#relationship-reflections

I think I got cursed with the gene for monogamy. Not the sweet kind. Not the healthy, well-adjusted kind with matching coffee mugs and mutual hobbies. No—I mean the kind that turns obsession into worship. The kind that rewires your nervous system to believe you are safe only when you’re someone’s one and only. The kind that makes “casual” feel like a threat instead of a choice.

It’s frustrating, because I understand polyamory. I support it. I’ve seen it done beautifully. But my body doesn’t seem to care about theory. It wants to be claimed. Fully. It wants to be someone’s favorite, someone’s constant, someone’s kept. Even in kink, even in scenes that are supposedly temporary, my brain is scanning for signs of permanence. Did they mean it? Did they feel something real? Could they want me beyond this?

It’s embarrassing sometimes. I try to play it cool. I say I’m fine with fun, with fluid dynamics, with undefined connections. But underneath it, I’m craving obsession. Devotion. I want to be chosen with urgency and held like property. I want to be the only one they see when they close their eyes. The one they ruin things for. The one they come back to when everything else feels flat.

There are days I crave being hurt so badly it scares me. In recovery, we’re taught to question the things we crave most. We learn that some hungers are smoke signals for destruction. But what if the thing I crave isn’t a substance, but surrender, and the punishment I want isn’t about shame—but healing?

There’s something unnerving about desire in recovery. You’re trained to hold your cravings up to the light: What’s underneath this? What’s it trying to soothe? And for a long time, I thought if I craved something, it must be a red flag. That wanting was dangerous. That to be safe meant to be still.

But submission doesn’t feel still.

Sometimes it feels like fire licking the inside of my ribs. Sometimes it feels like sobbing with my face pressed to the floor, heart cracked open, begging to be seen—even in the parts I’ve always tried to hide.

And sometimes it feels like compulsion. Like I’m reenacting something I promised I’d never do again.

Before I got sober, I used to let men use me because I thought that’s all I was good for. I didn’t negotiate. I didn’t speak up. I thought “please” was too much and “no” would make them leave. And honestly? I didn’t care if they left. I just didn’t want to be alone with myself.

Now, I ask to be used. I choose to give myself. And that choice feels like agency. It feels like power.

But I still wonder: Is this healthy?

Some clinicians argue that kink—especially consensual BDSM—can be healing for survivors. A 2020 article in Psychology Today highlights how “consensual submission may allow trauma survivors to reclaim control over past experiences by recontextualizing pain and surrender in a safe, structured environment.”

For many people, submission becomes a space to rewrite the narrative: I’m not helpless. I’m not broken. I’m choosing this. But the line between healing and reenactment is thin, and sometimes invisible.

Trauma therapist and educator Dr. Jamie Marich writes:

“Trauma lives in the body… and the body often returns to what it knows, even when what it knows is harm. It’s not just about what you do—it’s about whether your nervous system feels safe doing it.”

That’s the part I’m still learning. Not just to say I’m choosing it—but to feel that I am.

Because there are nights when I want to be choked, slapped, told I’m nothing. Not because it turns me on—but because it quiets everything else. Because the pain gives me focus. Because when someone is hurting me, I don’t have to do anything except endure. That’s not submission. That’s surrendering to silence.

So I check myself:

Am I playing out old patterns, or consciously engaging in new ones?

Is this desire born from wholeness—or from the part of me that still believes I’m easiest to love when I’m hurting?

Does the scene make me feel more me, or less?

And the hardest part is, the answer shifts. Sometimes I really am seeking connection, power, transformation. Sometimes, I just want to disappear in a prettier way than I used to.

I’ve ignored warning signs I knew were there. Not because I missed them. I just didn’t want to be alone.

Sometimes it felt better to be wanted in the wrong place than not wanted at all.

(What I hide, and what I wish I didn’t have to.)

I. The Invisible Interview

First dates feel like interviews where the job is “well-adjusted human with no baggage.” I smile, nod, and silently dodge every conversational landmine: “So what do you drive?” — Uber. “Want to grab drinks sometime?” — Not unless you enjoy watching someone explain that club soda is a choice. “Why’d you move back home?” — That’s… a story.

I’ve gotten good at talking around my life like it’s a broken sidewalk I don’t want anyone to trip on. What I don’t say right away: I’ve had two DUIs. I don’t have a car or a license right now. I’m in recovery, and not the shiny Instagram kind—more like the “still rebuilding, still unsure, still showing up” kind.

In The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, Catherine Gray writes, “Addiction doesn’t take prisoners—it takes hostages.”

I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to look at your own life like it’s a ransom note, wondering if you’ll ever get the whole version of yourself back.

But when you’re dating, there’s no neat way to explain all that. So I hand over the curated version instead—the resume with the red flags neatly cropped out. And it works, for a while. Until it doesn’t.

II. The Red Flags I Fold Into Origami

There’s a version of me I tell first dates about. She’s charming, a little chaotic in a “haha, don’t ask about my twenties” kind of way, and very good at pivoting the conversation when it gets too close to real.

The version I don’t share—at least not yet—is the one who’s had her license suspended, who knows the exact layout of a rehab intake office, who’s felt her stomach drop when the words court-mandated entered the chat. That version is harder to fit into a flirty little anecdote over appetizers.

So instead, I translate. I say “I don’t drive right now” like it’s a casual choice, not a consequence. I say “I had a rough year” and hope they don’t ask what I mean. I smile when I explain that I moved back home “to reset,” even though the truth is I lost everything and had to start over in a bedroom that isn’t mine.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m being dishonest, or just strategic. But the reality is, most people don’t know how to hold your mess unless they’ve been through their own. And I’ve been messy. Not in a cute, rom-com way. In a “I could’ve died” way. In a “thank god I didn’t” way.

