LOVE CRAZE

The Weight of the Ring

I had just taken a nice, long shower—the kind where you can finally relax your shoulders and feel the stress of the day wash away. I was standing in front of the mirror, appreciating my comfortable silence, when my phone buzzed. It was Guy 3. A text message. Then another. And another. All within three minutes. I hadn't even dried my body yet.

The first text was innocent enough: Hey, hope your meeting went well. 

The second was a little pushy: Why haven't you responded? You know I worry. 

The third text, though, was the one that made the small hairs on my neck stand up, replacing my calm with a sudden, cold rush of anxiety. It read: I saw you were online 7 minutes ago. Who are you talking to that's more important than me?

That was the sound of the glass slipper shattering. The calm I had worked so hard to achieve in those five minutes of solitude was instantly gone. I didn't just feel angry; I felt that slow, sickening wave of self-reproach wash over me. I wanted to smash the phone against the wall, but instead, I set it down on the bathroom counter with the careful, deliberate quietness of someone trying to avoid waking a sleeping monster.

I had chased the feeling of being wanted so badly that I hadn't realized I was trying on a handcuff. His devotion—the thing I had used to rationalize giving him a chance—felt less like love and more like a tight, suffocating cord. My comfortable silence was instantly gone, replaced by the crushing weight of having to account for every second I spent away from him.

"You're a hypocrite, Redempta! I whispered to my reflection. 

I had been so proud of myself for avoiding the dramatic fire of Guys 1 and 2. I'd told myself I'd grown up, that I was choosing maturity, stability, and a future. I went for the safe bet, the one who was obsessed with me, the one I didn't have to fight for. I had intellectually chosen him, convinced that I could simply grow into the feeling, just like that Rihanna song suggested.

But here was the catch: I wasn't growing into love. I was growing into compliance.

The intense pursuit I had initially confused with passion was actually deep-seated insecurity on his part, and my acceptance of it was based on my own fear of being abandoned. I needed the ring of his constant attention to prove I was valuable, but now the ring felt like it was made of lead, chaining me to my own phone.

I went back to my closet, found the oldest, loosest t-shirt I owned, and pulled it over my head. I looked at the three unread messages—now four, with a frantic Call me now!—and took a deep breath.

I had traded one type of toxic attraction for another. I hadn't broken the cycle; I'd just repainted the wall. The men might be different, but the feeling—that familiar, churning dread in my stomach—was exactly the same. The loneliness that had pushed me into this relationship suddenly seemed preferable to the anxiety of being constantly monitored.

I picked up the phone, unlocked it, and hit the mute button. I wasn't ready to break up with him. Not yet. But I was finally ready to admit that the person I needed to interview for compatibility wasn't the guy on the other end of the line; it was the woman staring back at me in the mirror.