Ironically, the independence I worked so hard to build is sometimes the very thing that makes romance look appealing.

Over the past few years, there’s been a strong cultural emphasis on “decentring men” and building lives that don’t solely revolve around romance. I agreed with that sentiment long before I fully understood what it would require of me.

As I’ve grown older, I crave my independence. I hold onto my goals more firmly. I keep my routines (or rather, try to). I make decisions that prioritise my long-term direction rather than short-term validation. I didn’t stop wanting love, but I started trying to build a life where it wasn’t the structure around which everything else was organised.

What I didn’t anticipate was the weight of what would replace it.

When you remove one centre of gravity from your life, something else inevitably moves in. For me, that something was the determination to build something intentional. I began looking more closely at my habits, my discipline, my thinking, and the way I spend my time. I wanted depth rather than distraction, even if I’m still learning what that actually requires.

Online, reinvention is often presented as quick and aesthetic. Become a new you with a magic routine. A new hobby. In reality, building a life that reflects who you actually want to become is slow and repetitive. Dare I say, sometimes boring? It demands self-trust, continued action and a tolerance for delayed reward. It requires you to show up when no one’s watching, and even more so when there’s no immediate proof that it’s working.

There’s a thrill to that independence, and a sharp type of clarity, but there’s also weight. When you stop outsourcing your stability, you inherit full responsibility for the pace and direction of your own growth. There’s no shared narrative to lean on, no built-in momentum. If things stall, they stall under your watch. That’s usually where the discomfort begins.

It doesn’t always take much to trigger it. Sometimes it’s as small as comparing myself to someone who appears further along, even if they’re moving in a direction I don’t actually want to go in. The mind doesn’t carefully assess whether the comparison is rational; it simply whispers “behind.”

From there, the doubts gather quickly. I start wondering whether I’m moving fast enough, whether I even know what I want, whether I will ever arrive at the place I’m working towards. Ambition stretches time; it forces you to live in the space between effort and outcome, and that space can feel uncomfortably wide.

When we perceive ourselves as behind, the brain tends to treat it as a threat, and threats demand relief.

It’s usually at that point that my mind drifts towards romance. Not towards the effort of dating — that feels exhausting — but towards the idea of an already-formed stability. A relationship that exists in its entirety, solid and supportive, absorbing some of the uncertainty I’m carrying alone.

There’s something undeniably easier about waiting for a message than waiting for your own growth to materialise. One offers immediate proof of your importance. The other requires faith. Romance, in those moments, becomes less about love and more about reassurance. It promises a distributed responsibility, a narrative that moves even if your personal ambitions feel stalled.

It’s a reflex that appears whenever the pressure of self-direction feels substantial. Faced with the slow and often ambiguous nature of building something meaningful, my brain reaches for the most satisfying form of immediate comfort it knows.

And I suspect this isn’t unique to me.

Whenever we feel behind — even in directions we don’t truly want — the mind looks for the fastest available story that restores a sense of momentum. It might be romance. It might be a sudden conviction that moving cities will solve everything, or that starting something entirely new will erase the discomfort. The form varies, but the impulse is similar: replace uncertainty with immediacy.

What I’ve started to understand is that this isn’t really about romance at all. It’s about the difficulty of tolerating responsibility without relief. When you’re building your own life, there’s no one else to blame for the pace of it. There’s no external structure to absorb your doubt. The whole weight rests with you.

Romance becomes the easiest imagined solution because it offers the illusion of ready-made stability. 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting partnership. But wanting it specifically when self-direction feels heavy is information. It reveals how tempting it is to trade long-term growth for short-term reassurance.

It’s worth asking, when the desire for immediate reassurance surfaces, whether it’s truly connection we’re looking for, or relief from the weight of directing our own lives.

Building something for yourself is heavier than it looks from the outside. It’s slower, and far less immediately rewarding than the narratives we’re used to consuming. Comparison makes it feel urgent, and doubt makes it feel unstable. But neither necessarily means you’re on the wrong path.

Sometimes the urge for reassurance is simply a sign that you’re stretching beyond old structures of comfort. Recognising that reflex, and pausing before responding to it, may be one of the ways we learn to carry our own direction.

I used to (and still do) get really in my head about success. Especially with the way society is today; a big fear these days for a lot of people is the idea of ‘settling.’ Settling in relationships, careers, friendships. Settling into old versions of ourselves.

