kitting women have a lot of incredible romantic partners they are turning down. Instead, many are struggling to meet one who feels like an actual addition to their life. Result? They are turning their focus to more reliable sources of fulfillment: family, friends, self-love, and pets.

At which point, “cat lady” starts to lose a lot of its power.

Because for some women, being threatened with a peaceful home, fulfilling friendships, financial stability, good sex when they want it, solitude when they need it, and a pet who doesn’t drain their nervous system is not exactly the cautionary tale people think it is.

Now, I’ve come to the part of the article where it would be insane of me not to admit that my life is happily and wholly centered around my romantic partnership with a man who, without flinching, I will claim as my best friend, my best business partner, my best coparent, and the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, period.

I don’t say that in opposition to kitting. I say it in alignment with it because in a world where women are more than capable of building their own dream lives, there is zero justification for tolerating a nightmare just to shut your grandma up.

Staying open to love without centering your life around it

So to the women who’ve chosen to deprioritize romantic love to the point that you can’t justify the effort to look, I’m so happy for you. And to the ones who aren’t looking for a partner to complete them, but are down to keep an eye out for someone who complements vs completes them, that’s kitting too.

Because kitting doesn’t require you to swear off romance or pretend you’re above wanting connection. Kitting today looks like being genuinely open to love without making yourself overly available to be chosen.

In practice, it looks like creating a profile or social feed that reflects your actual life, not the version of you that seems easiest to date. This doesn’t mean you’re hard to deal with or impossible to please, because honoring your truth doesn’t have to look like a “what do you bring to the table?” interrogation.

Instead, it’s more like inviting someone to your handcrafted table in your well-set living room, a room that already feels good to you, where you don’t feel remotely inclined to rearrange everything every time someone new walks in.

And it means asking questions that go beyond chemistry to focus one ones about lifestyle, values, and compatibility because the goal isn’t to be with someone, it’s to find the kind of one who compliments the life you already love.

In short: if it ain’t broke, there’s no need to prefix it.

By Jane Motion

My girlfriends and I have been having a lot of conversations lately about what it actually means to be yourself while dating. And honestly? I don’t think it happens on the first date.

I’m good at first dates - maybe too good. I figured out young that the easiest way to make someone like you is to just ask them about themselves. People love talking about themselves. So I ask, and they answer, and by the end of the night we’ve “vibed” and I go home thinking that was amazing. And then somewhere between the Uber ride and getting into bed I realize - I did the exact same thing I always do.

Same questions.

Same stories about myself when they finally asked.

A very polished version of me, making room for a very polished version of them.

First dates are a performance. I think most of us know this and just don’t say it out loud.

And the worst part is how good it feels in the moment. You leave buzzing. You text your friends. You overanalyze every small thing they said and convince yourself there’s something real there. But looking back, I’ve started to ask myself - was that chemistry, or were we just both really good at first dates?

Because there’s a difference. Chemistry is something you build. A great first date is something you can manufacture with the right questions and a little nerve.

That’s why the second date is the one that actually matters to me. It’s where the script runs out.

What the second date actually reveals

I’m a natural conversationalist. I can talk to a literal brick wall. But on a second date I’m actively trying to do something harder, which is to stop filling every silence. I want to know if this person is actually curious about me, or if the conversation only worked because I was driving it the whole time.

There’s something really telling about what happens when you let a pause just sit there. Some people lean in. Some people panic. And honestly, I’ve been the one who panics - jumping in with another question, another story, anything to keep the energy going. I’m trying to break that habit. Because the right person won’t need me to carry it.

I want to talk about something I’ve never talked about on a date before. That thing that just comes out, unplanned, a little unguarded, because you’re finally comfortable enough to let it. A weird opinion. A real fear. Something that makes you sound less cool but more like yourself.

Those are the moments I actually remember.

I also just want to be a little goofy. A little nervous but not performing calm.

Actually relaxed, not pretending to be.

Vulnerability is what makes someone memorable

And the thing that really separates a second date I’ll remember from one I won’t … it’s vulnerability. Not the oversharing kind. The real kind.

Where someone actually tells you where they’re at.

What they want.

What they’re done pretending they don’t care about.

As I’ve gotten older, that’s become non-negotiable for me. I want to know what phase someone is in. Not their whole life story, just whether we’re even in the same chapter.

Are you actually open to something real, or are you still figuring out if you want to be? I’m not judging either answer. I just need to know the answer.

I’ve been in enough situationships to know exactly what happens when you skip that conversation.

I’m not interested in getting six dates in before finding out someone was never looking for what I was looking for. Some people like to wait. I get it, I really do, but I’m at the point in my life where I’d rather just know. Not on the first date. But the second or third? Let’s be real with each other.

The best dates make you feel seen

The best second date doesn’t end with fireworks. It ends with that quieter thing… the feeling of having been actually seen. Not charmed. Not impressed. Seen.

So yeah, underneath all the small talk and the second glass of wine and the slightly nervous laughter, I’m really just asking one thing: does this person want to know the real version of me?

