His comment inevitably kickstarted a number of conversations around which of us (now “old”) cousins, would be having kids next. Of course, that then led into the well-known topic of declining fertility rates (which in Italy is more acute than elsewhere) and we ended up talking about how a growing number of Italian women, well into their 30s, keep postponing the decision to have children.

If you have read my substack, you will know that this topic is pretty close to my heart. After finding out my AMH levels were quite low for my age, two years ago I decided to freeze my first batch of eggs (I say “first” because I am very much considering whether to do a second round in the near future).

So off I went on my usual spiel about all the benefits that undergoing such a procedure could bring. I banged on about how smart it is to get ahead of the ever-declining fertility curve if you have the chance to do so.

“Sure, we’d be slightly older mothers” I said, - “but how much do x more years really matter, in the grand scheme of things, when what you’re getting in return is more economic stability and less stress around the fact that your biological clock is inexorably ticking away?”.

For me, it has always been a no brainer. The opportunity to somewhat dictate the terms and pace at which your adult life progresses, rather than letting nature do this for you, is something to be hailed rather than condemned.

Choosing and planning > “hoping”.

That’s when my uncle, who also very recently became a grandfather, simply said “but what about the nonni?”.

I paused to reflect.

I’ve always been so self-concerned, that it never once occurred to me that my way of thinking would inevitably leave someone out of the equation.

And in this case, that “someone” – nonno and nonna – are figures who also make up the bedrock of the classical Italian family structure. Gatekeepers of family secrets, traditions, and sayings, nonni often function as the bridge between where we come from and where we are going.
Think about it: your nonni are the only ones able to remember and relay details no one else knows - like how nervous your mother was before her first day of school or what a pest your uncle was throughout his childhood.

So that night I reflected on the fact that growing up, I was never really able to enjoy or share in the famous nonni culture. My mother’s parents both died when she was young, and my dad’s dad lost his life after an open heart surgery operation at the age of 50 (years before the thought of having me even crossed my parents’ mind).

The only nonna I have ever known was my dad’s mum, and even then, by the time I was born, one could argue that she was already “too old” to properly occupy the role us Italians associate with being a grandmother.

In 1997 she was 74, which means she would have been at least 80 before I was old enough to start forming any real memories with her.

Of course, as I got older, I still caught glimpses of it. She would occasionally shove five euros into my pocket so I could go and buy sweets. Other times, she would entertain my brother and I over lunch with a good old ramble about “how things used to be”. There was unquestionably a lot of love, but there just wasn’t enough time.

By the time I was 10, she was 84. By the time I was 20, she was 94.

Only recently, have I started wondering how much richer those years might have been if she had been younger when I was growing up, or if my parents had simply decided to have me earlier. Age inevitably limits what you can do together – with any sort of experience or conversation simply becoming “harder” when one person is quite old and the other very young. With this sort of gap, bonds are often not able to form in quite the same way.

And maybe, it is precisely because I didn’t have that experience that I never gave nonni a second thought when planning the timeline of the family I one day hope to have.

But I know from my friends, who grew up in very different houses, just how central nonni can be. A lot of them had standing appointments with their grandparents: Sunday lunch, Wednesday afternoon, “pop in after school. Even now, at age 30, most of them will still carve out a couple of hours on the weekend just to go and “say hi”.

One friend I have told me she basically lived at her maternal grandparents’ place when she was little. They were the ones who dropped her off at school and picked her up again; she’d do her homework at their kitchen table while her nonna stirred something on the stove. And just in the way she spoke about them, I identified a whole extra layer of her childhood that just belongs to them.

All those funny little rituals we often associate with [Italian] grandparenting, such as cooking together or singing along to the same old songs, actually add up to be far more than just that. Together, they form a kind of love that doesn’t look like any other and that cannot translate into anything else.

Maybe that’s why there are so many meme pages dedicated to nonni in the Italian community.

Take “Growing Up Italian”, for instance. An Instagram page with 2.6 million followers, almost entirely Italians or Italian appreciators, constantly posting about nonnas.

The smart thing about the memes they post is that they will only really land with people who understand the cultural reference behind them.

Only an Italian will be able to truly laugh at a meme about a nonna telling you to “eat more” after she has served you 3920 servings of her home‑cooked pasta.

Only Italians will chuckle when they see the images of the “before” and “after” entering nonna’s house, satirising the immense portions we are fed when we enter their homes.

These jokes are funny, yes, but they also doing something else. They’re a kind of shorthand to remind us who we are. A way of saying: this is what we share. This is what makes us us.

Which is why I think my uncle actually opened up a debate that is far wider than the potential loss of grandparents.

Because without nonni you are also depriving your future child of a pretty core part of the Italian experience.

There is a whole chunk of culture, of shared understanding, of history that risks disappearing with the erosion of this particular family structure. One could argue that having kids later places a big risk on losing a big part of the “Italianness” which otherwise defines us , the very thing for which we are so loved and appreciated around the world.

And the loss would not only belong to the child who will never really know what it means to have nonni in the way so many of us still understand it. You are taking away from yourself as a parent, too. I imagine there must be something incredibly tender about watching your own mother and father become grandparents.

And of course, you take away from the grandparents themselves, robbing them of the possibility to look after someone by simply loving them. Because as grandparents, they get to do the whole parenting gig again, but this time with fewer strings attached. They get to become softer. To spoil grandkids with sweets they once told you not to eat. This time, the experience is more akin to a slow exhale rather than a constant holding of breath.

Even someone with views as staunch as mine on the benefits of delayed parenthood can’t deny that there is something uniquely magical about the prospect of living out old age with a bunch of screaming kids weekly knocking on your door for food, love, and affection. And this magic goes both ways.

There is something undeniably satisfying about coming full circle with the roles you get to play: child, parent, grandparent. To move through life not in a straight line, but in a loop - ending right where we started, and revisiting all those familiar place with fresh eyes and renewed wonder.

Because culture isn’t just food, or language, or the way we gesture when we talk. It’s also the stories we are told and the voices who tell them. It is the way that we as children learn, often without being outrightly told, that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

Through the practice of having kids later, the window in which children, parents and grandparents coexist is narrowing. And with that, the door to a number of life experiences slowly closing. And losing our nonni would, in a way, also mean losing a certain way of being alive together.

To be clear - none of this changes my view on egg freezing. I still very much believe women should have the freedom to decide when (and whether) they want to have children. I still stand by the proposition that there is enormous value in being able to take some control over a biological timeline that has historically controlled us. And the economic and social reasons why Italian women are having children later are real and deserve more attention than what they currently receive.

But perhaps, by making fertility rates the centrepiece of these kinds of conversations, we have ended up in echo chambers that keep repeating the same narrow arguments. We have become very good at counting the births we are losing, but very bad at considering what else we lose with them.

This piece is about reflecting on the side effects we seldom consider when discussing all of this, and about how crucial these pieces of the puzzle are in helping us maintain what quintessentially makes us “us”.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like: don’t let them slip through your fingers: on remembering our parents are borrowed time

Life there was slow and unassuming. The places that welcomed me and the people I met in them did not ask anything of me, except for my presence in that exact moment. And as the days unfolded, I started to feel my nervous system loosening. My wired brain started untangling and the head noise which usually accompanies me temporarily simmered down.

This somewhat numbing experience made me think about how so many of us have, unknowingly perhaps, become accustomed to lives organized around excess. We operate in a constant state of “want” – whether it’s the nicer house, the better job, the cooler experience or the hotter body. We are, for the most part at least, completely unable to sit still with what we have. And actually enjoy it. We become so focused on whatever is missing that we fail to understand the importance of what is already there.

Dissatisfaction becomes a state of mind.

But this concept does not apply in the same way in Indonesia. Actually, the people I met over there made me wonder how much of this is innate and how much of it we simply learn from our surroundings.

The trip

My friend and I visited Bali, Labuan Bajo and Lombok. Indonesia is a country where the local currency is extremely weak and where cheap tourism thrives. This meant that luxury’s usual accessibility barriers hovered far lower than what they normally would. Alice and I consistently stayed in mind-blowing places for a tenth of the price of what we’d spend in Europe. But affordability, obviously, is relative. And I had to first-hand learn that the reason our money there stretched so far, was the same reason that local salaries stretched so little.

One of the perks of this setup was that we had a private guide at each destination. And it is those guides who sit at the centre of this story.

Marga

In Bali there was Marga – a radiant, full cheeked 21-year-old with a mischievious grin. The moment I landed, the local agency sent me a whatsapp of Marga’s contact together with a picture of her holding up a sign bearing my name.
“GINEVRA BIZZARRI” it read in caps.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of this beaming woman attempting to pronounce my name.
Even from the photo, I felt sure I would like Marga. She gave off pure and playful energy.
The moment I exited Denpasar’s arrival terminal, Marga rushed towards me, waving around the sign. Apparently, they had sent a picture of me too.

Mount Batur

On day 2, our schedule included “sunset trek down Mount Batur”. In truth, the original plan had been “sunrise trek to Mount Batur” but the 2am start was too taxing for Alice and I, two people who are in the habit of getting into bed at that time, rather than rising from it. So we spoke to Marga who efficiently agreed to switch around the plan.

On the way up, Alice and I kept a decent pace and reached the 1,170-metre peak together. But the descent was another story for me. I have always hated steep downhill walking, perhaps because my height makes it feel precarious. So as Alice sped ahead toward the car, Marga, whose sweat beads and flushed cheeks betrayed that she was also in need of a break, became my companion on the way down.

As we picked our way down the volcanic rocks, I learnt that Marga was the youngest of four daughters, that her dad also worked in the service industry (he was a driver for another local agency), that she had never left Bali (let alone Indonesia) and that her dream was to put together enough money to apply for a visa and move to Australia.
“Salary” she said when I asked why she wanted to leave.
She told me she had already tried once before to begin the process, but had been scammed.
“Scammed?” I repeated, pulling myself up from a fall and brushing black volcanic dust off my shorts.
“Yes scammed” Marga repeated “its actually quite normal here you know”.

Then, as she graciously held her hand out to help me down another set of steep, jiggly rocks, she explained that many Indonesians use agents to help them navigate the Australian visa process. These people act as middlemen, helping with the forms and, supposedly, improving an applicant’s chances of being approved. Naturally, these agents also charge a fee.

When I asked Marga why said agents had better chances, she didn’t have an exact answer. She mentioned something along the lines of them understanding the system, knowing what to write and perhaps having useful contacts.
It was clear by how she was relaying the information that she didn’t know much herself either. She was just blindly choosing to trust the cogs of a machine she had been told would work.

“My mum put me in contact with a man who was close to a family friend, so we thought we could trust him. I gave him the first payment, which was half the cost of the whole application. Then he disappeared.”

My face must have fallen because Marga suddenly looked alarmed.
Ironically, it seemed the last thing she wanted was for me to feel bad about the fact that she had been robbed.

“Oh but do not worry” she reassured me, enunciating each word with the careful clarity of someone who has learned English from textbooks, “I just went back to work, and now I am saving so I can try again”
Then she smiled and added “Hopefully not with a scammer next time!”
For a while after that, I was mute. All I could do was stare at the back of Marga’s bobbing ponytail as I followed her down the path.

In hindsight, I think what shocked me was the nonchalance with which she retold it all. In Marga’s voice I could detect no bitterness, no sense of betrayal for the trust that had been abused and no anger for the extra distance the scammer had put between her and the life she wanted.

Once in the car on the way back to our hotel, Marga asked me about all the places I had been. As I started listing cities that spanned countries, continents and timezones, I almost felt delayed shame for never fully appreciating what a privilege it had been to travel to them. But Marga didn’t care – she listened intently, enraptured by the variety of the descriptions I was feeding her. Her eyes glinted as they reflected the wonder and abundance of a world she knew existed but had never truly touched. She took it all in, avidly, and I could almost see her brain bookmarking all this information and saving it into a “remember for when folder”.

That night, lying in a freshly made hotel bed, I thought about how much of what we grow around ends up growing inside us. Our surroundings shape what we notice, what we expect, and what we believe is possible. By most material measures, I had been dealt the luckier hand. And yet, Marga seemed to move through the world with a sense of abundance that I often lacked.

Gerry

In Lombok, I met Gerry. He had been tasked with showing me around Sukarara, a traditional weaving village.

As we were about to set off, the mosque’s call to prayer resonated in the distance.
I asked him if he would not prefer to go and prey (Lombok has a Muslim-majority population, and many people pray five times a day). Gerry laughed and shook his head.
“Miss, I would tell lie if I said that I go five times every day. Sometimes I do, but mostly I go two or three. I prefer to be honest than to say something that is not true”.
Already I liked him.

He walked me through the village’s preserved ancestral houses, built from bamboo and wood, and explained the architecture, social structure, and customs with obvious pride. Later, as we sat on the porch of one of his friend’s houses drinking traditional rice coffee, I noticed the T-shirt he was wearing.

Printed across the front was a strange looking man with his arms crossed and a faraway look in his eyes.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Our governor,” Gerry said.

“You like him?”

“No, miss. He lied. I voted for him because he made many good promises, but in the end they were empty. Like many politicians, he speaks big words and then keeps the money for himself.”

