Boyfriends Are Not Rewards

On deserving true love, breaking up and - shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.

Song of the week: To Love by Suki Waterhouse

“Have you ever got everything you ever wanted?”

“No, but once I got close.”

Growing up, all of my favourite books and films ended with the strong female protagonist getting the ultimate reward - a man that loves her. The same way my parents fell in love young and had this beautiful love story, I couldn’t wait for my own. When each of my friends found love over the years, I noticed we’d all say the same thing to each other, ‘you deserve this’.

Lately, I have become bitter towards love. It’s not something I meant to happen, but after heartbreak, it climbed up and carved it’s way into me - a sore spot of jealousy tinged with skepticism. This weekend, I sat in the sun in London Fields along with the rest of the city and listened to their success stories of love. Friends talked about new boyfriends and girlfriends, and I held a perfect smile as they talked (ish). I’d try to swallow it down, but I knew it was there, this ever growing belief system that love didn’t exist really. The idea of impermanence like in my last substack scarred into me. There it was again, ‘you deserve this’, they’d say to each other. And a small part inside of me wondered ‘what did I do to deserve to be treated badly then?’

Our generation is obsessed with self-improvement, it’s our drug of choice. Go to the gym, work harder, read more, become something better and better and better. I thought after my first relationship ended, if I went to therapy and thought good thoughts, I’d finally meet the one. I’d get my reward and sometimes I’d think I was close, then not quite, it would slip just out of reach.

In 2023, one of my closest friends met a man and he was everything she deserved. He picked her up from work, dropped her home, bought her flowers, and was everything everyone wanted. Finally, she had got her happy ending.

Last week, an influencer who reached fame through her self-worth and manifestation content, shared that she’d been cheated on by her husband. Naturally, this shocked her audience, she often spoke about fate and how she had attracted him, and now this had happened, now people had began doubting her. His crime had become her punishment. Also last week, my friend’s boyfriend turned out to be cruel, a simple word for it, and they broke up. So what now? Did they deserve this too? No, of course not. We have made the mistake of putting people on pedestals they can’t keep up with. We look at new partners and don’t see new people but reflections of our own self-worth. This is what I was thinking anyway as I sat in London Fields watching all of these couples roll around in the grass and walk hand in hand down Broadway market.

After a long day of sitting in the sun all day collecting sun burns and growing my bitterness, we decided to go to Stoke Newington in the evening. We went to The Auld Shillelagh (might be the best Irish pub in London), and it was packed. Nowhere to sit but a half filled bench;

“Do you mind if we sit on the end?”

And so we sat, and an hour or so later, I started to believe in love again. I sat next to a woman from Cork who was a rarity here - kind and warm like I’d known her for a long time already. As we chatted about the countries she’d lived in and the places she’d travelled, she then told me about her boyfriend sat opposite us. They’d met a few years ago, ‘it was funny’, she said, ‘it was just like fate’. She whispered it like she was letting me in on a secret and I found myself smiling with her. She told me she’d wrote this big list of all these things she’d wanted in a partner, and there he was.

“You’ve kind of ruined my substack for this week” I joked to her, as I watched them look at each other with love.

As I looked around the table at these strangers as we ate dinner with them, sharing stories and cigarettes, I loved how they had welcomed us in with kindness and how they all loved each other, it was infectious. I didn’t want to stop being a hopeless romantic and be bitter.

Maybe this is what we’re seeing when we say to each other ‘we deserve it’, it’s about deserving happiness. We all do deserve to be happy, regardless of whether or not there is a partner attached to it. And maybe it doesn’t last, maybe we do get heartbroken at the end of it but still in that moment, it’s a way of telling our friends that happiness looks good on them.

I suppose that’s the thing isn’t it, we should become better versions of ourselves for the longest loves of our lives - ourselves. The point is to realise that healing doesn’t mean you’ll never be hurt again, it just means you’ll know when to leave when it’s not right. It becomes a toolkit, not a guarantee, but in the meantime, it’s also nice to think that one day, you’ll meet someone that loves you like it’s easy. Not as a reward or that they’re a perfect person, free from faults, but just someone that loves you for all of you - healed or not. After all, life is a lot nicer if you look at it with love.

As we said goodbye to our new friends, Cathy and I walked back to the station, talking about maybe moving as it felt like fate to come here. It was still warm enough to not wear a jacket, Summer was finally here and the streets were full of people laughing. Maybe it’s not right to put so much pressure on people or places to be our destiny, but on the other hand, life can be a little bit more beautiful with it.

-Shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.