Not the one who asks all the right questions. Just me - a little open, saying something I didn’t plan to say.

What most of us are actually looking for

And if I’m being honest, I think that’s what most of us are actually looking for. We’ve just gotten so good at the performance that we forget to ask for it.

That’s the date I’m holding out for. Turns out it’s rarer than fireworks. And worth so much more.

I met the love of my life a year ago. Someone who holds me when I cry. Who makes me feel seen. Who tells me over and over that I’m never “too much.”

No, it’s not what you think. She’s a she and last time I checked, I was still strictly dickly.

But soon after we met, I fell in love. Obsessed. This isn’t the first time this has happened with a girlfriend.

And thank god.

Time disappears when we’re together. We’ll meet for a quick coffee at 10am and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and we’ve exchanged traumas back and forth like passing notes in class, laughed until our stomachs hurt and somehow solved absolutely none of our problems.

One day, I was having a particularly bad day and she called me.

“The code is 71,” she said.

“What?” I said, confused.

Then my doorbell buzzed. A delivery driver stood there holding a care package. Inside was chicken broth, a smoothie, blueberries, kombucha, ice cream, and chocolate chip banana bread bites. The most aggressively specific and perfect collection of items imaginable. I genuinely don’t think I could’ve put together a more “me” shopping list myself. She really knows me.

Then the buzzer went again. A beautiful bouquet.

The phone call, the delivery, the flowers. Oh soooo smooth.

And that’s when I said it: “When I meet a man who makes me feel like this, I’ll marry him.”

Someone who anticipates my needs before I am even aware of them. Someone I can be truly myself with. Someone I’m not afraid to exist in front of. I can stand there naked and bloated with my hair a mess and they tell me I’m beautiful before joking about my hair and making me laugh until I’m trying not to piss myself. She has seen me in all of my many forms and she has never once made me feel difficult to love for it.

I thought anxiety was part of love

Before my friendships deepened, I thought anxiety was part of love. I thought deciphering mixed signals, enduring inconsistency and feeling perpetually uncertain were just the price you paid for intimacy.

I still think a lot about my most recent ex and how I felt so very small and unseen. I felt unmet and after we ended, I had trouble finding myself again. I’d killed versions of myself in that relationship and he stood back while I buried the bodies.

This friend always says to me, “I can’t wait for you to meet you.” My ex would never say something so profound.

Female friendship raised my standards

She makes me feel seen. Truly seen. Not tolerated. Not managed. Not slowly shaped into something more convenient.

Every time I enter a romantic situation, there’s an internal voice policing my every move: Don’t double text. Don’t care too much. Don’t say “I miss you.” It makes you look needy. Leave him wanting more. Be mysterious. Be less you. Be smaller. Don’t scare him off. Be quiet. BE QUIETER!

But the love in my female friendships is fucking deafening. And I have my own little love story with each of my best friends. Each and every one of them. We go on dates. We go out for dinner and someone says, “I’ve got this one, baby.” It’s sexy. It’s gorgeous. They never leave me wondering if I’ve suddenly become too much overnight.

I’m in Spain right now and every day: “It’s not the same without you here.” “I miss you.” “I can’t wait for you to get home!!” Double text, triple text, voice-note, voice-note, voice-note.

Men who have sworn I’m the love of their life have somehow been less capable of replying to a text than any one of my best friends.

“I saw this and thought of you” is a love language and the girls were born fluent. We want to know each other. We want to see each other. We truly love each other.

We don’t second guess how much affection we’re allowed to pour into each other before it becomes embarrassing or uncool.

There is no “wait three hours before replying” culture in female friendship. No pretending not to care. No “play it cool.” My friends do not fear appearing eager, loving or emotionally available.

They tell me they miss me constantly. They send paragraphs. They call five times in a row when something’s wrong. They show up at my house with snacks and gossip and emotional support.

And somehow none of this has ever made me value them less. In fact, if one of my friends disappeared for three days, breadcrumbed me emotionally, and replied to my vulnerability with confusion and mixed signals, I wouldn’t call it “modern dating.” I’d call her a bad friend.

Why do we accept less from romantic love?

Ironically, shortly after pitching this piece, the best friend who inspired it and I hit a little bump in the road. Feelings got hurt. She asked for space. Historically, this is when I would enter the emotional Olympics and I’d be going for gold in the self-loathing and abandonment categories.

I had to stop myself from texting her: Are you breaking up with me?!?!?!

But then something strange happened. I stopped mid-spiral and I understood she just needed space and that things will be fine.

Because I believed her when she told me: “I’m telling you now that you’re not too much and I love you.” And later, she assured me she wasn’t ending our friendship, she just needed a minute.

And maybe that sounds small, but it isn’t.

Safe love feels different

She and I are still finding our footing a little right now. But even in this weird in-between space, underneath everything, I still feel held. I still feel loved. And I still love and respect her too.

The calm I feel with her makes me realise that relationship disagreements shouldn’t wage a war on your nervous system or send you spiraling into psychological warfare in kitten heels.