There it was again. The same helpless surrender Marga had shown. A blind acceptance to a disappointment that had become almost procedural.

“Why are you wearing his T-shirt, then?”

“I realised this morning that I had run out of clean clothes. Also, it is a nice material. Touch!” He grinned and held out the fabric.

The conversation then somehow moved into the rule of law and what it means to live somewhere that enforces it. I must have mentioned that I was a lawyer, because Gerry stopped and stared at me.

“You are a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Do you make a good salary?”

The directness made me smile. There was no room in Gerry’s life for artificially constructed social niceties. If he wanted to know something, he simply asked. He was either oblivious to how this might be perceived or, more likely, did not think perception was a good enough reason not to ask an honest question.

“Yes,” I replied, half-blushing at something we are generally taught not to admit so plainly.

“That is very good,” he said solemnly. “I want that for my son too. That is why I need to keep him studying. He must finish secondary school and then go to university so he can have a good job like you. Maybe move out of Indonesia. I do not want him to end up like me.”

I wanted to ask what he meant, but I did not need to. Almost reading my mind, Gerry continued: “When I was fourteen, my parents did not have enough money to continue sending me to school. I had to stop studying and start working to support my family. I like what I do, but I want better for my son.”

I asked how much primary and secondary school cost, and then how much university would be. By Western standards, the figures were incredibly small. Yet, for Gerry, those same numbers represented a serious threat to the successful progression of his son’s future.
Realizing that something merely incidental to you has the power to redirect someone else’s life is deeply humbling.

And yet, Gerry smiled as he spoke. Because he was grateful for all that he did have and because, despite all the evidence life had given him to temper his expectations, he could still imagine a bright future. This man literally carried the face of someone who had disappointed him across his chest. A lightness of being I don’t think I have ever witnessed.

What we grow around

I could go on for pages about the people I met in Indonesia, but the point is this: perspective is shaped by what we are immersed in.

We are used to being fed, in the most obnoxious and unhealthy ways, reminders of what we don’t have. Our attention being grabbed by all that sparkles. Our conversations and ways of thinking constantly gravitating around what we could have. And when that happens, we become victims of that same optionality we so covet. The privilege of choice, if not handled with care, very quickly becomes a curse.

But when the layers of possibility are stripped away, we are forced back toward what matters most: the people who love us, and the people we love.
Affetti, my mum always says, is the highest form of abundance a person can have. The word is Italian for a concept which represents the bonds of love and tenderness that tether us to other people. All the things that, if everything else suddenly disappeared, would still make our lives feel “full”.

To clarify, I am by no means romanticizing hardship. There is nothing spiritually superior about being to be able to afford an education. Marga and Gerry deserve more than admiration for the grace with which they endure circumstances that fate dealt them.

Nor am I saying that being grateful means we have to stop wanting better lives. Wanting more for yourself is not a moral failure and is, after all, also the gravitational centre of both Marga and Gerry’s stories.

But meeting them opened my eyes to how easily wanting can consume seeing.
How often have we stared directly past a full life and perceived it as empty because one particular (and probably insignificant) thing was missing?

Abundance is not having everything you want. It is the ability to recognise what you already have while still reaching for what you do not. Gratitude is not the denial of difficulty, but the refusal to let difficulty become the only thing we see.

That, I think, is the importance of perspective.

The show in question was “Rivals” and the character Maud O’Hara – Declan O’Hara’s mesmerizingly complex wife.

Maud, a beautiful actress who is clearly past her prime, is shown throughout season 1 as being permanently, almost constitutionally, unhappy. It quickly becomes apparent that this is because she, who was once the most coveted woman in any room, is now middle-aged and forced to confront the possibility of her own (aesthetic) irrelevance. Or more precisely, the fear of it.

There is a scene in which, in an attempt to recover even a glimpse of the ease with which she once magnetised attention, she throws a huge New Year’s Eve party.
We watch her get ready for it: the dress, the mirror, the small compulsive adjustments which we probably also indulge in from time to time.

Later that night, after a rejection that lands deeper than it probably should (no spoilers), she ends up in a fight with her husband and, in a fit of desperation, suddenly spits out:

“I used to be fucking beautiful.”

What stopped me wasn’t just the line itself, but the way she said it - with this mix of rage, humiliation and genuine grief. It felt like watching someone realise that the thing they have relied on most is no longer holding them up. Like something fundamental has shifted, and she knows it, even if she cannot fully articulate how.
The truth is, that she is no longer the kind of woman for whom beauty alone can guarantee the same response it once commanded.

To her tantrum, her husband dutifully replies “you still are”.

But of course that is not the point.

The point is not whether Maud is still beautiful. She obviously is.

The point is that she no longer feels as powerful in her beauty as she once did. And because so much of her self-worth has been scaffolded around that power, its decline feels existential. And what becomes increasingly clear as the series unfolds is that this loss, or even just the anticipation of it, is completely destabilising to her.

Because beyond her beauty, it becomes difficult to tell what exactly she has built, or rather what she has allowed herself to believe was worth building. Despite clearly being an intelligent woman, Maud has never cultivated any other aspect of her persona. She has spent such a long time being rewarded for beauty that she has never truly learnt to root herself in anything else. And now, as her grip on youth loosens, we watch her begin to lose herself with it.

What makes Maud tragic is not simply that she is vain, but that she seems unequipped to locate her worth anywhere other than in the very thing that is now beginning to betray her.

What I actually want to discuss

So what this gets at is something bigger - which is the endless pursuit of aesthetic perfection. And how Maud encapsulates this big ugly problem which sits beneath so much of modern womanhood: the need of holding onto beauty at all costs.
The fear of time moving in one direction only. The knowledge that beauty, however much we may enjoy it or benefit from it, is not something we can freeze in place.

Women are told in a thousand subtle and not-so-subtle ways that beauty is social currency and youth, of course, its most valuable denomination. But because that currency is built on something so vulnerable to erosion it produces women like Maud: moving through life with the sound of an invisible stopwatch ticking above their heads. Always trying to “stay” ahead in a game they cannot actually (ever) win.

I say all of this as someone who is absolutely not above any of it. I am the first aesthete. I care a lot about how I look. I always have, and despite my best efforts to become more evolved, I probably always will.

And wanting to be attractive or well put together is not, in itself, the problem. Beauty
alone is not the problem – rather it is the role we have allowed it to occupy.
It is normal to want to feel attractive, to feel healthy, to feel good in your body. What is, however, absurd is the level at which we operate. The microscopic scrutiny. The endless fixation on things so minor they barely register outside of our own heads and yet manage to occupy a huge amount of our mental space. It is the daily, low-grade self-surveillance which enables the most meaningless details to run the show - our show.

For so many of us beauty has stopped being just a “pleasure” or a valued aspect of the self and has become the main project. The gravitational centre of our confidence.

Like miniature Mauds, so many of us care so deeply, so disproportionately, about the way we look that aesthetics ends up consuming most of our mental bandwidth. We fret so frequently about that extra kilo, that white hair, that extra line on our forehead, the stretch mark running down the side of our boob, that we end up living most of our life in damage-control mode, at the expense of forgetting who we are and what we can actually bring to the table - which is, usually, plenty.

I often find myself choosing to do something that cultivates my beauty rather than my brain, even though I know full well that investing in the latter leaves me feeling happier and more fulfilled every single time.

Let me give you an example of how this plays out

Although there are many different iterations of beauty, my preferred aesthetic currency has always been thinness. I’m not even entirely sure why anymore, beyond the fact that I grew up in exactly the sort of echo chamber where tall and slim were treated as the feminine “ideal”.

Since the age of 12, I have been acutely conscious of my body. Almost every day, in some form, there is a negotiation between what I want and what I allow myself to have. My stomach says it wants “x” and my brain gets called in to assess whether that is in fact wise. Together they perform a lovely little audit – calories, macros, whether the mini-Magnum is actually worth it when I could have double the portion in a bowl of protein-filled cottage cheese. I think about how long it will take me to burn a specific type of food off, and what part of my body said food might otherwise choose to “fill out” if I allow myself to have it.

This exercise is now so second nature that I don’t even notice it anymore – I stopped registering just how much of my energy it takes out of me, how competitive it makes me with everything and everyone around me, and most importantly how effectively it continues to build my self-worth on something so flimsy.

Maddeningly enough, even at my “best” (by the warped standards we are fed), I was never “truly” happy. And by “true” happiness, I mean happiness which has a bit of weight to it (lol) and which is built on a solid foundation. Happiness that “fills you” because it brings you joy and peace and allows you to relax, rather than happiness which begs to be upkept. Happiness which is not contingent on you never stepping out of line because doing so will cause the loss of all your hard work (together with the social acclaim and validation that come with it).

A losing game

And the reality is, it’s a forever losing game.

You never actually win. You might feel like you’re getting there, but it is never enough. Or worse - it might briefly be enough, and you won’t realise it at the time. You only realise months, maybe even years later, when your camera roll throws up some memory from x summers ago and you find yourself staring at the photo thinking, wow, I used to be so pretty.

Because, in this kind of game, the ideal is always receding, and satisfaction always retrospective. No matter the metric - weight, skin, features, age - there will always be a past version of you onto whom you project ease and worth more generously than your current self.

It’s worth mentioning that I think for a lot of women the pursuit of beauty is not actually about health and only partly about aesthetics. It is about trying to move through the world with less risk of judgement attached to you.
Personally, I have received comments over the years on both ends of the spectrum: that I should lose, that I should gain - and all of them, regardless of direction, had the same effect. They reinforced the notion that I am what I look like. That what I project externally somehow matters more, or at the very least gets registered faster, than anything I might be nourishing internally.

And women enforce this on one another too, often without meaning to.
I was at a bachelorette party recently where, within the first couple of hours of everyone reuniting - some girls seeing each other for the first time in months, some for the first time ever - I counted at least five or six comments directed at different women about how fit, hot, or “tiny” they looked. None of it was malicious, no. But the preoccupying thing was how “automatic” it was. The first thing being noticed, and the first thing being rewarded, was how everyone had aesthetically shown up.

There is some fascinating scholarship on this too that talks about the idea of thinness, or beauty in general, as almost quasi-religious: a set of beliefs, rituals, rewards and moral codes through which women try to negotiate worth, belonging and control. And that language of religion feels apt to me. The body checking, the self-denial, the promise of salvation in a smaller or more “beautiful”, body. It makes perfect sense that, for women who feel they lack other stable avenues through which to create meaning or exercise agency, the body becomes the most immediate available site upon which to perform discipline, ambition and hope.

I also want to spare a few words on the male aspect of it all. Why do we care so much about receiving approval from men when, at least in this form, it is often the most unstable approval there is? The same gaze that makes a woman feel chosen can be redirected at frightening speed towards someone younger, smaller, or more novel. The whole thing is so visibly conditional, and therefore so obviously losable. And yet many of us still organise ourselves around it. But if a man’s admiration can be so easily transferred from one body to a slightly “better” body, then that admiration was never really saying much of value in the first place, was it?

What if

So what would happen if, instead of craving self-definition through aesthetics, we started investing more seriously in the qualities we possess that are actually durable? The ones that do not expire or punish us for taking a day off. The ones that do not require eternal vigilance to remain socially acceptable.

What would happen if we stopped wanting to be remembered for the size of our boobs, the flatness of our stomach, the sharpness of our jawline, and started wanting to be remembered as the girl who writes beautifully, the incredibly talented journalist, the one who is devastatingly funny at dinner, the visionary founder, the person who makes everyone around her feel more themselves?
I can give you a preview of the few times its happened to me - what would happen is that you go to sleep with a real feeling of accomplishment, a fuzzy warmth inside you that settles deep, instead of slipping through your fingers by morning.

And maybe the irony is that once we actually start living like that, the fulfilment becomes self-generated. It is no longer dependent on people feeding you compliments to keep you afloat. It no longer demands that you monitor yourself so relentlessly.

Honestly, I am so tired of exhausting myself in pursuit of a kind of validation that is fickle, temporary and ultimately hollowing.

I don’t want to be a Maud. I don’t want to incarnate a version of womanhood that we are increasingly being coaxed to subscribe to - the one in which beauty becomes both a religion and a prison.

Because surely, SURELY, there is a version of life that is more appealing than that.

All at once, getting married is no longer scary, its ‘normal’.
Out of nowhere, pregnancies become something to be ‘wanted’ rather than feared.
Overnight, the couple-speak language of ‘we’ starts pervading most conversations, leaving you to wonder at what point exactly addressing all queries in first person plural (regardless of the other’s presence) stopped sounding cringe.
Without warning, the world as you knew it shifts.

And the funny thing is, once the first domino tumbles, the others follow suit with a force that feels almost unstoppable.

But that’s not even the point of what I want to write about.

I mean, I won’t sit here and pretend I wasn’t somewhat mentally rattled by this transition, because I was. But at the same time, like any ageing human, I understand people evolve. They grow into fuller versions of themselves; into versions that can take on the shared responsibility that comes with marriage, parenthood, and the like.

And although I’m nowhere near any of these ‘milestones’ (if that’s what we want to call them), I’m not here to shit on people who are.

