Fear, Friends, and Falling in Love

by brooke harrison

I’ve had a fear of losing myself in a relationship since I was little. Depending on someone to a level that consumes me or ever letting someone dictate my life are on the long list of reasons I’ve only let myself be in one monogamous relationship ( If we want to call that three-month blimp a relationship). Yet even then, I was constantly paranoid that I was spending too much time with him instead of on school and my friends. 

That fear of codependency and consumption has never seeped into my adult friendships; I don’t feel the need to be on guard for control. My true friends matter as much as family to me, and when I felt like I was prioritizing a man over them, it made me feel like I had become the type of person–the type of woman–I was always terrified of becoming. This is partially because of the unspoken/spoken rule (especially in femme friendships) that it’s extremely bad form (some could argue anti-feminist) to choose your partner (especially if they’re a man) over your friends. 

While this rule has been preached so many times before, I still see women I know abandon who they are and those they call their “besties” for their man.

Honestly, I don't know if a perfect balance exists between pals and partners because I think it all depends on personal priorities. As much as I’m sure we’d all love to split our time evenly between everyone we care about, it's just not realistic. 

At some point, even if it's subconsciously, we choose who matters more to show up for.

Love is endless and infinite, but (sadly) time is not. How we choose to spend our time and who we choose to spend it with can show how much value we give to that thing or person. 

For me, it always felt like a pretty easy choice to choose platonic love over romantic love. Even when I would only spend weekends with my ex, it felt like too much time away from my friends in the dorms. When they confirmed those thoughts and told me how they felt like they would barely see me, it meant more than any “I miss you” I had ever gotten from him.

I minorly spiraled about if I had become the horrific stereotype of the girl who gets into her first relationship and forgets about her friends; it was only a few weeks later that I broke up with him.

This hierarchy I’ve created with friendships and relationships could be attributed to the fact that I’ve never been with someone romantically who has made me feel as cared for, as entertained, as seen, or as comfortable as my friends have.

Now, I can’t entirely blame my ex for why I never felt the way I wanted to in our relationship. I’m the one who chose to be with someone who I knew wasn't as smart or as funny as me, didn't know how to have deep conversations, was obsessed with his and our appearance more than the actual quality of the relationship, and who love bombed me into being together with him after hanging out only three or four times. But what I truly blame is the fear that controlled my love life and led me to be with a person like that.

That fear of attachment is why I chose someone that could never really make me happy. Sure, getting that attention was nice, but I knew that he wasn’t my dream person. The fear of letting anyone, especially a man, into my heart like that is why I still choose people I know I’ll never truly end up with.

What scares me the most is that for how much I know I want to have a partner that I’m connected with inside and out, I don’t know if I’ll ever let myself get to that point. To get there, I would have to let go and trust a partner (at all) to be there for me and let them try to understand all the good and not-so-good parts of myself. I would have to make peace with being vulnerable and putting myself out there even if I know there’s a possibility of rejection; I would have to have the courage that my friends have shown me and trust that someone really could fall in love with all of me.

So how can I judge my friends for how they prioritize their relationships when I don’t know what it's like to let yourself feel that type of love? I can get on my soapbox and scream about how female friendship is a life-long bond that would easily outlast and outweigh any hetero-romantic relationship (which has been my experience thus far), but the reality is that I don’t know for sure if that’s true (my grandma might’ve just rolled in her grave). 

Until I actually experience making the decision to choose between someone I love and someone I’m in love with, I don’t think I can fairly declare any absolutes about friendship vs relationships.