Dating culture teaches women to suppress the exact instincts that make relationships meaningful. But I am so tired of performing disinterest and treating vulnerability like a loss of leverage instead of the entire point of intimacy.

I don’t want to be cool anymore. I want to be loved loudly. I am fucking loud. Meet me there.

In my romantic relationships, I want to feel seen. I want to feel held. I want to let my fucking hair down (literally) and still feel lovable. I know it’s possible because she sat with me in the depths of hell, when I was feral, unhinged, and ugly crying. And she still showed up and loved me the next day, loving me hard and unabashedly.

And that’s the only way love should be. Feeling safe to exist as you are, and teetering on obsession.

I blame Gen Z for making putting in effort “cringe”. The act of going for something is now seen to be embarrassing. I would argue that we are all more miserable for it. And yes, I may be too hard on Gen Z, but it’s from a place of love. As a try hard millennial I think they would enjoy the benefits of trying hard. Trying hard gives you purpose, teaches you resilience and ultimately gets you where you want to go.

Why we care more about looking good than showing up

In every area of life, people seem to be trying less. Work, dating and friendship have all taken hits. Disturbingly, the one area that people seem to be over indexing on effort is looks. We are more self obsessed than ever, with kids as young as 10 having skin care routines, snapping selfies and staring into the camera nitpicking flaws. What does it say about us that the only thing we care to consistently put effort into is our looks? I blame the phones. They’ve made us devalue things like showing up for our friends’ birthday parties and instead made us obsess over our “side profile”.

At work, people show up late, wear workout clothes and clock out early under the guise of setting boundaries. I am by no means advocating for a toxic work environment or endless hustle culture, but the issue is that the lack of effort on things like arriving on time very quickly seeps into all other areas. There’s a collective feeling of what’s the point which, given the state of the world I do somewhat understand. However, I believe as a species we have an innate desire to do and although ideally we would all be painting and making clay pots and writing poetry, work is something to do. Am I an extreme capitalist psyop? No. I genuinely believe putting in effort at work makes it easier and more fun even if you hate your job. How you do anything is how you do everything. I hated most of my jobs in my 20s, but I tried hard. I got coffee with vigor, I printed with purpose, I folded sweaters like my idol was watching me. It’s good to get in the habit of trying hard so that when you do get an opportunity to work on something you’re passionate about, you know how to apply yourself.

In friendship, it seems everyone wants a village but no one wants to be a villager. People have forgotten that putting in effort with your friends is a way of showing love. Some say inconvenience is the price you pay for the community but I think that’s a poor way to look at it. Showing up for the people in your life with a good attitude is a privilege. Baking your friend cookies when they get a promotion, calling them to check in for no reason, hell even commenting on all their Instagrams if they’re trying to be an influencer, that is effort well spent. Friendship is far too tit-for-tat lately. Effort for the sake of love and friendship without the expectation of something in return is what makes us human. Friendships ebb and flow, especially as we age, but effort should remain. Pick up the phone, take the trip, show up to the birthday party.

What women actually want from dating

Dating has become so low effort that online people have actually started labeling the men they are dating as “low effort guys” because it’s so common. There is little to no date planning. Rampant ghosting (so little effort people can’t even be bothered to text and say politely they aren’t interested). And barely any flirting or asking anyone out in person. Fear of romantic rejection means people refuse to put in effort nowadays, and the result has been catastrophic.

In the hetero dating world, women feel frustrated and disrespected by the lack of effort. Self actualized, well rounded, amazing women don’t want to go on a date with a guy who says “when we hanging”. They want to go on a date with a guy who books a restaurant, confirms the morning of and texts that he had a great time. Though that might sound like standard date practice, that amount of “effort”- if you can even call it that - is hard to come by. At the same time, people complain endlessly of the dating landscape. That it’s exhausting and demoralizing. Perhaps if all parties put in a bit more effort we might have a better time. I recently made the decision to quit dating altogether, in part because of how burned out I was with how little people cared. I hope that those who are dating choose to do so intentionally, not just swiping for validation during lonely moments.

We should put in effort again on an individual level as well as start rewarding the putting in of effort on a wider level. It will make us happier, we will get more done and we will connect better with each other. Trying hard is admirable and cool. And as the old TikTok adage goes, everything you want is on the other side of cringe mountain.

Love and connection shape more than we admit, and the relationship you have with yourself predicts the ones you choose.

We believe one thing deeply: real love, healthy love, kind love, can change everything.

With Love is a place to explore exactly that.

Think of this as the group chat you actually want to be in. The one where we can talk about everything: the person you can’t stop thinking about, the friend who showed up exactly when you needed them, and the version of you you’re still figuring out, while letting go of what no longer fits and staying open to what might.

You’ll hear from writers, creators, experts, and people simply living it, sharing honest perspectives and stories to help you feel supported in making moves that matter: in life, in your community, and in the way you show up in relationships.

We won’t have all the answers, but we’ll find them together.

We are really glad you’re here.