What bothers me though is how easily these deeply personal occasions have become commoditised for content.

After the first engagement post, it’s almost as though the floodgates open, and there is no looking back. You start waking up to diamond rings and beaming couples plastered all over your feed- upcoming marriages being announced with the same energy as those dire LinkedIn self-promo posts.

I guess that in a world where what you “show” online is increasingly more important than what you are, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
But there’s something uniquely irritating about seeing engagements, pregnancies, and other life-altering moments handled with the same casualness as everyday carousels.

Because these aren’t just “updates”. They are big, heavy, important things. They’re the kind of events that, despite not being religious, I still feel are somewhat sacred.

And I can’t shake the feeling that letting hundreds, thousands (maybe even millions, depending on how platform-popular you are) of people “in” on these moments chips away at their core significance. Not because sharing is inherently bad but because it turns something private and weighty into something consumable, scrollable and commentable.

The validation trap

And I want to clarify: I’m not irritated because I’m jealous (I know that’s the easy conclusion).

I’m irritated because I can’t help but feel that informing people you’re taking that next step has, in some cases, started to matter more than the underlying reasons driving the choice itself.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I still think there are some events that deserve to exist without an audience. A marriage proposal. A pregnancy. Death, even. Moments that carry weight. Moments that should be allowed to just sit with you.

The second we broadcast them we are creating a space for people to enter and inevitably disrupt it.

Strangers and loose acquaintances we haven’t spoken to since Year 10 suddenly get to observe, evaluate, and comment on parts of our lives that were never meant to be up for discussion. They get to bestow approval, or withhold it.

And of course, the judgement always happens.

“Did you see the ring? I was expecting better”
“Wow- the caption is so cringe”
“Doesn’t that baby shower look a bit trashy?”
“That newborn is lowkey ugly- aren’t babies meant to be cute?”

The above is just standard, background commentary that I know for a fact goes on. (and FAOD, I am no saint and have at times also partaken in similar discussions).

Of course, not everyone thinks like this and even when they do, they won’t spell it out publicly. Outwardly, it’s all “omg congrats!!! so happy for you both!”, a like, and a scroll onwards. And they may even mean it for the half-second your post manages to hold their attention.

But the question I keep coming back to is: why? Why do we crave that specific sort of validation? What are we trying to prove?

Do we think that showing that we’re on what society has taught us is the “right path” will somehow make our lives look more worthwhile? Do we hope it will make us look more serious and adult-ready in the eyes of those who watch? Will externalising these events help us feel more ‘complete’?

I’m not trying to moralise. I’m genuinely curious about the mechanics of it. About how this need to be seen and affirmed has made its way into even the most personal corners of our lives.

We already criticise ourselves for not being able to live in the moment. Going on holiday only to geotag, curate, and capture instead of actually being present. So it does make me wonder whether that mindset is quietly seeping into bigger decisions too.

What’s perhaps even sadder (from my perspective) is how desensitised this makes us to events that would otherwise feel once-in-a-lifetime.

Admittedly, the first few engagement or pregnancy posts you see do hit. But then one morning, as you sip your coffee, double-tap, and scroll past, you realise how immune you’ve become.

And it’s that shift - the way once-in-a-lifetime moments start registering like any other piece of content - that I find deeply sad. Because even if they remain meaningful in real life, the way we collectively consume them somewhat ‘flattens’ them.

The show-off race

There’s another layer to this that’s hard to ignore: how easily these moments get sacrificed in the name of display.

Lavish parties, flashy rings, more elaborate proposals. The wedding-industrial-complex going absolutely feral -all of it becoming another warped metric through which you (and your relationship) are judged.

Decorative, superficial details suddenly become the only things worth focusing on because they’re what photographs well. They’re what your wedding guests will record and what their followers will second-hand consume and judge.

And this creates a race you didn’t even sign up for.

We’re so conditioned to make events like weddings look ‘perfect’ that, in planning them, we risk losing what actually matters. We prioritise how things appear over how they feel.

And because of this, we run the real risk of self-sabotaging. Of inviting people because of optics, rather than because we actually value their presence. Of arranging the seating plan in a way that doesn’t necessarily sit right with us but which we know is “socially safe”. Of spending money on things we don’t care about because we hope they will relay something “positive” to the wider, intangible population watching from behind the scenes.

And the most depressing part is that we can literally see the trade-off happening: moments losing their depth in favour of how they’ll look from the outside.

Think about modern weddings you’ve attended. Isn’t it so fucking sad to watch a bride walking down the aisle through someone else’s phone camera? Everyone stretched out in their seats, arms extended to the max, trying to get the best angle.

Yes, people want memories. Fine. But something about it still feels ‘off’- almost like the moment is being diluted, turned into something replicable when it’s meant to be unrepeatable.

Personally, if I’m walking down the aisle, I want to meet the eyes of the people I love, not of their camera lens.

Do it for you

I want to finish by making one thing clear: I’m not finger-pointing. I’m not saying people who post these moments are disingenuous, or that their relationships are less meaningful.

People can share and still feel deeply. They can post and still mean every second of it.

I just think there’s something worth paying attention to there.

If you choose to share these moments, just be careful that the online world , and everything that comes with it, isn’t playing any part in shaping the decisions themselves. That you’re not choosing things because they’ll translate well. That you’re not, without realising it, building a life around what looks good to people who won’t actually be there when things get hard.

Because the real world isn’t your comments section!

At the end of the day, the people double-tapping your posts are not the ones who will, day in and day out, sit with you through the mundane, the hard and the boring.

In my last piece I wrote about how fundamental it is to always remember that, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is who you share your life with once you close the doors to your home. Everything else is fleeting.

Let’s not allow the need to be seen ruin the parts of life that are meant to be lived.

But what got me thinking was the often unspoken, yet obvious, assumption behind the phrase. By encouraging us to spread ourselves more thinly across all our romantic prospects, doesn’t the rule also assume that we have to do so because we will pick badly? Doesn’t it imply that we should not commit because we will probably misjudge, at least the first time round?

That line of thinking pushed me into a long, and fairly humbling, self‑assessment. It brought me face to face with the reality that over the past decade I’ve repeatedly put my eggs in the wrong baskets, so to speak. Baskets that, for whatever reason, looked appealing on the outside but which were never meant to truly hold me.

So what I have tried to unpack here is why this happened in the first place and what sort of baskets lured me in under false pretences, inevitably disappointing once I tried to fill them with anything “real”.

The “easy solution” basket: appeal through convenience

A few times, I found myself drawn to what I can only describe as the easy basket. The kind that looked alluring because it was assembled and presented to me by men who offered the appeal of something seamless. They were part of my world -overlapping social circles, similar weekends, the same places to be and the same people to see.

Back then, I very often mistook overlap for substance.

Put simply, I thought: if our lives fit so neatly alongside one another, and if we do like each other (because of course there has to be a baseline of that for anything to work) what could possibly go wrong?

Even at the time, without the benefit of hindsight, I knew the whole thing sounded superficial. But the prospect of being handed an easy solution to part of my adult life was compelling enough for me to try anyway.

And, for a while, it seemed to work. The overlap created momentum. There was comfort in familiarity: in shared routines, shared spaces and shared expectations. It felt easy to settle into, easy to maintain, and therefore easy to mistake for something more meaningful than it was.

But these baskets worked the same way distractions do: by postponing the inevitable - which, by nature, only grows more insistent the longer it’s ignored. And every time the glitter settled and the distractions fell quiet, these men and I would find ourselves sitting across from each other in what I can only describe as a loud, deafening silence. A silence that screamed: you are not being seen.

Because beyond what we had already experienced, there lay no curiosity. No emotional stretch. No willingness to undergo any real discovery. It turned out that I had fallen for the image of connection, not the reality of it.

And once that distinction made itself known, everything else unravelled on its own.

The credibility basket: mistaking competence for connection

Then came the men with immaculate résumés and clear, linear [career] paths. Men who spoke the language of ambition fluently and confidently. I admired their drive, their discipline and their certainty. There is, after all, something undeniably seductive about a man who seems to know exactly where he is going and how he intends to get there.

What drew me in was not ease this time, but assurance. I trusted the confidence of their forward motion. I believed that someone so focused, so exacting with their time and ambition, would naturally carry that same intentionality into intimacy.

But far from it, I very quickly came to realise how one dimensional their emotional boundaries actually were.

Although these men were fierce and disciplined at work, they seemed imperceptibly absent when it came to us, or to me. They showed up beautifully in all the decorative ways: lovely dinners, thoughtful gifts, punctual pick‑ups. Everything polished, everything reassuring. Everything carrying that particular smoothness competence gives off.

And again, for a while, that was enough to make me believe I was being “met”.

But roadblocks were hit once the novelty wore off and it became impossible to not acknowledge that (emotionally) something was amiss. The only way I can describe it is this: I felt like these men were willing to accommodate me, but not to truly absorb me. They thought about me, yes but they didn’t really feel me. More often than not, I felt as though what they wanted was for me to exist there as a reflection of their brilliance, not as something that might interrupt it.

And I don’t mean this in some annoying feminist sense. I’m not trying to argue that ambitious or successful men treat women like trophies, or that success and emotional shallowness go hand in hand. That would be convenient and also blatantly untrue.

What I am saying, however, is that my experience of these dynamics was enough to make me clock a pattern which mattered and which I no longer wanted to repeat – a.k.a. that of mistaking credibility for connection, of thinking that intimacy can be outsourced to someone’s achievements.

I now know that no amount of polish will ever stand in for (real) presence and that an impressive life architecture is not indicative of whether someone is actually capable of loving you well.

The comfort of no sharp edges: mistaking safety for intimacy

Then came the men with no [obvious] red flags (emphasis on the square brackets). Which, at the time, felt like growth. Real progress even.

These men were appealing because they felt safe and steady.
They were thoughtful, emotionally literate and used to always saying the right things in the right tone. They listened and asked questions. They knew how to act around my parents and they tried to involve me with their friends. Interestingly, and maybe also unsurprisingly, I almost never had full blown arguments with these men, and when I did, these felt calm and composed.

On the surface, everything about the relationship looked right You could even say it felt right - if you didn’t prod too deeply, that is.

But the truth was that the temperature between us was somewhat tepid. The calm felt “muted”. I couldn’t help but feel that we were both doing an impression of love. A dance of polite, well-rehearsed interactions. The kind of relationship where nothing really stung but nothing really sparked either.

I told myself that maybe this was what maturity looked like, that maybe I was finally choosing peace over the emotional turmoil I had become so familiar with. That perhaps, just perhaps, I simply needed to grow into this calm.

What I eventually realised though, was that the calm wasn’t the product of emotional depth, but the result of emotional caution. And the distance between those two, in practice, is abysmal.

Because what this meant was that these men were always careful, always guarded. That although they were skilled at avoiding rupture (very few fights, very little friction), they were also equally skilled at avoiding exposure. Vulnerability and everything that came with it, was something they were at best willing to discuss but never to practice. And that created a misleading sense of safety. A closeness without depth. A softer form of loneliness, if you will.

And what I learned, slowly, was that a life lived that carefully left very little room for the kind of closeness I craved.

The pattern

Looking back, the theme is painfully clear: I didn’t truly like any of these men - not for who they were, anyway. I liked what they represented.

For a long time, I idolised and looked up to men for their potential, their symbolism, their promise to make my life look coherent from the outside. They were, for a reason or another, the story that I wanted to tell about myself. What I wanted other people to see, admire, envy or think about me.
I projected so much onto them that I never asked whether they actually let me in, or whether, quite frankly, I even wanted be let in.

Around the time I started thinking about this piece, I came across an essay by called Are You Dating a Stranger? In it, she writes about the experience of dating people who feel familiar and whose stories overlap neatly with ours. People who seem to speak our language but who, crucially, never quite let us in. You can share everything from dinners to dreams with them and still realise, one random Wednesday night, that you barely know who they really are.

That’s what Timerman calls “the stranger dynamic”; the one where you’re together, but not known.

And, with a sort of sinking recognition, I had to admit how often I had lived inside that dynamic myself .

The shift

Everything shifted when I stopped performing. When I stopped choosing men based on the optics of the story we would tell together.

I fell for someone I had known for a long time. Someone I had lived with, actually. A full year, under the same roof. Someone I never once, in all that time, considered as a romantic possibility.

This was a man who blew his nose like a foghorn every morning (at least ten times, without fail) with little regard for who else might still be asleep. A man who drove me mad by brushing his teeth in the guest bathroom instead of his own because it was “closer to the front door” and saved him the effort of going back upstairs before work. A man with the uncanny ability to undo, within minutes, whatever order or cleanliness had just been carefully restored. A man who, perhaps because we were close friends and together constantly, made no effort to bring a “curated” version of himself to the table, at least not with me.

And yet.

He was also the man who sat with me at 2am while I cried into cold Chinese takeaway after a particularly miserable night at work, consoling me while simultaneously filming me for posterity.
The man who knew the strict order in which my stuffed animals lined the left-hand side of my bed, and deliberately messed them up “to combat my OCD.”
The man who knows I have one lone hair that has, since the dawn of my teens, stubbornly grown back in the exact same spot under my chin and teases me for it affectionately.
The man who knows the routes through the crevices of all my different personalities and, more importantly, how to navigate them. Who can recognise my mood by the pitch of my voice the moment I walk through the door.

