what's up with all the romantic suffering?

sorry to taylor swift but i'll pass

In the locker rooms of our girlhood-perfumed daydreams powdered with wishful thinking and desire, we whisper about love and longing. This longing, so sacred and holy, woven through our lives, taking different shapes and stages but never really leaving, can make us or break us. Taylor Swift just dropped a 31-track album that almost entirely revolves around, well, letting it break you. Talk about an ode to romantic suffering!

Regardless of how you feel about Taylor or celebrity culture at large, I believe pretending she doesn’t exist means denying yourself the opportunity to do a near-accurate temperature check of how girls around the world are doing on a collective level. We can love or hate her, but we can’t deny that analyzing her work is probably our best bet for understanding the female zeitgeist. I also find it fascinating that Swift, being a 34-year-old private jet connoisseur, probably set us all back a good decade, but in a way that weirdly feels indulgent, relatable, and tragically good. Cause why decenter men when you can “just die, it would make no difference” in the midst of pining for a guy who goes on podcasts to say questionable things? Even I, no longer an impressionable young woman, wasn’t immune: the album is bringing up a lot of old humiliation with a sour aftertaste of romantic failure. When arguably the most successful woman in the world makes a 2-hour long record about dying for a failed situationship, something’s not adding up here. I thought this was a classy party… What’s up with all of this yearning and being down bad? Is trading our dignity for a chance to be loved second nature to us?

For better or for worse, I know a thing or two about being down bad. Yearning. Pining. Suffering for love. Whatever you wanna call it, honestly, it’s all the same love me love me please love me sinking feeling. The narrative of suffering for romance is omnipresent and genderless, but it’s women who have mastered the art of accepting its detrimental fate and everything that comes with it. It’s us who will go the extra mile. You’ve heard the jokes: we’re hopeless romantics. We’re not just girls, we’re lover girls. The devotion we identify with so closely, wearing it like a badge of honor, the collective experience of giving away our sense of control in the name of loving somebody comes so naturally, almost as an instinct. Is it really an instinct, though? Losing your appetite because the person you’re talking to is being weird, not sleeping because you’re up waiting for a text, begging to stay, trying to fix people, frantically engaging in digital surveillance — it doesn’t feel good; it feels bad. It’s draining. But we’re such good, good friends with our pain, we take it as a given. Falling prey to voluntary crucifixion, we succumb to the idea that love equals pain. It has long plagued our minds and our hearts. It’s all fun and games until you look at what’s boiling underneath; a sacrifice with no promise, no prize. Just you, your desire, and an undying need to devote yourself to something larger than you. Maybe something larger than life itself.

Being down bad is not far off from being in love or having a crush — it’s just that this particular state of infatuation can quickly take the lowest form of powerlessness, as it implies a lack of control. It’s devoid of agency or choice: feeling like you need that person by your side and can’t do without them. A story with an unsatisfying ending: throwing your personhood off the cliff and biding time at the mercy of reciprocation — an empty cup to be poured, and the water is outsource-only. This kind of longing usually gets us when we’re not doing well, and boy does it get us good. I recall certain points of my life where my entire day would revolve around getting someone to like me or treat me well. Those weren’t my proudest moments; they would usually be times when I’m already not doing so well. I don’t necessarily miss that girl, but I’m fascinated by her life choices and how far she was willing to go. Like a low-vibrational disastrous version of myself that I hate, a dismissed patient with a chronic condition. Diagnosis: devotion. Cure: not yet discovered. The patient is introverted, plagued with insecurity, and indebted to everyone around her. A people-pleaser with nothing to lose, some points to gain, and everything to prove. The patient has no free will: she’s once again needing some guy, waiting around to be graced with attention, pining for something that can only ever be acquired in small parts if at all; and because of this, she’s just perpetually fucking sad about nothing in particular. She should’ve been at the club…

The moment I realized everything was finite, including my love and devotion, was the moment my round-the-clock yearning stopped. I no longer see the appeal of suffering for romance. Just doesn’t do it for me anymore, doesn’t have a punch to it. When we’re young, we look at our emotions as a high-yield savings account — I have so much to give, you know, the more I give the more I’ll eventually get. Then, little by little, you start to realize how nuanced that can be. Everything comes at a price: I can’t keep giving myself away and drowning in my sultry sorrows in hopes that sometime, someplace my loving might ricochet. It’s self-sabotage, plain and simple. My longing has kept me stagnant for longer than needed, kept me on edge and insecure when I could’ve been doing exciting, spiritually enriching things instead. By allowing myself to pine for people and passing my agency over to the golden hands of whatever fate decided to meet me halfway, I was doing a great disservice to other areas of my life, too. You can’t expect yourself to suffer in love yet girlboss in everything else. Why would you? How can I be assertive in the workplace or have the confidence to follow my sense of purpose if I’m too busy ripping my hair out because some guy isn’t texting me back? How can those coexist? They can’t. So, I traded in my longing for dignity and never looked back.

As women, the bitter truth is that we can’t afford to wait around for things to come to us: agency is not given, it’s claimed. At work, with family, and in love, too. It takes Sisyphean effort to overcome self-imposed limitations and gain a sense of control very few of us can naturally tap into, so we probably shouldn’t hinder that on purpose. The more life experience I gain, the more my perspective widens, the harder I grasp onto my sanity and peace. I’m able to see that I’m capable of much more than endless romantic suffering. I’m able to see that I’m made for joy, not endurance.

Do I miss all the yearning and pining? I think sometimes, sure, yes — it’s a delicious little treat, why lie. Becoming aware and rational feels cynical, dry, and sometimes flat, like life has lost a bit of color. There’s nothing like an infinitely aching heart and a Mazzy Star playlist to go with it. I miss the futile fantasizing and being the precise target demographic of Taylor Swift’s marketing efforts. I miss being on the floor, ready to nail-to-cross myself for love. The dull aftertaste of heartbreak lingering for days, often weeks. But then, you know, I look in the mirror, and I like what I see. I see that I’m protected and can think straight. I see that I’m in charge of my emotions and my mood, no one having the faculty to throw my day off with a weird-tone text. I like that I’m not faking my self-sufficiency, I’m living it. I like that I’m aware of my finite resources and can determine where to give a little more of myself. I like that I feel a sense of purpose that cannot be ripped out of my hands. The more the complexity of my personhood takes root in the fabric of my being, the less I feel the need to get down bad for anyone ever again. All the what am I and where do I belong in the world have ceased — it’s up to me to decide. I’ve watered my soul long enough, and the gardens of my competence are blooming just in time for spring.

Go where you’re wanted, leave where you aren’t, take what’s yours, and ditch the rest. And no, having crushes is not canceled — that’s always on the menu. Crushes are sexy. Devoting yourself to romantic suffering is not.

So, now that we got that out of the way…. What’s your favorite track on TTPD?