don't wait to be chosen

it'll lead you to the wrong relationships

I’ve been having lots of conversations about dating, recently. It’s not out of the ordinary for me, given it’s a lot of what I think, talk and write about for a living. But the recent conversations have all been eerily similar. And all too familiar to a period of my life.

Women are feeling unseen, in relationships. They’re feeling like they’re not enough. That the people they date don’t see them for all their beauty underneath the surface. And if they do, that they’re actively not choosing them — because they’re too much. Or so the women think. They’re feeling crippled by the weight of not being chosen. Because what does that mean about their success as a woman?

I remember feeling this big time all throughout high school and into my early twenties. This fear that I wasn’t going to be chosen. That to be chosen I needed to be pretty and cute but not too sexy. That I needed to be really easy going, laid-back, effortless in both my beauty and my emotions, that my photos on Facebook needed to show my long legs and growing boobs, but not in a vulgar way. And then, maybe then, a boy would virtually poke me (a vintage Facebook function), message me, start up a conversation that might lead to a kiss at a party, to a relationship and then, I’d be chosen. Out of all the girls he could’ve chosen, he chose me.

This desire to be chosen overtook my younger self. It was all I could think about. I think I’m a little more wistfully romantic than the average girl — I mean look at my occupation, lol — so I really wanted that love story. And all the stories I consumed told me that the only way to get it, was to be chosen.

Genres of movies that are targeted at teenager girls are literally made around this narrative of being chosen. The girl who goes unnoticed being chosen by the popular guy, the journey to finally being noticed, the effort it takes to get there, the power that being chosen gives you in the social structure of high school, college, the world.

Music supports this narrative, songs that centre around wanting to be noticed, falling in love with people who don’t know you exist and the pain of being invisible. Then there’s the other side of the narrative, men singing about the women they desire, the allure of them, the power they have over them with their beauty, the hunger they feel towards them, the things they’d do to get her attention, the yearning that comes from choosing the girl.

So now, we’re stuck in this place where we believe that to be chosen is to be successful. That therein lies the power of being a woman; to be desired, yearned after, seen.

It becomes something so sought after, that we sometimes find ourselves wanting it regardless of the consequences. That if someone choses us, we feel we have no choice but to be grateful and accept their choice, because what if no one else ever chooses us? No matter that they don’t see and accept us for what we are, that they see an image rather than the person underneath; we’ve been chosen. And that is enough.

I’ve found myself in relationships simply because I was chosen to be there. At the time, it feels like the moment you’ve been waiting for, for someone to choose you; and you’re just happy to be there. You feel like your job is done, or something. You’ve been successful enough at being desired that someone has chosen you.

But then, ultimately, you find yourself moving around to keep them there. You realise that they haven’t chosen you because they really know you. You’re actually not really sure why they chose you at all, because all they want is for you to change parts of yourself to accomodate them. But I think that’s what happens when you give someone the power to choose you. You give up your own sense of self, your gut instinct that told you from the start that they didn’t really see you as you are, but you take responsibility of that because maybe you changed parts of yourself to be chosen in the first place.

When I got to the end of my last relationship, I felt lonelier than I ever had on my own. Those night of watching romantic films, crying because I felt alone and wanted a meaningful love story, didn’t come close to the isolation I felt sleeping next to someone that didn’t really know me. Or want to. During that era of my life, I realised that being chosen actually means absolutely nothing at all. The actual “choosing” is not the important part. It doesn’t give us — as women — any extra brownie points of success to simply be chosen by a man (or anyone).

To be loved and to be chosen are two very different things. They can go together, if the love is real. And not in that fluffy — and frankly make-believe — ‘butterflies in your stomach’, ‘can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t concentrate’ kind of way. If someone loves you for who you are, for the long text messages, the deep feelings, the insecure moments, the times you feel sick and how you deal with that, the way you interact with others, the world and really just all of it — then it’s probably pretty likely that they’ll want to choose you. But only if they’re able to meet you there.

And the truth is, that takes guts. It seems to be getting less and less common, in this era of modern dating where we claim to not need each other like we used to. In this era of self-love, independence, falling in love with yourself; it’s amazingly empowering and fucking lonely at the same time. We still need each other. Not only is that so okay, it’s also a really beautiful element of being human.

It seems to me that people are afraid to need each other, afraid to give up their power. We’re so highly aware of all the things that can go wrong in relationships — emotional abuse, gaslighting, love-bombing, infidelity, dishonesty, getting stuck in a role we don’t want — that we’re closing ourselves off from feeling vulnerable all together. When we could just be safe and be alone, why open ourselves up to disappointment, hurt, rejection, lasting emotional consequences?

I think it’s worth it, to open up. Being in love is really nice. But we shouldn’t accept anything solely based on a desire to be chosen and a fear that it may never happen again. We need to take the power away from being chosen. It’s not enough. And it means absolutely nothing about our success rate, as a woman or otherwise. What other people do or don’t choose is a reflection on them, not you. There’s nothing we can really do — despite the stories that tell us otherwise — to impact another person’s decisions. If they want to they will. It’s cliche, but it’s true.

So let them walk away. Let them not choose you. Let them not understand you. Let them miss the light in you. Let them disappear without a trace. Just, let them.