A man who saw me long before romance ever entered the picture.

He speaks to me with an honesty and frankness I wasn’t used to, but have come to value deeply. Never afraid of hurting my feelings if the alternative is pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. He values truth and substance over appearances. He shows up in the name of partnership rather than performance. Nothing about him feels peripheral or surface-level.

He is the first person with whom I have ever felt fully inside a relationship, rather than orbiting it. Which feels almost absurd to write, as one assumes this would be the baseline. But it’s the first time I’ve experienced a real sense of we. A willingness, on both sides, to stay, to work through things, to grow rather than retreat.

And the irony is that he also possesses many of the qualities I once prized so highly in others: ambition, presence, kindness, charisma. The difference is that this time, I didn’t choose him for those things. I chose him for him.

For how I laugh louder around him. For how I’m allowed to be goofy, nerdy, dramatic, slightly obsessive, soft, and messy. For how I am seen, not as a projection or an idea, but as I am. For how the real me, the whole me, is welcome.

A friend once said something that has since proved itself true:

When you close your front door at the end of the day, all that matters is the reality you share with the person standing behind it with you.

And this is the first time that reality feels like home.

Buy me a coffee!

If you enjoyed this, you might also like…

when we break up, where does the Love go?

don’t let them slip through your fingers: on remembering our parents are borrowed time

love in the time of algorithms

A lot of people ask me what makes her music so genius - how it’s possible that the words she writes have built a following so loyal it borders on mythic devotion. Others roll their eyes, calling me hysterical and basic.

But here’s the truth: you either get it, or you don’t. And I understand the resistance, because unless you give yourself fully to her music, it doesn’t click. She’s polarising that way.

So I guess this mini series is my personal crusade against the non believers. My attempt to explain why some of her best songs are that good. And sure, I know plenty of readers will turn away the moment they see her name, but they’re not who I’m writing for. I’m writing for the genuinely curious-for the ones who have asked me over and over, “Can you explain it so I can understand?”

Episode 1: Peter - Album: The Tortured Poets Department

“Peter” is, in my opinion, one of Taylor Swift’s most lyrically potent and piercing works- a gentle dagger of a song.

In the beautiful words of @blabbertok (a very happy discovery on TikTok), “Peter” is about waiting so long that you forget what you are waiting for. It’s about “almost,” about promises made at a time when belief felt infinite and consequences imaginary.

In “Peter,” Taylor isn’t angry, and that’s the wound at the heart of it. Anger is easier; it has heat, direction, something to burn. What lives in this song instead is reflection: the sweetness of memory mixed with the slow sting of understanding.
Taylor is calm, composed - standing in the wreckage of a future that was never officially cancelled, only endlessly postponed.

The brilliance of Peter is that it understands something brutal: not everyone who leaves means to abandon you. Some people just never mature enough to come back. Peter isn’t a villain, he is just frozen in potential. Still choosing adventure, still choosing later over now.

Peter is about waiting longer than you should have -long enough for hope to turn into history. It is about the ache of realising you outgrew the dream while the dream stayed the same.

Setting the Scene

I picture “Peter” like that scene in Peter Pan where Wendy waits by the window, silver moonlight washing across her face, eyes searching the sky for the shadow that once knew the way home. It’s that particular kind of longing that lives somewhere between nostalgia and truth -the gut-punch when you understand that what once was magic now only exists in recollection.

And the melody matches that feeling: a distant piano, tender and tentative, carrying the sound of something disintegrating beautifully.

[Verse 1]
Forgive me, Peter
My lost fearless leader
In closets like cedar
Preserved from when we were just kids
Is it something I did?
The goddess of timing
Once found us beguiling
She said she was trying
Peter, was she lying?
My ribs get the feeling she did

Forgive me Peter - This first line sets the emotional tone for the whole song. Taylor is addressing her long-lost love, asking for forgiveness not because she did something wrong, but because she’s finally done waiting. Yet the apology makes it even more powerful because it shows compassion where bitterness could have lived.

My lost fearless leader–A phrase that holds reverence and ruin in the same breath. Despite everything, Taylor still worships the boy she knows she must leave behind. A boy who once led her through the wildness of youth.

In closets like cedar, preserved from when we were just kids- A line that smells like memory. You can almost catch the faint sweetness of cedar-the universal scent of preservation. I imagine her in a room she knows intimately - walls that have watched her evolve across every version of herself. This timeless imagery evokes nostalgia laced with magic, like the Narnia wardrobe which allows you to slip into another world. An attempt to hold on to what time wants to fade.

Is it something I did? -. The timeless question of love’s fallout. The oldest insecurity in the book.

The goddess of timing, once found us beguiling, she said she was trying, peter was she lying? My ribs get the feeling she did – Here, Time becomes a trickster deity who once delighted in them; but now mocks them. They believed, recklessly, that they could defy inevitability, that fate could be persuaded to wait. But now the goddess has withdrawn her favour. And Taylor feels it deep in her ribs.
Yet in this verse, she never blames Peter. She writes in “we”: found us beguiling, she was trying. The language keeps them tethered; the loyalty is still there, even as the ground gives way.

[Chorus]
You said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me
Said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me
Said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me
Words from the mouths of babes, promises oceans deep
But never to keep
Oh, never to keep

You said you were gonna grow up, then you were gonna come find me – is where the responsibility finally tilts towards Peter. This chorus -repeated, relentless -embodies the rhythm of empty promise. The line comes in like waves, each one a reminder of something said too easily and honoured too little.

Words from the mouths of babes, promises oceans deep -The contrast is stark: language so pure and vast in intention, yet so naive. They were wielding words far bigger than their emotional reach.

But never to keep, Oh never to keep - brings us back to inevitability. You can almost feel that same goddess of time shaking her head as Peter and (Taylor) swear vows mortal hearts can’t sustain.

[Verse 2]
Are you still a mind-reader, a natural scene-stealer?
I've heard great things, Peter, but life was always easier on you
Than it was on me
And sometimes it gets me, when crossing your jet stream
We both did the best we could do underneath the same moon
In different galaxies

Are you still a mind reader? A natural scene-stealer? - continues the thread of reluctant admiration. Like “my lost fearless leader,” there’s no venom here, just melancholy fascination. Taylor wonders if Peter still moves through the world with the same unguarded charm that first dazzled her. This is the particular sorrow of remembering someone exactly as they were, even when everything else has moved on.

I’ve heard great things, Peter - low-key kills me. She no longer knows him directly. She only hears about him through distant channels, through people who know someone who knows someone. Their connection has thinned into rumour. She’s trying to feed a once-great love with scraps, throwing whatever she can onto a dying fire in the hope that it might flare for a moment -even if the embers are reflected through someone else’s eyes.

And sometimes it gets me, when crossing your jet stream – a gorgeous metaphor. It assumes they once flew together, side by side. Once, she lived inside his gravity; now she merely crosses his jet stream -a flicker of old turbulence before calm resumes.

We both did the best we could do – Once again, no real blame for Peter. Just tenderness for what could have been in a parallel universe .

Underneath the same moon, in different galaxies– completes that thought. There’s something powerful in sharing the same moon , the same sky, the same love, the same history, while knowing you now belong to separate worlds.

Now for the masterpiece part of the song

[Bridge]
And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn
As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you'd come and get me, but you were 25
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life

And I won’t confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn - takes us straight back to the window. The lamp that once glowed with endless hope is almost out. The flame, and with it, her patience and devotion, has reached its final, fragile flicker.

As the men masqueraded I hoped you’d return –You can see the scene: people -suitors, faces, possibilities -passing by her like masked dancers, all a blur. None of them recognisable. None of them real. None of them him.

With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you’d learned – A plea for evolution. She wants, needs, him to be the man he promised, not the boy he was.

Cause loves never lost when perspective is earned -almost sums up the song in one line. Love isn’t wasted if it teaches you how to see more clearly: yourself, the other person, the story you were telling.

And you said you’d come and get me but you were 25 - is where all illusion shatters. We finally learn his age and the heartbreak deepens. Twenty-five isn’t innocence -it’s arrested growth. Promises made at that age carry weight -and suddenly her long waiting feel less like youthful fantasy and more like misplaced faith.

And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired – How much time has to pass before promises dissolve into fantasy?

Lost to the “Lost Boys” chapter of your life– A masterful line. He’s not just lost -he’s lost within a chapter that was never meant to be the whole book. Undone by his own refusal to grow, forever circling Neverland.

Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried – brings the song full circle. We return to the plea, now heavy with context. You can imagine her holding onto this phantom relationship for years; this is the moment her hands finally release.

To hold on, to the days ,when you were mine -What is she actually holding onto? If he had ever truly been hers in any grounded, adult way, would the story have ended here? The grief is for the version of him that only ever fully lived in memory.

But the woman who sits by the window- has turned out the light -Curtain down. Taylor is done waiting. She’s spent too much of her youth holding a vigil for someone who never intended to give up his own. This line embodies the recognition that you can’t

@filmsculptWhen Peter and Wendy met again after many years 😍 #disney #peterpan #wendy #disneyedit #peterpanedit #disneypeterpan

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

And this is why “Peter” is a masterpiece.

You may dislike Taylor, you may find her cringe -but you can’t deny the lyrical precision of this song. Even the most sceptical listener has, at some point, known the feeling of loving someone who will not grow with you.

“Peter” isn’t just about heartbreak. It’s about the slow, painful emancipation from arrested devotion: that moment when you finally accept the story won’t change, so you will. It’s a song about what happens when you’ve kept the window open for years, and one night, quietly, you close it.

And if you’ve ever waited for someone to become the person they promised they’d be, “Peter” is a song about you too.

buy me a coffee :)

In those early days, love operates most violently through absence - an absence exercised by the muscle memory of what once was. You feel haunted by what your body remembers.
The way your brain still expects the sound of them coming through the door, or the messages lighting up your screen. The way your chest thumps a little louder whenever you turn the street corner which baptised your first kiss, and the millions that followed.

Such absence rearranges your world through small acts of defiance - the toothbrush you toss away, the shared playlists you don’t want to delete. The small recalibrations of a life that no longer includes someone’s name.
For a while, lost love disguises itself as hate or resentment, and all you try to do is avoid. You try to outrun reminders, to scrub them from your days.

I asked my friends the same question: when we break up, where does the love go?
Their answers doorways into the private architecture of their hearts.

“Back to yourself”, most of them said.
That, I found, was the reply of those who had loved asymmetrically. Who had given too much with no reciprocation, whose love had left them hollowed out. For them, the lost love went towards healing the parts of them that the relationship broke. To feed the parts of their soul that went hungry, in order to keep the other person full. A kind of reclamation - the slow rebuilding of a self that had otherwise forgotten its own appetite.

“To someone else”, a few answered.
I struggle with this idea because it assumes an interpretation of love that is commoditised; implying it can just be repackaged and sent off to the next recipient. That love is transferrable rather than transformative.
If you have been lucky enough to love more than once, you will know that each love is bespoke, fitted to the contours of a singular soul. The gestures may recur - the way you brush your hair behind your ear, the nicknames, the familiar ways you reach for someone. But the pulse is different each time. The rhythm of each relationship is its own language, and you never speak it with the same accent twice.

“Into everything it once touched”
This, undoubtedly my favourite answer. Maybe because it reflects what I deep down believe to be true.

Which is that Love is clever. It learns survival.
After all, pain is just Love with nowhere to go - too alive to die, too displaced to belong.
Love knows that something as beautiful as the force it once was - something once so bright, so luminous - cannot just “disappear”. Instead, it adopts new disguises, re-arranging itself into something softer. Something slower. Learning a new way to exist that no longer requires the old flame to keep burning.

Lost Love doesn’t leave - it lingers. It flows back to the places where it first blossomed, seeping into memory and embedding itself into the fabric of daily life. The things you once shared - songs, streets, inside jokes - reclaim Love for themselves, allowing it to disperse through the world like light refracting through water.

I see it every time I pass the Haribo shelves in a supermarket and think of a boy I once loved who swore they tasted better cold.
I hear it in Bob Dylan songs, as they murmur memories of conversations that, a long time ago now, taught me that desire can live in the mind; that the sexiest thing is to be seduced by thought.
I now carry these Loves not in my lungs but in my noticing.

And, if you pay close attention, I’m certain you’ll hear yours too. Past Loves whispering through the way you care for people now, unseen editors of your tenderness.

Maybe that’s also where Love goes after it unmoors: it becomes education.
Even the most painful Loves live on this way, including the ones that broke you so completely you swore no lesson could justify the wreckage. In those cases, I believe Love reshapes itself into protection: you love more carefully next time. You notice sooner when you’re pouring from an empty cup. You become more generous, because you’ve seen what withholding does - how it starves connection and turns tenderness into suspicion. Slowly, you become a mosaic of the Loves that almost broke you, and the ones that quietly saved you.

So perhaps Love doesn’t end at all. It simply shapeshifts, adapting to new vessels when the heart is no longer its home.

