Recovering Romantic

On falling out of love with the idea of love, and falling in love with yourself instead.

Hey there,

Have you ever romanticized the idea of a relationship so much that you eventually became everything you were looking for in a partner?

Because I have.

Hi, I'm Kaitlin, and I'm a recovering romantic.

Someone who used to love the idea of love so much that I was willing to accept the bare minimum of it. Someone who spent years imagining what love was supposed to look like, how it was supposed to feel, and who I was supposed to become once I finally found it. Someone who, if I'm being completely honest, didn't have nearly enough love for herself.

And now?

I don't need anyone.

Which sounds a little dramatic, I know.

But I think there's a difference between not needing someone and not wanting someone. And somewhere along the way, I had to learn that difference.

For most of my life, I was in love with the idea of love.

Not necessarily the relationships I was in, but the possibility of what they could become.

I romanticized the potential.

The future.

The person someone might become if I just loved them enough.

I convinced myself that love was supposed to be patient, understanding, forgiving, and willing to make sacrifices. And while I still believe those things can be true, I forgot one very important detail.

Love was supposed to feel good for me, too.

I spent so much time imagining what my life would look like once I found the right person that I stopped paying attention to what my life actually looked like. I was waiting for a relationship to make everything feel complete. And somewhere in that waiting, I fell out of love with my own life.

Strangely enough, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Because when I finally stopped pouring all my energy into the idea of someone else, I had no choice but to figure out what to do with all that love.

So I started giving it to myself.

And let me tell you, I had a lot of catching up to do.

I started making decisions based on what I wanted.

I learned how to enjoy my own company.

I started going places alone, trying new things, building friendships, and creating routines that made me happy.

I stopped waiting for someone to take me on dates and started taking myself on them.

I stopped waiting for someone to build a beautiful life with me and started building one myself.

And somewhere between all those little decisions, something shifted.

I realized I wasn't waiting for my life to begin anymore.

I was already living it.

And I loved it.

I still do.

Which brings me to the slightly inconvenient part of becoming a recovering romantic. What happens when you finally build a life you love so much that you're not particularly interested in letting someone disrupt it?

Because that's where I am.

I used to be the girl who could meet someone, have one decent conversation, and immediately start wondering if he was my future husband. Now I can have a perfectly lovely conversation with a man and go home thinking about how excited I am to sleep in my own bed.

Growth, I guess.

But seriously, I think my relationship with love has shifted from one extreme to another. If romanticism exists on a scale of one to ten, I spent most of my life somewhere around a twelve. Now, some days, I feel like I'm sitting comfortably at a two. And I'm learning that maybe I don't need to rush to find the middle.

Maybe it's okay to take a break from love. Maybe it's okay to have mixed feelings about dating. Maybe it's okay to want a relationship someday while also being perfectly content without one today. And maybe, just maybe, it's okay to admit that after spending years wanting to be chosen, being the one who gets to choose feels pretty fucking good.

I used to love love.

And I think I still do.

I just understand it differently now.

I no longer believe that loving someone means accepting less than I deserve. I don't believe that chemistry automatically means compatibility. I don't believe that potential is a substitute for effort. And I definitely don't believe that being in a relationship is inherently better than being single.

My expectations are higher now.

Not because I expect someone to be perfect, but because I've learned what it feels like to be genuinely happy with my own life. And I don't want to lose that.

I want love to be something that adds to the life I've created, not something that requires me to abandon parts of myself to make room for it. I want a partner who has their own passions, friendships, ambitions, and sense of identity. Someone who wants to build something together without expecting either of us to stop being the people we worked so hard to become.

And until that person comes along?

I'm good.

Really good, actually.

I think that's what being a recovering romantic means to me.

It's not about becoming cynical. It's not about convincing myself that I don't believe in love anymore. And it's certainly not about pretending I don't occasionally miss the idea of having someone to share my life with.

It's about learning that love doesn't have to be the center of my universe to be something beautiful. It's about allowing myself to want love without needing it to validate the life I'm living. And most importantly, it's about remembering that the relationship I have with myself is one I will be in for the rest of my life. So, I might as well make it a good one.

I'm still figuring all of this out.

I still have moments when I romanticize a stranger, imagine an entire future after a five-minute conversation, or wonder whether I'm being too picky.

Old habits die hard.

But I'm learning.

And as a recovering romantic, I hope to share some of those lessons along the way.

The good ones, the uncomfortable ones, and probably a few mildly embarrassing dating stories.

For now, if I could give one piece of advice, it would be this:

Choose yourself.

Not because other people aren't worth loving.

Not because relationships aren't beautiful.

But because the right relationship should never require you to stop choosing yourself.

And if you're somewhere between loving love and wanting absolutely nothing to do with it?

Welcome to the club.

I think we're going to be just fine.

All my love,
Kaitlin