I’ve cleaned up a lot of that mess, but the paperwork’s still in the drawer. And dating means deciding when—if ever—you open it.

III. I’m Not Ashamed—Except When I Am

I’ve done the work. I’ve gone to the meetings, the therapy, the court dates. I’ve cried over the life I wrecked and then started building something steadier in its place. I’m proud of that.

And yet—there’s a hitch in my voice every time I consider saying it out loud. Not just the facts, but the emotional weight: I used to fuck up everything I touched. Now I just try really, really hard not to.

Shame is sneaky like that. It doesn’t always scream—it whispers. It shows up in the way I let someone assume I just don’t like to drive. It coils up in my stomach when I hear someone joke about “red flag behavior” and I laugh too loudly, pretending it’s not about me.

It’s not that I think I’m a bad person anymore. I just don’t always believe someone else will wait long enough to find out I’m not. Especially when dating has turned into this endless swipe-audition for who can appear the most normal, the most effortless, the least complicated.

But I am complicated. I’m also kind, and loyal, and funny when I’m not catastrophizing. I know how to sit in someone else’s pain because I’ve had to sit in my own.

Still, there are nights when I wish I could Photoshop my past—blur the arrests, crop the rehab, throw a grainy filter over the months I disappeared from everyone’s life. Just enough so I could say this is me and not feel like I have to follow it with but don’t worry—I’m better now. Please still want me.

IV. When Honesty Feels Like a Test

I never know when to bring it up. The past, I mean.

Too early, and it feels like I’m handing them a disclaimer before I’ve even had a chance to be a person. Too late, and it feels like lying by omission—like I’ve built something on silence and just hoped it wouldn’t crack.

Honesty, when you’ve lived through hell, starts to feel like a gamble. Will they respect you more for telling the truth, or quietly put you in the “too much” pile? Will they see the effort, or only the damage?

I’ve had both. I’ve shared too soon and watched someone flinch, eyes scanning me like a bad Yelp review. I’ve waited too long and felt the shift when they found out anyway—like the air between us had been edited, and now the fine print was too big to ignore.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth explaining. Like maybe I should just let them walk away before it gets real. But then I remember what Girl Walks Out of a Bar said:

“There’s something freeing about putting it all on the table. You stop waiting to be found out.”

And I want that. I want to stop rehearsing the most palatable version of my life. I want to be known. I want someone to look at the whole, messy picture and still choose me—not out of pity, not out of obligation, but because they see something worth staying for.

V. I Don’t Need a Savior—I Just Want to Be Seen

I’m not looking for someone to fix me. I’ve done enough of that myself to know it doesn’t work that way. What I want—what I’ve always wanted—is to be allowed to show up as I am. No disclaimers, no damage control. Just… me.

It’s weird how radical that feels. To want connection that doesn’t come with performance. To date without contorting myself into someone easier to love.

But here’s the truth: my life is a little messy. I live at home. I’m rebuilding. I take my meds. I still get overwhelmed and shut down sometimes. I miss who I was before everything collapsed, and I’m also proud of the version that crawled out of it.

If I tell you that, I’m not asking you to carry it. I’m just asking you not to run.

Some girls meet their forever person in high school. They fall in love in the lunchroom, go to prom together, move in after college, get married before 30. Their life has a pace. A rhythm. It unfolds like a well-behaved story.

I didn’t get that version. I got the weird one.

The one where I learn everything the hard way. Where I spend years untangling myself from shame and craving and trauma. Where touch feels dangerous and sacred at the same time. Where I confuse wanting with being wanted. Where I come home from hookups equal parts satisfied and hollow. Where I throw up on someone during sex and then wonder if it means I’m broken or just weirdly alive.

I’m not ungrateful. I’ve learned so much. But sometimes, I still wish I’d gotten the soft start. The simple version. The safe one. The kind where your first love stays. The kind where your body is never a battlefield. The kind where your mistakes don’t become your personality.

He made me a rose out of Legos.

I remember thinking, God, I hope I don’t like him too much. I remember feeling nervous in a hopeful way, like maybe this one would be different. Not perfect—just decent. Safe. Fun. Someone who might meet me where I was.

We laughed, kissed, split a couple entrées. He opened my car door. Said thoughtful things. Said he was serious about dating. Said he liked my brain, not just my body. Said a lot of things.

And then, after we slept together—after he made the first move, after we kissed like teenagers and I let myself soften into it—he texted me the next day. Said it wasn’t about judging me. Said he just didn’t like that he had become the kind of guy who has sex on a first date.

As if I was a mirror he didn’t like looking into.

As if I was the mistake and he was the one who needed to get back on track.

I wanted to scream. Or maybe just roll my eyes hard enough to rupture a blood vessel. He promised I wouldn’t regret it. He promised he wasn’t that kind of guy. And then he did exactly what that kind of guy always does: he blamed his discomfort on me and walked away clean.

I’m tired of being someone else’s line in the sand.

Their moment of weakness. Their moral dilemma. Their, “That’s not who I am,” right after becoming exactly that.

It’s always so civil, too. So gentle. So kind. Like if they phrase it nicely enough, I won’t feel used. Like there’s dignity in being the girl who understands.

But I don’t want to understand anymore.

I want someone who doesn’t need to backpedal his way out of intimacy. Someone who won’t make promises just to feel better about breaking them. Someone who doesn't turn my body into a confession booth and then call it a one-time lapse in judgment.

It wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice. We made it.