Past Loves don’t need to be exiled; they can coexist. The past and the present finding a soft truce , acknowledging that there was happiness because of them, and there can be happiness after them too. To let something end and still be warmed by its echo. That, I think, is the most human kind of survival there is.

support my work :)

If none of the above ring a bell, I guess you are either immune to TikTok and its algorithm or have been living under a rock. Either way, I applaud you.

But just so we’re all on the same page, this is 21 year-old Talia Breyer, TikTok’s latest hate-magnet.
She went viral recently because she uploaded videos where she unapologetically declared herself the embodiment of society’s “beauty standard”, explaining how anxiety-inducing it can be to carry such weight. See here for full experience.

“Going out in public is stressful sometimes because everyone’s looking at you”

Since then, she has racked up a lot of views but also a lot of hate.

“The prettiest girls I know don’t talk about it they are humble.”
“Delulu is the solulu.”
“A solid 5!”
“It’s weird cause like… you’re not?”

Being the outspoken character she is, Talia wasted no time clapping back at haters, calling them “bots” or envy-riddled trolls. Again, for some good entertainment, see here.
Of course, this only added more fire to the flame.

In fairness, it’s not all hate. Talia also counts a fair share of supporters in the comments section, a lot of them rightly questioning why a girl saying she’s pretty would fuel such outrage.

It is precisely this contradiction that I want to explore: the fury from her haters and the equal outrage from do-gooders who can’t fathom why their FYP would possibly feed them such content - all pontificating from their TikTok high-horses, pronouncing themselves “shocked” at the algorithm’s choices.

Haters : be real.
You don’t hate Talia Breyer because she is shallow, vain, or cruel. You hate her because she is honest about the rules of the game you’re playing too. She speaks out loud all the undertones permeating modern society which otherwise usually lurk in the shadows: beauty is currency, attention is capital, morality is just thinly coated lipstick on self-interest. She isn’t lying about what wins, she’s just skipping the PR spin everyone else is slathering on.

Do-gooders: be real.
There IS a reason Talia is flooding your field. She is exactly what a metrics-obsessed, outrage-drunk platform ecosystem is designed to manufacture. She is what happens when you give an economy unlimited reach, a beauty hierarchy, and an engagement algorithm that fattens itself on resentment.

If you design a system that:

• Pays in attention, not truth

• Rewards extremity, not nuance

• Prioritizes watch time and comments, rather than care and consequence…

…then of fucking course the system spits out someone like Talia.
A girl whose job is to turn her face, her body, and her worst instincts into content. A girl who has understood that controversy and self-obsession are the most coveted professional skills if one is to “make it” in this new, warped marketplace.
So the real horror isn’t one girl acting this way, it’s that the structure makes it rational for many to try.
Talia is just the symptom, society the disease.

So please please please spare me the performative outrage. The people who disapprovingly tut as they doomscroll are the same people who made this sort of behaviour on platforms profitable!

The same people who say they don’t comprehend the noise around Talia’s videos, who declare they want kindness and depth to flood their algorithm instead, are the same ones who reward women who build an entire persona on their looks by watching and dissecting every single “GRWM” video they come across.

Talia is “problematic,” yes but mostly in the sense that a mirror is problematic. She reflects back the ugliest parts of our value system, and our response is to try and shatter the glass instead of asking why we like staring into it.

If Talia Breyer is the villain, then we must face the fact that she is our villain: crowd-funded by our clicks, sculpted by our resentments, and sustained by our inability to look away. As long as we keep rewarding performances like hers, the same bitter venom will continue pulsating through our veins.

So what is the responsible thing to do, as a society?
STARVE THIS ARCHETYPE.
Shockingly, this requires something more than some faux collective outrage. It would require something more radical - change what we find entertaining and what we pedestal.
The sort of revolution that has to start from within.

Think about it - when did you last reward content that improved you? Taught you? Made you think?
When was the last time you exited a social media app feeling fuller than when you clicked it?

If Talia Breyer is what the current incentive structure is designed to reward, what kind of people -and what kind of selves -are we training a whole generation to become?

All posts are free because I love attention and all my subscribers in equal measure.
But if you’d like to support (or fuel my caffeine habit), you can pledge or buy me a coffee! :)))

As I absent-mindedly moved my pawn around the board, I visualised the days ahead. My brother was off to Brazil in the morning, ready to spend New Years with school friends. My best friend and her boyfriend were also leaving town to go to Costa Rica - a trip I’d turned down in the name of some healthy, “solo” downtime.
Now though, the quiet contentment I’d felt about staying put was slowly being corroded by my brain’s unhelpful echoes.

You’re going to be so bored here alone.

Why would you actively choose to miss out when your alternative is nothing?

At this point, you might expect a sermon about conquering FOMO, about how it is important to choose peace over parties.

No.

Not least because that would be a tad cliché.

This piece is about something else entirely: it is about the recalibration of focus, the quiet work of noticing what matters whilst we still can.
Because as I was headed down this rabbit hole of looping thoughts, mood starting to foul, my head noise was silenced by an eruption of laughter around me. The kind that rearranges the air in the room.

I re-adjusted my gaze and saw my brother in front of me, bent over, clutching his tummy in the way that you do when you laugh so hard it hurts. My mum had her head thrown back- joyful tears brimming on the corners of her eyes.
Both of them completely undone by the fact that my dad had, for the sixth time in a row, rolled a combination of numbers that sent him straight to jail.

For a second, as I took in all this commotion, everything stilled.

In that moment, I felt serene and pure happiness. That rare feeling you get when you’re surrounded by people who feel like home in the least metaphorical sense of the word. People whose presence fills you up instead of making you crane your neck for what else, what more, what next.

A state of perfect balance. Stasis.

But, like many other good things, peace of mind is fragile.

Out of nowhere, a wave of guilt came crashing over me as some part of my subconscious played back a couple of scenes from earlier in the day:
My voice sharp with impatience as I called my mother “technologically incompetent” because she couldn’t figure out an Amazon subscription.
My casual cruelty as I told my dad to get his hearing checked because how could he possibly navigate social situations if every time someone said “fair” he heard “bear” or “pear”?

I felt guilty for all the above but most of all because for the first fifteen minutes of this monopoly madness - this rare, fragile constellation of the four of us together - all I had done was focus on how to make “better” plans, how to have “more” fun, how to be surrounded by “cooler” opportunities.

All this stopped me in my tracks and made me think hard about the version I am around my parents, and whether this aligns with the version I want to be.

Why did I think it was okay for me to be unkind to my dad?
This was the same man who had devoted endless hours spinning bedtime stories for me and my brother. Still today, I remember the warm fuzzy feeling of wedging beside him in bed - ears wide open for what each new episode would bring. Ships with secret names and doorways that opened only if you whispered what you feared most.

Why did I think it was okay to have thin patience with my mother? The same woman who had taken infinite care in always drawing the world for me in a way that felt safe, translating each of its edges softly, so none of them would cut.
The same woman who learned my weather and dressed me for it, even when I did not know my season.

And yet, here I was, treating them like infrastructure - fixed, indestructible, assumed.
In a way, I guess we all do this. We have a tendency to use our parents as emotional punching bags. From heartbreaks to insecurities of any kind and magnitude, we offload it all on them.
Oblivious, and perhaps even a bit careless, to the knock-on effect this will inevitably have on their own emotional ecosystem.

Maybe we do this because, somewhere along the way, we froze them in our minds as invincible. Larger than life figures who would always be there for us, in the same way that they were when we were growing up.
At our own peril, we cling onto echoes of who they once were: echoes that do not age, falter, or weaken.

But of course, that’s not reality.
They get hurt. They get tired. They have days when nothing works. It’s just that growing up, all that humanness was purposefully hidden from us behind the armour of parenthood.

There’s a quote I love, one that always humbles me:

They are also doing life for the first time.

It’s so easy for us to brush over this and forget that, they too, are a first draft: guessing, revising, crossing out, starting again.

Once you allow your perspective to shift, and to see them not as monuments, but as manuscripts still being written, something changes.
We gain a new softness toward them, and with it, a quiet regret for how long it took to see them clearly. We realise how uneven the equation has always been; suddenly crystal clear that no matter what variables we plug in - indifference, impatience, distraction - the answer always comes back as love.

And it is with our head down, in the quiet of our thoughts, that we must admit it is rarely the same in reverse.

This is the paradox of parenthood - unconditional love on tap, yet the bond we treat most carelessly in youth. We often forget what a privilege it is to be known in the unique way only our parents do. As people who have loved us through every version we have tried on and shed.

Still, we are often kinder to pixelated faces on screens than to the ones who raised us; relegating them to a mere afterthought, feeding them whatever scraps of patience and attention we have left.
We so easily mistake intimacy for immunity, but would do well to remember that love does not make us unbreakable, rather it makes us responsible for where we choose to put our weight.

It feels almost inconceivable to imagine a future where role-reversal will be the norm. Where they’ll rely on us- emotionally, logistically, physically. More inconceivable still to imagine a future where they are simply…not there. No calls. No texts. No Christmas Monopoly.

So next time you are at the breakfast table with sleepy eyes scrolling through Instagram stories of people you barely know- don’t let precious time go by.
Ask them questions, ask them how to be.
Try, for a change, to relate to them adult to adult, with respect for the fact that they are not a service you are entitled to, but people you are still lucky to have access to.

When you start seeing your parents for what they really are - two complicated, aging humans you happen to share a long, strange history with - something might just shift. You stop assuming they’ll be there tomorrow and you start treating today less carelessly.

This does not mean you become perfect. You’ll still be irritated and you’ll still subject them to your occasional snaps. But there will be a newly found thread of intention running through it all: a quiet awareness that this is borrowed time.

buy me a coffee :)

Spoiler: there is no right way. Only a labyrinth of contradictory instructions.

buy me a coffee :)

The Text Dilemma: How to Sound Chill While Losing Your Mind

The first unfolded at a dinner with mostly female friends. There, a significant amount of time was spent analysing a conversation between “D” (lets call her that) and a guy she is “sort of seeing” (always a fun, grey area). One of the points of most contention was whether it would be okay for her to call him given they had vague post dinner plans, but had not yet agreed on any specifics. By the time we got onto discussing this, dessert was long gone and D (rightly) wanted to figure out where and when they would meet.
Instead of just picking up the phone and hitting “call” to communicate with a guy she otherwise spends the majority of her days texting, she started gathering opinions from the committee (us) on what would be the most appropriate way to reach out.

What then followed was a 30 minute strategy session involving five experienced females wracking their brains to get the tone, punctuation and emotional temperature of said text right.
Should I send one message or two separate ones?
Two - one longer text screams overthinking.
Do I write “helloo” or “hii”?
Hello with two o’s - using the “hi” makes you sound like a teenager with a shrill, high-pitched voice.
Maybe I should voice note him?
Only if you’re okay with him seeing you re‑record it five times, because we all know you will.

After all this hassle, D decided not to do anything at all. Paralysed by indecision, she just could not bring herself to initiate. So she hung around my friend’s house for another couple of hours before he called her to confirm the plan.

So, in a way, I guess all’s well that ends well. D ended up getting her date and she managed to do so without betraying the slightest bit of interest. But a part of me could not stop thinking about how, if the roles were reversed, the guy would likely have not wasted one single minute of his time second-guessing himself.

Think about it: how many times have you (if you’re a woman reading this) gone through the same mental gymnastics?
How many SWOT assessments have you carried out before deciding whether a guy’s message deserves just an emoji react or an actual text reply? How absurdly calculated and coy have you forced yourself to be, even in situations where he was undoubtedly into you? How careful have you been, time and again, to make sure you successfully treaded the line between “potentially interested” but in no way “attached”?
And, most importantly, how often do you think men go through all the above to a similar degree?

Alas, once again in the realm of modern dating, the map is drawn in double standards.

When Chasing Love Is Cute Until You’re the One Chasing

I’ll give you another real-life example.
A couple of months back, my friend G was telling me how a guy to whom she had already made clear she just wanted to be friends (emphasis on already), had that morning left a DVD in her letter box with the following message inscribed on the cover: “Watch this and then let me take you out to discuss it?”.
Leaving aside the fact that his vintage delivery method impressed me and made me reminisce on otherwise long-forgotten 2000s rom-com gestures, it still put G in the uncomfortable position of having to (yet again) spell out to this man that she just saw him as a friend. She replied with a kind, yet firm message where she thanked him for the gift whilst reiterating that she did not see their bond progressing into the romantic sphere - “I really value you as a person but I don’t see us working as anything more than friends- I hope you can understand that”.
The response she got was a halfway house between a dismissal and an attempt at clownery : “no worries at all, I’ll just make sure to ask you in person next time so you don’t have time to come up with such an elaborate rejection (winky face)”.
She left him on read and slowly iced him out, until the gap between his texts and her reply times were so wide and the lack of engagement so obvious that he diverted his attention elsewhere.

Later that weekend I was at the pub catching up with said man (who, plot twist, is also my friend) and a few others. When asked about his dating life, he jokingly recounted the story involving his (failed) pursuit of G in full detail.
The commentary which was offered by his other male friends was pretty predictable-
“Oh well- onto the next one then”
“ Bro, just keep going, perseverance is key.”

