By: Amelia-Rose Williams
Perfection. A word I know too well, a word I’ve been trying to be my entire life. In the past year, I’ve been trying to be the perfect girl for each guy I’ve crossed paths with. You know that guy who likes to play video games? Well, I started going down rabbit holes on TikTok and YouTube just so I could understand what he was talking about. How did that turn out for me, you ask? Well, he only wanted to see me naked.Â
How are we supposed to thrive romantically when, as a society, we have collectively decided to develop an idea of how we want the relationship to go with the person before it starts? I’ve always tried to go into every situation with a clear head. For example, I’ll use one of my relationships from last year. This guy was dreamy, a photographer, had cute glasses and knew how to hold a conversation. Which, for a guy these days, is a lot. The conversations never turned sexual, just straight to the point.Â
The catch? He was still stuck on his ex. While we both trauma-bonded over past relationships and how f’ed up they left us, that was the breaking point for ours. He accused me of being stuck on my ex. He made me into a villain, saying I was the reason our relationship was taking a turn because I cared enough to introduce him to my friends and family when he said he had no one in his corner. Everything I did, I did out of consideration for him, but that didn’t matter.Â
He spun the narrative, and I was the perfect villain addition needed for his story. While I spent the summer crying over him, he was spending his summer with the one that got away; the girl I was told I shouldn’t worry about was the girl he was in love with. The memories I had? They were really him reenacting the moments he wanted to spend with her. So how was I ever supposed to compete with an idea that I never had control of in the first place?
We are taught to believe that love is the purest form of affection. That it doesn’t come with baggage. Meanwhile, as women, we are stuffed into a category before we even have a chance to properly introduce ourselves. I was the “rebound”. Think of how many women are consistently perceived in a way that isn’t at all a representation of who they really are as people. “Gold diggers“, “Innocent”, “Sluts”, “Whores”, the list could go on!
Categorized by traumatized men who are still in love with the girl from however many years ago. I always say, “A man will only fall in love once; after that, he spends the rest of his life finding similarities in the girls that follow”. So, how have we adjusted to the unfortunate circumstances that lie before us? More women have focused on the goals that lie before them that are permanent, rather than a man who isn’t ready to open his heart to new experiences. That’s how we fight marginalization and the patriarchy.