SELF-LOVE
INDEPENDENTLY EVER AFTER Tara Wesson @tarywess The dating world is rife with barbs and broken hearts. Tara Wesson tells how to make gold from it, and put the most important thing first: you.
That young girls are taught to rely on their ‘prince’ from an early age is nothing new. The damsel in distress tale is woven into our infantile brains, with Disney and romcoms, which, once you’re old enough to date, simply turn into the disillusionment of a real ‘need’ for that special someone. This was me. At twenty one, I’d never had a boyfriend, let alone a requited love. In its place I had a mangled history of emotions and rejections, violations and fledgling broken hearts, leaving me with a pit in my stomach and lump in my throat
whenever I thought about my dating life. By this age I’d strongly solidified a base of feminist values and girlpower vibes, which I knew to be true.. but however proudly I flew my burning bra, the cultural conditioning of codependency ran deep. art: nimasotoudeh.com
I remember the vapid rush of serotonin I’d get, whenever a guy would send a heart emoji or an ‘x’. I hated to admit it, but I was absolutely desperate for the slightest glimmer of codependency. I was an aching desert of feelings, too exhausted from the dating scene to be upset, yet clinging too hard to my last sliver of hope to be completely hopeless. I was sick of having nobody as a daily sounding board. Nobody who cared enough to ask about my day and its tiny, trivial details. Anyone single and silently yearning for a relationship will tell you the same thing; your heart holds out, but somewhere along the line, it hurts too much to admit to yourself out loud that you want what you want. I was, frankly, feeling sorry for myself, which I’m sure is how this now reads, but it is difficult to detach myself from the heaviness of that period. I was starting to wonder whether 15