Now I want you to flip the story for a second. If G had been the one doing the same, i.e. dropping unsolicited gifts at his door and sliding into his DMs after being explicitly rejected, would anyone in that pub (or any guy for that matter) have said “good for her”? No way.
In all probability, she would have been written off with little afterthought, these sort of gestures forever tainting whatever positive perception she might have otherwise enjoyed.

So I ask you- how does this work? How is it that, when it comes to pursuing someone you are romantically interested in, if you overexpose yourself as a man you are “shooting your shot” but if you do the same as a woman, you are just shooting yourself in the foot?

The Sticker Experiment- Desperate or Daring?

To lend my PoV more gravitas, I’ll once again turn to empirical evidence.
A couple of days ago, my brother showed up to breakfast with a new sticker slapped on the back of his iPhone. It was circular, featuring a young, attractive woman holding sipping a drink. Scrawled across the diameter of said sticker were the words: - “You’re CUTE- call me! [number and phone number inserted but redacted for privacy reasons].

After asking him what on earth it was, he shrugged
“Some girl came up to me at the bar yesterday and handed me it.”
“Are you going to call her?” I asked
“I don’t think so- it seems as bit too desperate”.
I wondered whether my brother’s perception would have found consensus amongst a wider audience, so I decided to run a miniature social experiment and test this with my Instagram close friends.

I uploaded a photo of the sticker and invited opinions on the girl’s bold avance, asking respondents to justify their take.
Surprisingly, the story racked up a lot of engagement, from both males and females alike. Even more fascinating, was the fact that womens’ reception to it, turned out to be far harsher than that of their male counterparts. For instance, whereas the responses from the girls ranged from “I can’t lie, this gives crazy” to “How desperate do you have to be to go through the hassle of actually making, printing and handing these out?” men appeared be more lukewarm.

“Women’s avances are appreciated/welcomed when gracious, but would prefer if they weren’t the norm”

“Women can give more or less explicit hints but should still allow for the man to be in control of the courting process”

“Giving the number isn’t bad, but maybe the whole printing scenario is a bit much”

“What is this brave new world you describe? Onus should be on the man, but sometimes fine for it to be the other way round”

I’ll admit, reading these initially left me somewhat stunned. Why on earth do we keep playing this hide and seek game - where as women we unfailingly hide, with the expectation that men must always seek - if the reality out there is far more balanced? Have we, as women, just completely fallen out of synch with what modern expectations are? If men nowadays are more than willing to entertain scenarios where women “take the lead”, why do we insist on always being the passengers?

The Goldilocks Zone- Confidence with Conditions

However, a closer reading of the male replies made me realise something I had originally missed. Underneath all of their seemingly progressive stances, lay a hidden, identical subtext. Men liked the idea of female initiative in theory, but only within bounds they couldn’t quite articulate: not too much, not too soon, not too obvious.

It’s the Goldilocks principle of flirting: this is too cold, that’s too hot, but this - oh, this vague, undefined middle - is just right.
Except no one can tell you what “just right” means; they only know when you’ve overstepped it.

And because of that, we lose our minds trying to navigate this grey area. Every emoji is debated; every pause is strategy. We self‑edit instinctively, terrified of tripping into the territory of “too much,” “too keen,” “too available.” And often times this means we don’t end up doing anything at all, because extremes such as inaction are easier than in-betweens.
Meanwhile, the men are in another galaxy entirely, blissfully unaware that “too many ha’s” in “hahaha” could alter the course of an entire situationship.

Maybe that’s the real double standard: women are told to be confident, but not forward; desirable, but never desperate; assertive, but in a way that still lets him feel like he’s leading the dance. We’re told to know our worth, yet to hide it carefully enough that it doesn’t read as arrogance or desperation. Modern dating hands us empowerment, but only if we promise not to use it too loudly.

So this holiday season, for your own (and your friend’s) peace of mind, end the guessing game. Whether that means sending that extra text, making that extra call, or simply not waiting x amount of time before opening his message or viewing his Instagram story, show up. Be “too much”. And if that scares someone off, they were never your person anyway.

To clarify, this isn’t a green light to bulldoze through rejection - read the room. If he’s ghosted you four times, please don’t make it five. This is about those grey areas where a little initiative won’t kill the vibe, where showing interest makes sense and saves everyone from the agony of endless guesswork.

After all, is hiding really ‘power’, or is it just fatigue and emotional exhaustion with better PR?

The next morning, as I walk into the pre-op room I see at least another 15 women lying on beds lined up on either side of the walls. There is a buzzy atmosphere in the air, as a few of them talk animatedly to each other and the nurses. One of the nurses comes up to me, hands me a hospital gown and tells me to go and get changed into it.

Once done, I get escorted back towards my assigned bed and told that my doctor will arrive shortly to give me some general pointers about how the procedure is going to go. I sit there and start picking at the edges of the fitted linen sheet underneath me. I feel fidgety and I just want this to be over quickly. My scat mannerisms and general aura must betray my nervousness, because suddenly my stream of consciousness is interrupted by a very soft voice:

“Is this your first time?”

I turn to my left and see the most petite woman lying sideways in the bed next to me. Her rich dark hair is layered in a way that elegantly frames her face. She offers up a warm smile and I nod back.

“Yeah- I just hope it goes well because I genuinely don’t want to put myself through this again.”, I say.

She looks at me with the face of someone who really does understand.

“I know what you mean… this is my third time.”

Hearing this startles me slightly and makes me want to know more. We engage in a brief conversation and I find out she is 36 and started trying for babies about four years ago. After two years of being unable to get pregnant her and her husband decided to turn to the IVF route. I tell her my mum’s story and I am happy I do because it seems to have given her some genuine hope.

My doctor has now arrived and starts explaining to me how the operation will go. Once sedated, he will use a transvaginal ultrasound probe fitted with a needle to locate my ovaries and follicles. The needle will then be carefully advanced to each follicle, where it will gently puncture and draw out the eggs using a suction device. This process will be repeated for each mature follicle in both ovaries until all potential eggs are collected. This procedure typically lasts about 15 to 30 minutes.

I don’t even have time to start overthinking about what could go wrong because a nurse has already arrived to collect me. With unexpected force she turns around my bed and wheels me into the surgery room. Once in, they put a mask on my face and ask me to count backwards from 10.

13 minutes later

Thirteen minutes later, I am woken up. I’m back in the pre-op room and I feel really groggy. I see there is some sort of badge stuck on the front of my bed, on the left-side corner. From where I am lying, I can make out some blurred black writing. I fix my focus and slowly the outline of what looks like a number starts to appear: “12”.

Instantly, I realise that must be the number of eggs they managed to collect. I am proven right shortly after when my doctor approaches and confirms 12 is indeed the number of “good” eggs they have secured. He tells me he is quite happy with the result; given my AMH levels, and how unresponsive my body was throughout the majority of the treatment, that is truly a great result.

I go home thrilled that the final outcome has exceeded my expectations- there was truly a point where I had convinced myself they would (literally) get nothing out of me.

The aftermath

Given that the aftermath for me ended up being harder than the actual process, I think it is only fair I give a brief account of it.

Weirdly (or not?) the side-effects for me were not immediate. In fact, the day after my operation I felt completely fine (so much so that I got on a 9am flight to another country).

The remaining part of the summer was also fine. I felt pretty normal, with the caveat that I was slightly bloated- although this is hardly surprising given my body was likely still on the comedown from all the hormones I had subjected it to.

In September, after a good two months had passed (my operation was in mid-July), I decide to go back on the pill. I had been on it for the ten years prior and had found it really kept my hormones and emotions at bay. My pill (Klaira) was light, I liked taking it and I did not really see a reason why I could not go back to it. My doctor agreed.

However, almost immediately after starting the new pack, I felt off. I could sense my body getting bloated, although nothing in my diet or other had changed. Three weeks into the new pack, and almost none of the jeans in my closet fit me anymore. To clarify, that had never happened two me in the whole time I had otherwise been on that same pill, pre-hormone treatment.

At that point, I did something really dumb and point blank stopped taking the pill because I had convinced myself (on no legit medical basis whatsoever) that starting up the pill again had been the cause of my sudden weight gain. In hindsight (hindsight is always a beautiful thing), I should have consulted my doctor before doing so or, at the very least, had the common sense to get to the end of the package before interrupting it (rather than stopping mid-cycle).

From that point onwards, everything kind of started going to shit. Not only did I keep putting on weight, but I also just did not feel good emotionally. More often than not, I found myself feeling sad for no apparent reason. At times, these blues would get so intense that I just started crying.

I remember there was this particularly bad week at the end of December last year (so at this point we are well past the three month post-op mark) where I woke up every morning and just felt hopeless. I would cry for hours on end. To this day, I don’t know whether (or how much) of this was caused by the therapy I went through, but I only think it fair that I relay this for completeness.

To top it all off, I also stopped getting my period. From when I abruptly decided to stop the pill (which was the end of September), to July of this year, my body just went dry. My doctor tried everything to resuscitate it- from prescribing me really strong doses of progesterone, to telling me I should go and do some stress-relieving activities, as one of the main reasons women stop having periods is due to being faced with too much physical or mental stress. When this happens, their bodies can switch into ‘survival mode’, where the body prioritises essential functions and may temporarily shut down reproductive processes, like menstruation, to conserve energy.

It was only this summer, so about one year later, that I finally started to feel like myself again. I wont lie- it took me ages to get back on track, both physically and emotionally.

Where to go from here?

Would I do it again? Honestly, I don’t know.

I am in two minds. The more rational and risk-averse part of me wants to give it another go- I am now 28 (veering on 29) and hopeful that I still have some “good eggs” left in me. I have no idea how long it will be before I’m in a position to seriously think about starting a family, and for that reason I think it only makes sense to hedge my bets. Any eggs I can freeze now will by definition be “better quality” than any future eggs I may have to rely on. Yes, the procedure is expensive, but I am lucky enough to be in a position to be able to financially afford it. So, in a way, why wouldn’t I?

At the same time, a part of me is really reluctant to experience all the hardship that came with the process. I wouldn’t even really mind putting myself through the actual hormone injection and whole monitoring shabang again- but what I am really really dreading is the possibility of feeling as shitty as I did last winter again.

So, my current plan is to get to get to my next birthday (June 2026) and take stock of the situation again.

General disclaimer

I hope this article series has been informative and helpful in allowing you to understand, at least on a basic level, what egg-freezing looks like and entails.

However, before I let you all go (and at the risk of sounding like those annoying robots at the end of commercials) I want (and need) to make a disclaimer.

I am not a medical professional and the account you just read is based solely as my personal experience. Feel free to use the numbers, stats and general information in these articles as benchmarks or points of reference, but remember that every woman’s situation is unique and therefore so will be her process. Please do not treat any of the information published on this page as medical advice and for any medical-based questions or decisions regarding fertility or egg freezing, please consult a qualified healthcare provider.

Buy me a coffee!

Getting to grips with injections (days 1-5)

Once home, I carefully unfolded the crumpled up prescription. Through the creases, I was able to make out “daily injection of Gonal-F.

So, without further ado, lets take a deep dive into the world of hormones.
Gonal-F contains follitropin alfa (first hard word of the day). Follitropin alfa is a synthetic (i.e. artificially created) form of follicule stimulating hormone (FSH)- a hormone that our pituitary gland is meant to naturally produce and which plays a key role in the development of ovarian follicles. To make it simple, Gonal-F is used by women who have ovaries that are capable of producing eggs, but whose pituitary glands don’t produce enough FSH to enable the relevant follicles to properly grow. Gonal-F, in a way, helps follicles to “wake up”.

Gonal-F is administered via subcutaneous injection -this means that you basically have to inject the hormone close to your belly button area or any other area where there is a layer of fat that lies between the skin and the muscle. Typically, this is done using a pre-filled pen (visual aid for your reference).[1]

The actual injection process was pretty fun for me. My best friend from Australia was visiting back then and she proved very useful as she had both i) a weird passion for needles and ii) a ton of friends who had already gone through the same process. So, for those first five days, just before lunch, she would prep the Gonal-F pen, stick a teeny tiny needle on top of it and proceed to inject a fuck load of FSH inside me.

Fun photo below inserted for reference

At the same time as Gonal-F, I was told to also inject Cetrotide. Without going into detail, and in very simple terms, Cetrotide is a widely used medication. It is a hormone blocker and is useful for exerting control in the egg-freezing process as it prevents early ovulation and ensures eggs remain inside the ovaries and continue to mature properly.

In terms of side effects, those first five days were pretty innocuous. I started feeling slightly bloated as I neared towards day 5, but otherwise I could not discern any material changes in my mood or physical appearance.

First hospital check-up (day 5)

Throughout egg-freezing treatment, doctors have to carefully monitor patients’ response to the hormones. The main parameters through which they do this is by tracking follicle growth and estrogen levels in your blood.

Follicle growth is tracked through vaginal ultrasounds -essentially, doctors put some cold mushy liquid on a probe they then insert inside you to visualise your progress. When doing this, they will be looking to measure the size and to count the number of follicles developing in your ovaries.

