For years, women fought for the right to build lives that did not revolve around marriage. Today, known as “girlboss“, young women are encouraged to study, work, travel, make their own money, chase their dreams and, above all, be independent. The message seems clear: build a life so complete that you do not need anyone else. But, still… sometimes, the hopeless romantic inside us all wants to emerge.
What happens when, after building that life, you still really want someone to share it with?
For a generation raised between romantic comedies and “I don’t need anyone” speeches, admitting that love is one of your biggest dreams can feel strangely embarrassing. You can want the career, the apartment, the trips and the financial independence and still dream about meeting someone, falling deeply in love and building a life together.
Somehow, though, women are often made to feel like these desires contradict each other.
There seems to be an unwritten rule that a truly independent woman should never want love desperately. She can date, flirt and fall in love, but she should always make it clear that she would be perfectly fine without it. Caring too much can be interpreted as weakness, while detachment is often presented as confidence.
This creates a strange situation: women finally have more freedom to decide what they want their lives to look like, but they can still feel judged for the choices they make. Only now, instead of being told that marriage should be their ultimate goal, some feel pressure to prove that it really is not a goal at all (even when it, actually, is…).
So, is it possible to be deeply ambitious and deeply romantic at the same time?
The pressure to be the independent woman
The idea of the “girlboss” was originally connected to female ambition and independence. She knows what she wants. She works hard. She has her own goals, earns her own money and refuses to let a relationship define her.
There is something empowering about that image, especially considering how long women were expected to see marriage and motherhood as their main paths to fulfillment. Having the freedom to choose something different is revolutionary.
For many women, financial and professional independence also means having choices that previous generations did not always have. A woman can leave a relationship that does not make her happy or isn’t healthy, live alone, move to another city, prioritize her education or decide that marriage is simply not for her. That freedom matters.
But independence can become another expectation when women start feeling like they have to prove that they do not need love at all.
Social media often reinforces this idea. After a breakup, the answer is to “focus on yourself.” If someone disappoints you, you should “know your worth.” If you want a relationship too badly, you risk being called desperate. The ideal woman is sometimes presented as someone who enjoys romance but would never admit needing emotional connection.
Even dating advice can become a performance of indifference. Do not text first. Do not reply too quickly. Do not show that you care more. Do not let someone know how much you like them. Protect yourself, but most importantly, never look too invested.
Of course, protecting your boundaries is important. But there is a difference between having boundaries and treating vulnerability as something embarrassing.
And maybe that is where things get complicated. There is a difference between being capable of living without a romantic partner and never even allowing yourself to discover if, actually, you want one.
Independence should mean having the freedom to choose, not having to constantly demonstrate that you are emotionally untouchable.
What if love is part of the dream?
Being a hopeless romantic does not automatically mean giving up your independence.
You can have professional ambitions and still get excited about first dates. You can want to make your own money and still imagine sharing a home with someone someday. You can celebrate a promotion and still want someone waiting for you at the end of the day.
You can dream about having your name on an important project and about someone remembering how you take your coffee. You can want to travel the world alone and still hope that, one day, there will be someone whose hands you want to hold through some of those trips.
One desire does not erase the other.
Perhaps the real problem is not making love an important goal, but making it the only source of meaning in your life. There is a difference between wanting to experience love and believing your life cannot truly begin until someone loves you.
It is easy to fall into the idea of waiting. Waiting to meet someone before traveling somewhere special. Waiting for a relationship before feeling complete. Waiting for another person before allowing yourself to imagine a happy future.
But life continues while you wait.
When every decision, plan and dream depends on finding a partner, love can stop being something that adds to your life and become something that controls it. But pretending not to care about relationships just to appear strong is not necessarily independence either.
Real independence may have more to do with choice: being able to build your own life while remaining open to building something with another person.
Maybe balance is not about dividing your attention equally between romance and career. Life rarely works in perfect percentages. Sometimes work will demand more of you. Sometimes a relationship will. Sometimes friendships, family or yourself will need to come first.