No one really wants to ‘settle.’ But what does that word actually mean? Whoever you ask, there’s a different definition. We usually hear it in motivational speeches, in videos, thrown around online to boost engagement and secure success for someone else. Maybe we hear it in conversations with our friends. “You can have it all – the dream life, the dream body, the career, the relationship. Don’t allow anything less than perfection. Don’t lower your standards for anything.”

It sounds good. It’s a lie.

The lie is that perfection exists. That once you work hard enough, raise your standards high enough, and reach that final point, the hard work stops. That you’re finally where you need to be. That from there everything comes easily and there are no more worries. It’s a glorified end destination that never really arrives.

I used to overthink the idea of ‘success’ and ‘making it’ all the time. I would FaceTime my friend and spiral for three hours, convinced that I’d never be who I want to be, and that the fear of that insignificance was too much to bear. That the world was so big, and I had no idea what my place was in it.

The strangest part is, I would think this to the point of collapse, yet not even have a defined idea of who the person I wanted to become was. It was made up of things I thought were expected of me, things I saw other people have, and I assumed that if I didn’t have those things, then I hadn’t achieved anything.

A feared ‘small’ life for me was one that was ordinary. That I could be just anyone, living a life that everyone else lives. That I could be forgotten. Leave with no impact.

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between settling and just living in one portion of the world. One narrow slice. Is it settling if I don’t want everything? Don’t get me wrong, I want a lot of things. But my biggest tension is wanting so much that I’m never happy with anything. This idea of constantly going for more, needing more, projected everywhere under the guise of self-improvement and achievement, exhausts me. How many of these lives are actually fulfilled and aligned? What do you really gain when the goal becomes to purely want, to keep chasing and chasing?

I see this dilemma in my own life. I want a large life, of course I do. But when it comes to happiness and fulfilment, how does that fit in? When does enough become enough? And how do you move intentionally when the subconscious goal is to constantly acquire?

I think sometimes we imagine ‘not settling’ as living in a frictionless world. A world of ‘peace’ where everything goes purely our way, and we have everything we could ever need. But ‘not settling’ still means living with discomfort. It still means being unsure. It still means not always making the right decision.

I’ve delayed choosing in case something ‘better’ might exist. Especially being young – you never know what the future has in store. I’ve disguised it as alignment before, but constantly scanning for better, instead of building better, hurts.

Sometimes ‘high standards’ are just fear dressed up as self-respect.

It’s exhausting. It’s relentless. Nothing ever compares to how things are in your head. The more options there are, the harsher the feeling that I could be choosing wrong. That I’ll be trapped in a life I don’t want. That I’ll be hurting myself in some way. Lose time I could have spent doing something else. Lose who I am and not being able to get back to it. Lose opportunities and miss out. I hear the avoidance creeping out, don’t worry.

It stops me from fully inhabiting what I already have. I’m constantly searching for lack, therefore all I find is lack. In myself. In the world around me. Other people always have it better. They find things I don’t, take steps that I don’t. Live freely.

An ex-boyfriend once told me I’ll never be happy with the small things, because I’m constantly looking for things to be perfect. It resonated with me deep down, so I didn’t break up with him that day. Ironically, the one time I thought I was making the right decision – sticking with something that wasn’t ‘perfect’ in an effort to build – allowed me to tolerate less than bare minimum behaviour for another six months.

I don’t hold on to that. But it made me question what ‘settling’ actually is.

I would now define ‘settling’ as not trying. Looking for better rather than being better. Externalising your fears onto the world rather than looking inwards. Betraying yourself by opting out, or chasing for more rather than choosing what is aligned.

Choosing a corner of the world is making your scope smaller. Not your dreams, but your approach. Not avoiding the work. Not holding onto a fake version of what a dream life looks like. Staying aligned with the things you actually value.

I used to imagine having it all meant a peaceful life I no longer have to work for. I believed negative feelings would disappear, that I wouldn’t experience the friction of being human in the same way. Even my imagined bad days weren’t ‘real’ bad days. They were days where I overcame things, but with minimal struggle and emotion.

I think of how many connections, opportunities, passions we’ve walked away from because they weren’t ‘peaceful,’ and we took discomfort to mean ‘not for me.’ We used the blanket term ‘settling’ because we actually had to still work for something. Still show up. Still grow. It’s much easier to pretend you didn’t want it in the first place.