As follicles contain eggs, their number and growth indicate how well the ovaries are responding to stimulation and also allow doctors to pinpoint the optimal time for egg retrieval. Tracking scans are typically performed 3-5 times throughout your treatment cycle , although this may, of course, vary based on your ovarian response and cycle details.[2]

The blood tests, on the other hand, are looking to see whether your estrogen levels are rising . This is because estrogen levels rise as follicles grow, so blood levels can provide additional useful data as to the progress of your follicular development.

A mini guide to interpreting follicular tracking scan results

With the aim of providing a (very brief) and useful visual summary, I have in the below table given basic information on the three key parameters which doctors will track during your treatment.

So, going back to me, after 5-7 days of stimulation, my doctor and his team were hoping to see both i) follicular development with follicles of (at least) 10mm and ii) rising estrogen levels.

Interestingly, that first check revealed that although my follicles were growing (both in size, and in number), my estrogen levels were still quite low. The doctors at the hospital told me this was not alarming for a first check, but that it was important to keep this variable under control and asked me to come back after two days.

Therefore, on day 7, I put myself through another lovely excursion towards the other part of town (conveniently, the hospital was located a good 40 minute drive from my house) and repeated the exact same tests I had done during my first check up. Once again, my doctor told me that my estrogen levels were quite low, despite good follicular development.

Now I would like to briefly pause and explain why exactly it is important for medical professionals treating you to see both follicular development and estrogen levels rise at the same time.

More on Estrogen (Estradiol)

As prefaced above, it is important to track estrogen as the levels present in your blood provide a real-time snapshot of how well your ovaries are responding to stimulation. To clarify estradiol (rather than estrogen) is what doctors will be looking to track. Estrogen is an umbrella term for a group of hormones, and estradiol is the most potent type found in women of reproductive age.

Estradiol (E2) is measured in picograms per milliliter (pg/mL)[3], and its trend (aka how it rises over time) can be just as important as the absolute value. As stimulation begins, clinics will monitor estradiol every few days, especially around days 5, 8, and 10, as they adjust medication doses. Early in the cycle, E2 levels are low, but as the follicles develop, estradiol levels are expected to rise exponentially because each growing follicle secretes estrogen (see more here for understanding how estradiol levels can and should vary in egg freezing therapy)

Should you despair if your estradiol is low? How predictive is this variable?

Although estradiol is your friend in the egg freezing process insofar as it can evidence your ovaries are doing what you want them to, it does not alone tell the full story. Indeed, some patients may have high estradiol levels but still retrieve only a few eggs. What is the most reliable predictor of how many mature eggs will be retrieved are the results you get through the tracking follicular scans- e.g. the number of follicles that measure 17mm or larger on ultrasound, the ones considered “in range”.

Having said that, estradiol levels still remain an important indicator of how well you are responding to treatment and doctors will try their best to boost them. And, of course, the way they would do this is by giving you (or me, in this case) more hormones.

Enter drug number 3

After my day 7 check, my doctor tells me to go home and buy Meriofert which, I am instructed, I should inject alongside Cetrotide in the evening.

Meriofert is essentially an additional drug that doctors sometimes prescribe during egg freezing treatment if follicles are growing but estrogen levels are low. The medication contains both FSH, and the luteinizing hormone (LH).

The addition of LH via Meriofert can be particularly helpful if your ovaries are not producing enough estrogen despite follicle growth, as LH supports follicle maturation and hormone production. In some women, especially those with low endogenous LH levels or certain hormone imbalances, stimulation with FSH alone may not adequately promote follicle growth or trigger proper egg maturation. So the doctors were hoping that through Meriofert my hormone response would be improved.

At this stage, you will have noticed I was taking a full cocktail of medication on a daily basis. Because I am conscious that it is probably quite hard to keep track of all the meds I’ve mentioned and of when or why I was taking them, I have provided a brief snapshot below to jog your memory.

More injections and (even more) check-ups -days 8-12

On days 9 and 11, because my estrogen levels were still (too) low, I was asked to come back for further check ups. Day 9 results came back similar to those I got back from day 7 and day 5 (e.g. growing follicles but low estrogen).

On day 11 (the penultimate day of my hormone injection therapy), as I sign-in and say hi to the team of nurses who at this point have come to know me, I briefly look down and catch sight of my arms. It is the first time I fully notice the very unpleasant shade of purple they have become -consequence of my veins being bruised by the overly frequent needle puncturing I have to engage in. After they take my blood and do the usual routine ultrasound follicle check, I am sent home.

The following day, like clockwork I get my results. Again- my estradiol levels are too low. Given we are almost at the end of the injection cycle, my doctor tells me that if my results don’t improve, they may not be able to operate. Low estrogen that far ahead in the treatment could, in fact, indicate inadequate follicle development and the real possibility of few or no mature eggs actually being available for retrieval. In these cases, given the slim chances of success, doctors can decide to cancel the operation to prevent patients from undergoing an unnecessary, invasive procedure and associated costs. Needless to say, this news really deflated me.

That night I, as I waddled to meet my friend for a quick bite (my stomach had swelled up to an extent that walking normally was not really an option anymore) I allow myself to be pissed off.
I am tired, bloated and really fucking annoyed at the very real possibility that I may have put myself through such an invasive process for nothing.

The next day is day 12- which also marks the last day of my hormone therapy. There is my final in person check up that morning but, at this point, I am not holding out much hope anymore.

At the hospital, I diligently hold out my arm for what seems like the millionth time. At the very least, I think to myself, even if this thing does not go to plan, after today I’ll give my poor veins some respite.

After my blood is drawn, I walk into a separate room for my last follicular tracking scan where the nurse starts inspecting me with her probe. I see my doctor walk in and he is holding a bunch of papers I assume are my test results from the previous day.

As I observe him flicking through these, I cant help but notice that something is off. I stare at him a little longer to figure out why, and then suddenly it dawns on me.
He is smiling! Actually, to call it a full blown smile would not be correct, but I can definitely make up a slight upturn of the lips, which is more emotion I than I have ever gotten from him. I wait in anticipation.

“I’m looking at your results from yesterday” he confirms.

I look at him, expectantly, almost too scared to continue the conversation in case it is, once again, bad news. I want to live in this state of possibility for as long as I can. So I don’t say anything.

“Your estrogen levels have spiked overnight” he continues. “I’ll take a look at the follicles now but I am almost certain we have enough mature/big ones to actually go ahead with the operation tomorrow.”

A huge wave of relief washes, crushes even, over me. For the first time since this process started, I am speechless. Through the buzzing in my ears I can just about discern the muffled words my doctor is saying; he is doing a final count for my “in range” follicles, on a quest to figure out how many are of these are big enough in size to conceivably contain a mature egg.

“One, two three…”

I cant wait to get out and call my mum.

“nine, ten, eleven…”

I wonder how it will feel to be put under general anaesthesia- I’ve never been fully asleep for a medical procedure before.

“thirteen, fifteen, sixteen…”

As I lie there in what can only be described as a semi-conscious state, he counts 18 follicles across both ovaries. He tells me this is definitely a good enough number to operate on and explains to me that before my operation the following day I will have to take my “trigger shot”.

What is the “trigger shot”?

A trigger shot contains Human Chronic Gonadotropin (“hCG”), which is the hormone that comes into play once you have almost crossed the finish line-i.e. the one you inject to initiate the final maturation of the eggs, loosening them from the follicle walls and preparing them for retrieval.

Now that we are almost at the end of the process, I thought useful to give you a final, comprehensive table of all the hormones taken throughout the journey. Please note the below reflects a stimulation plan developed by my doctors based on my subjective needs. It should be read and interpreted on an indicative basis only as it constitutes only one possible iteration of what an egg freezing process can look like.

I go to the pharmacy and buy Gonasi. I inject my trigger shot that evening.

Read Part III for the procedure and the aftermath.

Buy me a coffee!

[1]The dosage of the pen varies depending on each individual’s needs, but mins was 300IU a day (which I think is quite a high dose).

[2] See here : Interpreting Your Follicular Tracking Scan Results - International Ultrasound Services

[3] A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram

My mum had me at 38, which means that ever since I was mature enough to engage in reproductive related dialogue, I knew how complicated, frustrating and delicate female fertility could be. I myself am an IVF baby (one of the first in Italy apparently) and came as a very unexpected surprise when, after 8 rounds of trying, my parents truly thought they had exhausted all avenues. Weirdly enough, my brother was conceived naturally almost immediately after my birth, which makes me marvel at all the fascinating and unpredictable ways in which the human body can work.
Regardless, my mother was lucky- but I know that many women who have found themselves in the same predicament, cannot say the same.

For the longest time, I have walked around with an almost subconscious fear that if I didn’t play my cards right, I too could end up in a similarly stressful situation. Last year though, this worry started to intensify. I assume this had a lot to do with the simple fact that I was starting to dangerously edge towards the end of my 20s which, according to experts, is roundabout the time when the quality and quantity of your eggs start falling off a cliff). So, just before my 27^th birthday, I decided to get my fertility levels checked, with the intention of embarking on an egg-freezing journey shortly after.
I know that for many of you 27 will sound very young and, to be honest, it is (although, as I will explain in Part II and III of this article series, that ended up being the right choice for me). Regardless, I am not here to debate on what the optimal age for doing this kind of treatment is or should be- not least because I am in no way qualified to do so.

What I do want to do, however, is use my personal experience to raise awareness around a topic which, especially amongst certain circles of mine, is not so openly discussed. Actually, when I stop to think about it, what baffles me most is that this reluctance often stands in stark contrast with how much women actually want to know. Indeed, ever since I started being vocal about my journey, numerous friends and acquaintances have often reach out, firing at me a flurry of questions they were eager to have answered. Of course, I was always very glad to assist. What frustrated me though, was that whenever they approached me, they seemed to do so with an almost quiet shame. Were it not for the safety bubble provided by the privacy of our 1-1 conversation, I very much doubt they would have aired their concerns so freely.

With this in mind, I want to make something very clear before I jump into the story: your reproductive abilities (if they should even be called that, given they are not exactly an inherent talent or skill) do not make you more or less valuable. The fact that you may want or may need to use assisted reproductive technologies to conceive does not make you “more” or “less” of a woman; and anyone who tells you any different is, quite frankly, less of a human. The genetic code that you were born with is simply that; something inherited. I am sick and tired of having to tell girls (women!) my age that it is not shameful to want to use tools at your disposal to maximise chances of successfully achieving something potentially life changing.

Covering my bases and getting my AMH levels tested

It is March 2024 and there I am, sitting in my OBG’s study- as always, feeling ever so slightly awkward at the prospect of discussing all things vagina related with a man well into his 70s. I had dragged my mother along to this check-up for emotional support.
I tell my doctor that I want to freeze my eggs and, if possible, that I would like to start the process sooner rather than later. His first reaction, after querying why, is to tell me that these sort of procedures are usually not necessary for someone my age. I politely tell him I understand and explain to him that I would like to do it regardless. He very cleverly decides it is not a good idea to contradict not just one, but two of his most strong willed patients and tells me the first thing I should do is take a blood test to get my AMH levels checked out.

For those of you who don’t know, an AMH test measures the “Anti-Mullerian Hormone” levels in your blood. AMH is a protein produced by the developing follicles in womens’ ovaries. Follicles are tiny fluid filled sacs which contain and release all of our eggs- if simpler to envision, imagine them as the eggs’ houses. There is a direct correlation between AMH levels and a woman’s ovary reserve; higher AMH levels means more growing follicles (which typically indicates a higher egg count), while lower AMH levels indicate a smaller number of developing follicles, which typically indicate a lower ovarian reserve overall.
However, a very important thing to clarify before I move on: whilst an AMH test can provide an estimate of your egg quantity, what it cannot do is assess egg quality. Put simply, although knowing your AMH levels is helpful in assessing your fertility, it is only one party of a much broader equation (which I will not go into at this point in time).

AMH levels vary with age. In women, AMH levels start rising during adolescence and peak around 20-25 years old. After that, they start naturally declining. In terms of how to interpret results (I remember being extremely confused when I got mine), providers measure AMH levels in nanograms per milliter (ng/mL)[1]. I have summarised in a table below what these generally look like.

Group AMH Levels by Age Range

Image taken from: Age-Based AMH Levels: What’s Normal and When Does It Decline?

AMH levels vary widely and should be interpreted with clinical guidance. The table shows typical AMH levels for each age group using the median (middle value), 25th percentile (lower range), and 75th percentile (upper range) to show how levels vary. For example, in the 30–35 age group, if your AMH is below 0.9 ng/mL, it’s lower than most people your age; if it’s above 3.6 ng/mL, it’s higher than most

Doomsday- Getting my results

The morning after my appointment, I go and get my blood drawn. Speaking to my gyno the day before had somewhat soothed me as he had seemed pretty confident that we would be doing this on a “preventative basis” only. So, imagine my dismay when a couple of days later, I open my results and see 0.91 ng/ml being the level of AMH in my blood. A quick look at the tables above will tell you that result safely placed me in the fertility range of someone in their mid to late 30s.