Balance can change depending on the moment. What matters is being able to recognize when one part of your life starts erasing all the others.
The fear of wanting “too much”
There is another contradiction in modern dating: women are often encouraged to know exactly what they deserve while also being careful not to expect too much.
Want commitment, but do not rush. Have standards, but do not be unrealistic. Be open to love, but do not look like you are searching for it. Care, but not too much. Hope, but protect yourself from disappointment.
It can become exhausting.
Being a hopeless romantic in a dating culture that often celebrates emotional distance can feel almost rebellious. There is vulnerability in admitting that you want something meaningful. It means accepting the possibility that you may be disappointed, rejected or hurt.
But vulnerability is not the same as a lack of self-respect.
Wanting someone to choose you does not mean accepting anyone who does. Dreaming about love does not mean lowering your standards just to have a relationship. In fact, knowing that love matters to you can make it even more important to understand what kind of love you are actually willing to accept.
Maybe the question is not whether you should want love “too much,” but whether the love you are pursuing allows you to remain yourself.
A healthy relationship should not require you to become smaller so someone else can fit into your life.
Love is bigger than romance
There is also another question hidden in this conversation: when did “love” become synonymous with romantic relationships?
A life centered around love does not necessarily mean a life centered around finding a boyfriend, girlfriend or future spouse. Love exists in friendships, families and communities. It exists in the people who answer the phone at 2 a.m., celebrate your achievements, sit beside you when everything goes wrong and make ordinary days feel important.
It is the friend who knows something is wrong from a single text message. It is the family member who remembers the smallest details. It is showing up for people and allowing them to show up for you.
Maybe putting love at the center of your life can mean valuing connection in all its forms.
That perspective can also take some of the pressure away from romantic relationships. One person does not have to become your entire emotional world. A partner can be incredibly important without replacing friendships, family, personal interests or the relationship you have with yourself.
Romantic love can still be part of that. A huge part, if that is what you want. The important distinction is between wanting someone to complete a life that feels empty and wanting someone to become part of a life that is already full, yours.
Perhaps a meaningful life is not one where you learn to need nobody. It is one where you build different kinds of relationships while still knowing who you are when you are alone.
You don’t have to choose
The “girlboss” and the “hopeless romantic” might not be opposites, after all.
Maybe you can answer emails in the morning and daydream about your future wedding on the way home. Maybe you can work toward your dream career and still hope to meet the love of your life. Maybe being independent does not require convincing yourself that you never need anyone.
There will probably be moments when these parts of life conflict. Relationships require time, compromise and emotional energy, just like careers do. Choosing both does not mean everything will always fit together perfectly.
But perhaps the goal is not perfection.
It is learning that compromise does not always mean sacrifice, that loving someone does not require abandoning yourself and that being ambitious does not require treating affection as a distraction.
Wanting love does not make a woman less ambitious, just as wanting a career does not make her less romantic.
For previous generations, the fight was often about proving that women could have a life beyond love and marriage. Perhaps this generation faces a slightly different challenge: understanding that having that freedom also means being allowed to choose love without feeling like it makes us weaker.
After all, feminism gave women the possibility of imagining more than one version of a fulfilling life. For one woman, that may mean building a career and remaining single. For another, marriage and family may be deeply important. For someone else, fulfillment may exist somewhere between the two or change completely over time.
There is no universal formula.
Being independent does not mean refusing to depend on anyone for anything. Human beings build relationships, trust one another, ask for help and want to feel loved. Independence can also mean knowing that you are capable of standing on your own while still choosing to let people stand beside you.
So maybe the question is not whether it is okay to make love one of the main goals of your life. Maybe the best question is: what kind of love do you want, and what kind of person do you want to be while pursuing it?
Because maybe the goal was never to become women who need no one.
Maybe it was simply to become women who get to decide whether a meaningful life looks like career, love, both, or something completely different.
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The article above was edited and translated by Ana Beatriz Carvalho Sapata.
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