What I suspect is true about success is that it’s what you make of it. It’s what fulfils you. It’s not something you arrive at one day, but something you choose every day, through your actions and your outlook.

Life does not become permanently easy if you’re constantly growing. It becomes easy when you’re comfortable. Truly settling. Not wanting to be better than you are, but chasing distractions. Busy-ness for the sake of being busy. Achievements for the sake of achieving.

I’m a big believer that we should have it all. And we should. But that doesn’t come with ease or perfection. I can aim for the stars in my own way and still choose my small corner of the world.

This fear of not settling can make you not choose anything. Because nothing will ever be good enough.

I don’t need to conquer the whole world.

I just need to choose a part of it, and build something meaningful there.

As the gender wars spike even further with the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ and the rise of red pill content, the rift between the men and the women of this generation feels almost irreparable.

When I first saw the article in Vogue, I focused less on the article itself, and more on the reactions to it. A lot of women felt validated in their decision not to date and in their single status, a lot of men were offended, and there was a good mix in the middle that just didn’t care.

Overall, the article seems to be adding fuel to an already growing fire online. But is this article just another form of ‘rage bait’ to attract attention and spark debate, or is there something deeper?

The article talks about the fear of getting the ‘evil eye’ from onlookers into relationships, a desire to maintain freedom, and a continued step away from the traditional happily-ever-after of marriage and family. There was also talk about a loss of ‘aura’ whilst in a relationship — I myself can relate to that one.

I think there’s no dispute that the dating world has become confused. More confused than it ever was (not that I was around to see it). I’m also not the first person to talk about it, nor will I be the last. So why is this? Why is dating so hard today? And will men and women ever find peace?

As we do move away from that stereotypical happily ever after, women are increasingly focusing on their own lives and ambitions, and the mask on the male gender starts to slip. As teenagers, a lot of us look at men with stars in our eyes, thinking they’ll be the solution to all our problems. Then we grow, and we start to see the socks left out on the floor, the dishes left in the sink, the emotional toll on our lives, and we start to think that maybe it’s actually a burden.

We’ve also grown seeing the stories of our parents, grandparents, maybe a parent’s friend — there’s always at least one relationship where you think, ‘Why are you still together?’

In movies, when the husbands were jokingly made fun of for not knowing how to cook or find their way around the store, I didn’t find that endearing. When a couple cheated and got back together — I didn’t think it was brave that they worked through their issues. With the exception of Mitch and Gail in Dawson’s Creek.

It was all just passed off as something to be expected. For women to hold the emotional burden of the relationship. To act, essentially, as a second mother. To put up with bad behaviour and let it go because of ‘love’ and expectation.

I’ve been the person in the relationship who has done everything for their partner, put myself on hold, cleaned, cooked, tried to be who they wanted so I’d be loved. What did I gain? A loss of identity and confusion over why the things I did weren’t enough.

Even in the relationships where I didn’t ‘over-give’ and I was loved, I still lost myself. Because although he wasn’t a bad person, I still carried the emotional weight of the relationship. I still found myself not receiving back the things I gave. And it’s not that he didn’t want to; he just didn’t even think about his actions or what he was giving me.

I felt that I just couldn’t grow in that relationship, there was nothing bad, it was just stagnant. There wasn’t room for me to really evolve. I felt myself putting my dreams and goals aside. Making myself smaller. As I’d seen so many other women do in my life. Why should that be the case?

It’s not that women don’t ever want love or partnership, but we shouldn’t just accept it in any form it comes.

Personally, I do want love. I do want partnership. But I want an adult that will support my dreams, my ambitions, inspire me, be able to function on his own, and have emotional intelligence.

As otherwise, what am I inviting into my life? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Love on its own is never enough. And if I’m going to pick someone to be with for life, they can’t be a factor in making things worse, or even just be okay, but instead influence me positively in some way.

So, do I think having a boyfriend is embarrassing? No. I think having a bad boyfriend is embarrassing, and always has been. I think the dating scene is embarrassing. With all of the ghosting, cheating, non-committalness. I respect myself more than that.

But also, I think we need to remember that online isn’t necessarily real life, and things are a lot less worse than they appear to be on the internet. And I think it’s possible to be independent, achieve your dreams, and also have love. You just need to be a bit more intentional with who you choose.