So, of course, I did the most rational thing I could think of in the moment and started crying. I’m not sure why I lost my composure in that moment- maybe it was the fact that I was overwhelmed by all those random numbers I did not understand; maybe it was because I felt the pessimistic hunch I had had all along had been proven right. Or, maybe, because part of me was feeling “embarrassed” at the thought that my late 20s body was functioning at the pace of someone a decade my senior.
I immediately screenshotted the results and sent them to my doctor, followed by a flurry of questions- “Why are they so low?”, “Should I be worried?”, and “Can I call you?” (the latter one particularly inappropriate given I was whatsapping his personal number on a Saturday evening). After what seemed like a million years, my phone lit up with his reply: “Yes. Very low. We have to retest.” Something about the severity of those words managed to, for the second time that hour, send me into hysterics. I call my mum half sobbing and she tells me that I can’t get angry at him because he is a doctor and not a therapist- it is not his job to make me feel better.
We book another appointment the following week and my doctor this time does not try to dissuade me away from the process. He does however tell me that taking the pill can sometimes alter your test results as birth control hormones sometimes suppress AMH levels. Having been a pill-taker for most my adult life, that gave me a slither of hope. We schedule our next appointment for June 2024.

Doomsday (repeated) - June 2024

Three months on no birth control go by and I am forced to rediscover all hormonal and PMS related symptoms the hard way. All the while, of course, with a gnawing anxiety in the background about how my next results would look. The day before my birthday (very wrong timing, in hindsight) I go back for a second AMH test.
On my way home from the test centre, I rub my eye and a lash sticks to the tip of my index finger. I squeeze my eyes shut and pray for better results as I blow into the wind.
No luck. A couple of days letter, I am confronted with the same exact number I saw back in March and even my doctor is forced to admit he has run out of variables which could justify, or at least in some way caveat, the numbers I was getting. The start of my hormone injection journey is scheduled for the beginning of July.

So- now comes the part everyone is interested in and always asks me about: “how long is the process?” “what did you actually have to do?” and “is it hard?”.
Before I go into it, I want to make clear that everyone’s journey is different and entirely subjective. I have spoken to a number of friends who have gone through my same process and who vastly differ in their perceptions of how they found it. For some, the whole thing was pretty much a walk in the park- they took the hormones, got a really good number of eggs taken from the procedure, and afterward went back to their life as if nothing had happened. For others, myself included, things were slightly more complicated (more on this below). I do not for one second regret my decision, but I do think it is important to be transparent about the potential downsides that choosing to go through this can bring.

Buy me a coffee!

[1] A nanogram per milliliter (ng/mL) is a unit of concentration that measures a tiny amount of a substance within a specific volume of liquid.

And so I sat there politely, dutifully joining in on the coos of “ooohs” and “aaahs” squealed every time one of the other girls announced she was moving in or getting married or pregnant with her other half. By the time it was my turn to speak, I was so discouraged by the amount of happily ever afters apparently so accessible to everyone but myself, that I was keen for my interlude to be as brief as possible. I quickly confirmed that i) yes, I was still single and ii) no, I was not actively looking to date - the latter statement not necessarily true, but spoken out of a desire to discourage further prying. As I slouched back into my seat, convinced I had managed to elude any unwanted follow-ups, a chirpy voice from across the table called out “have you ever tried hinge?” The moment the question was uttered, I felt my body tensing and realised I did not want to answer it frankly. So, I gave the girl a placeholder answer to the likes of “no, but ill get on it if you think its worth it” before allowing the conversation to move onto someone else.

Later that night though, as I lay in bed, I reflected on my almost knee-jerk reaction. Why had I been instinctively so reticent to answer her question? Were dating apps a topic I unconsciously perceived to be taboo? I have always prided myself on being unabashedly open and outspoken about my personal affairs, so how was this coyness explained? The truth is, I have tried dating apps and occasionally still download them.
Once upon a time I had Bumble, purely for entertainment purposes. I was 21, new to London and giddy with the excitement that comes with knowing the city you are about to inhabit offers infinite prospects. Back then I didn’t really reflect on my decision too much. Clicking the download button next to the black and yellow square on my interface was akin to an impulse buy. “Why not”? I asked myself. Worst case scenario I’d get free food and good lore out of it.
And that is exactly what happened. I stuck it out for around 3 years and collected an incredibly entertaining assortment of anecdotes. From the guy who shamelessly added 20cm to his height and then blamed his glitchy eyesight for making him confuse a “6” with an “8”, to the man who invited me for a pretentious dinner only to whatsapp me the next morning asking to “please transfer him £200” (his financial generosity clearly contingent on physical intimacy he did not receive). Of course, at the time I screenshotted all these interactions, forwarding them to my girls’ group chats with detailed voice notes recounting the whole experience.

The apps eventually fell off my radar when I met a guy (in real life) who would later become my first (and last) long-term boyfriend. But, since we broke up, about two years ago, I have never been able to commit to the hinges and bumbles of this world with the same ease. And, every time I decide to give the apps another go, I notice that I do so with an undertone of shame. I have a few theories which may explain why this is- and I will now lay them out for consideration, in the hope that psychoanalysing them together may help me gain some more clarity.

First up is the less flattering perception I have of myself now, as someone who uses these platforms in her late twenties- a drastic shift from the one I believe characterised me around a decade ago, back when I was an app newbie. In fact, in my early twenties, the [dating] world was my oyster. I knew this, the people on the app knew it and my “real life” friends knew it. This common understanding created an aura of unseriousness around my app usage. Yes, I was on apps, but I didn’t actually “need” them. I treated them as my go to for a little serotonin side-kick whenever I was bored, alone or occasionally low. I “x”ed and “heart”ed people mindlessly, rarely engaging in actual conversation. Sure, I ended up meeting with the men on the other side of the screen a couple of times, but ultimately, I did not care. My presence and actions at that point in my life, had the beauty of being intentionally inconsequential. The nonchalance and silent assuredness that came with the knowing that time was on my side, permeated from within and was glaringly obvious to myself and to those around me. This knowingness made me feel strong, invincible.

So, what changed? Did I now believe that it was shameful to use apps because doing so in my thirties equated to an implicit admission that I actually needed them? Maybe that was part of it.
Maybe part of it was also the fear of knowing that by actively putting myself out there at a slightly more mature age, people would automatically assume I had more “skin in the game” so to speak, and all the laissez fairness around the outcome of a date would not be socially condoned to the same degree that it once was. This last reflection hurt particularly as, for the longest time, entertaining a group of friends with my most recent (and often suboptimal) app dating experiences was what had made me feel most invigorated and understood. A punchy, self-deprecating remark such as “I’ve been ghosted for ten days and counting”, would elicit knowing laughter from friends equally well versed in the field of male rejection. Back then, our shared disillusion often morphed into a sense of camaraderie, making me feel blessed to be part of a sisterhood whose membership I grew grateful to have.
But I would be lying if I said that times hadn’t changed- I have learnt the hard way that nowadays my stories don’t land the way they used to. Testament to this, a recent housewarming where my attempt to amuse a group of friends with one of my Bridget Jones style tales caused my audience to nervously shuffle from side to side, their nervous gazes darting around the room in an attempt to avoid eye contact - almost as if any active acknowledgement of my dating fiascos would make them vulnerable to catching the same malaise. Of course, I hate them for this betrayal, but I also know I cant blame them. The amount of times I’ve heard men disparagingly refer to unmarried women in their thirties as “second hand goods” is bound to make a dent even in the strongest of self worths.

Another reason behind my unwillingness to “seriously” use dating apps is that they simply feel faithless. Maybe it was all those early 2000s romcoms which instilled in me an expectation that meeting my future husband would happen in a “sliding doors” type of way. Whether in a queue at the airport information desk after both our flights had been simultaneously delayed, or at a dinner party organised by a friend of a friend which I had originally not planned to attend. Whatever the story, I grew up convinced that the universe had reserved for me a happy ending whose puzzle pieces would come together with unexpected ease when the time was right. Using apps sometimes makes me feel like I am actively self-sabotaging- almost as if, by taking any sort of agency, I am meddling with a perfect future otherwise carefully crafted for me.

Is it delusional to operate in this way? Many people tell me it is.
Others, actually make very good cases for dating apps. For example, Aleks, a good friend of mine, is always encouraging me to take a different perspective. I have been over my dating app dilemma with her multiple times, and she is a firm believer that these platforms should be viewed and treated as “opportunity maximisers”: “Statistically, apps have a better chance of helping you whittle down candidates in a far more effective way than what you otherwise would”, she always says. Let me try and summarise her theory for you.

When you go out to a bar or a club, you- scan the scene and immediately filter out 90% of the individuals there. Some are too short, some are too skinny and some are dressed in a way that instantly puts you off. After this initial screen, there are three or four left which you find physically pleasing who you would actually be willing to entertain a conversation with. What you don’t know, is that out of those four, one holds extremely religious views (imagine you’re an atheist), another spends every spare weekend he has skiing because that is his greatest passion (imagine you hate skiing) and the last one absolutely does not want kids (for arguments sake, lets say you can’t wait to be a mother). The last man is a perfect match with you on paper.
An app would likely make all the above peculiarities instantly visible,- giving you the opportunity to say “no” to the first three from the get go, allowing for your focus to instead be directed towards the one candidate who is in practice most aligned with the person that you are.
Allow me to pause for a second, as I am sure a lot of you are thinking my reasoning is flawed insofar as it does not take into account the vibe, the chemistry, the spark, that one can only feel towards people when they meet them in the flesh. And if that is what you were thinking, you would be right - a dating app obviously can’t screen for “chemistry”,- and I believe that works in your favour. Hear me out.

Having good chemistry with someone does not necessarily mean you guys would be a good fit down the line. Actually, it can cloud your judgement for the worst. For argument’s sake, let’s continue off our hypothetical bar scenario and let’s imagine you decide to strike up conversation with the guy who loves skiing. You have an incredible connection and start dating. Skiing is not brought up until the third dinner date and by then you are too emotionally involved to be rational about how unaligned you guys are on what is clearly a non-negotiable for him. You of course convince yourself that this is the sort of thing that you will figure out later, that you will compromise on.

For the first four months the relationship flows beautifully. You already see yourself marrying this man. Then winter hits and the first chance he gets he asks you to spend the weekend with him and some friends in the mountains. You knew this was coming and are of course happy to oblige- you want to share his excitement and you want to make him happy. The following weekend he asks you on the same trip. You’re a bit disappointed because you would have liked to do something else, but he is unmoveable. You once again go along and spend the weekend taking yourself on solo walks whilst he is on the slopes with his friends. By the time they come back its you are full of energy but all the others are exhausted and ditch the dinner plans you meticulously made because they are keen to get an early night and go again the following morning.
My guess is you would be willing to put up with this situation a maximum of other (10?) times before you blow up and call it quits. By the time you actually break up with skiing man, a whole year has gone by. 12 months of your precious time which would have never been wasted if you had allowed your online advisers to filter him appropriately.”

On an app, the chances are his passion for skiing would have been conveyed through a photo or a prompt of some sort. If not, the topic would have almost certainly come up in one of your first “on screen” dialogues, where the inevitable absence of chemistry would have directed the conversation towards more rational, boring small talk (“where are you from”, “what do you do”, “what are your hobbies” etc) where his fanaticism for the sport would have been one of the first bases covered.
At that point, you would have (rightly) decided you were probably better off not dating him. And that would have been the end of it. The same applies for the religious guy and for the guy who does not want kids. Their non negotiables would have been on public display from the beginning, allowing you to make informed and educated decisions on how to proceed. According to this theory, if all four men who were at the bar in the above scenario also all had hinge profiles, you would have ended up matching, dating and successfully marrying the fourth man- the one who you would have otherwise overlooked in person.

I obviously see reason in both schools of thought- and have for the past week been toying between which one I think presents the most compelling argument. So I now ask you -in a world where choices are infinite and time is the most precious asset we have, is it better to cast dating apps aside in the name of romance and spontaneity, or should these platforms be treated as props capable of more speedily (and effectively) propelling us towards happy endings we otherwise autonomously struggle to find?

Buy me a coffee!

Subscribe now

After years of privately playing around with the idea of putting my most inner thoughts into writing, I decided that any further waiting would put this endeavour at risk of becoming yet another “what if” in the story of my life. And I don’t want that. I realised I am fine for almost anything else to pass me by, but not this. Not the possibility of creating a mini community whose members are brought closer together by the notion whatever thought I have managed to distil on screen turns out to be a universally relatable experience.

Substack has created a number of prompts which it wants me to dutifully fill in. But I won’t do that. There is no exact answer to “what kind of community I am looking to build here” (honestly, anyone with the remotest interest in contemporary society is welcome) and to “what sort of specific content I will be putting out there” (again, I refuse to pre-emptively box myself into a sub-category in the hope of more effectively attracting a specific kind of audience).

I want to write about everything and anything which impacts me enough to the point of forcing me to sit down to find time to write about it. I can’t promise this substack will deliver coherency in content, but I promise it will not let you down. From dating, to female friendships, to double-standards and eating disorders, I am interested in unpacking all those topics that make up the social mosaic we all try to navigate on a daily basis.

If the above sounds like something you would not hate to read- hit the “Subscribe” button below!

Subscribe now