"Don't kill the part in you that is cringe, kill the part in you that cringes."

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of being single; the longest I’ve been completely on my own since I was sixteen.

I’m admittedly a long-term relationship person. I love being in partnership, not just romantically, but also in friendships and with family. I want to collaborate and compromise. I want to learn and adventure through co-creation and intimacy. People are weird. I’m weird. It’s fun to combine messes.

And… I am purposefully saying I want to as opposed to I like to. Because let’s be honest sometimes it feels terrible to make decisions together. My old scripts come up: I’m being manipulated. They’re going to hurt me. They’re trying to hurt me. They don’t care. I don’t want to be out of control. Or, I am giving up my freedom. They’re weak. I’m weak for needing. They’re codependent. I’m codependent. Every one tends to have an intimacy script, or a few.

Protection. Protection. Protection.

(And sometimes for good reason.)

But did you know that accepting influence helps partners stay out of power struggles?

(Citation from the Gottmans, a husband and wife research team: here.)

I imagine that this is true for any relationship, not just romantic partnership(s).

And yet - here comes the attachment lens, it’s terrifying to be deeply intimate with someone because there’s nowhere to hide when all your cards are on the table. And if you’re making decisions collectively, you have to show the ways that you treat yourself to another person - because you will treat them how you treat yourself the closer they get to you.

So each time we’re close to someone, it’s a magnifying glass on our own inner lives.

How devastatingly tender (see: uncomfortable) it can be to be that vulnerable often.

Yesterday was hard. I cried. I ruminated. I felt bad about myself. I got angry - at myself, at past partners, at people I’ve loved. I felt really sad and raw in my body. And, please forgive the cliché, but I truly felt like a snake about to shed its skin. I went to the gym, sweat it out, shook, yelled, journaled.

I cringed at myself. At others. At the world. And then I let it all out. Not in some tidy, Instagrammable way, just pure, messy emotion. Like a kid realizing they’re upset for the first time: What is happening?! I was bare emotionally with a loved one… not intentionally, but because I had no choice. We were in close quarters, and I didn’t want to run. And then I did. I said I needed to leave, and I went to a coffee shop and poured my energy into a project I’m really excited about.

I’m not claiming that a single 24-hour spiral healed years of relational trauma. But every time I face the part of me that hates big feelings and fears being seen inside them, something in me shifts.

If there’s one throughline in what I’ve learned about love, it’s this:
The right ones are willing to be cringe. Willing to show both their darkest and brightest parts. Willing to be seen fully, and to see me fully. They understand that relationships aren’t distractions from life,

they are life. They are the terrain of transformation.

As Esther Perel wisely says: the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.

So today, I’m feeling grateful. Grateful to raise a quiet glass to one year of, from the depths of my bones, choosing to live a fully embodied, inter-relational life.

Thank you for being here.