My Stupid, Developed Personality
hey friends—I have a stand up show in Philly May 2nd, please come! And now, enjoy this essay.
“Don’t get into a relationship until you’re 24 and have already developed your personality,” my high school history teacher used to tell us. We collectively scoffed at the idea; we were 16 and unwilling to wait another eight years—50% of our lives!—for access to what seemed like the best thing in the whole entire world.
I didn’t take her advice. By 24, I’d had three boyfriends. Three turned into five, then seven, then ten. After each one, I felt like I knew myself just a little bit better, like I had a clearer idea of exactly what I wasn’t looking for. By the time I met my fiancé, I was 31 and coming off about four abrupt breakups, each of which was progressively more depressing. I knew a lot about what I wasn’t looking for.
On our first date, he was quiet. I feared I’d put him off by being too loud, by showing too much of the personality I’d spent 31 years developing. I made fun of him for ordering a Ginger Ale (why? There are so many more embarrassing things!). But he made me laugh out loud, which I considered a sufficient but not necessary condition for granting a second date. As he put on his coat, I took a swing and asked if he’d like to go out again. “Yes, definitely,” he said.
“I think dating in your 30s is impossible,” a friend said a few days later, following an abrupt breakup. “The way I organized my schedule reminded him of his toxic ex.” My eyes rolled back so far in my head that they almost fell out. Dating in your 30s was impossible.
Dating got harder because people got harder. After each breakup, I began to wonder if anyone was emotionally available anymore, or if we’d all been so damaged by someone in our past that a healthy relationship was infeasible.
For some exes, the damage was visible. There was the man who’d had his marriage proposal rejected a month earlier (I knew that one was a long shot). The man who suspiciously didn’t invite me to his Super Bowl party, only to later admit it was because his ex was going (I just saw on Instagram that they’re engaged—congrats!). The man who told me a week after our breakup that he still felt hung up on the woman he dated right before me (blindsided).
It wasn’t just emotional baggage. It started to feel like everyone had a specific way they wanted their dishwasher loaded, or a specific bedtime ritual that could not be interrupted. Everyone had already seen all the shows I wanted to watch; everyone already knew what six recipes they wanted to cook.
I became more difficult, too. My list of deal-breakers expanded. I declined dates with guys who’d slept with any of my friends (and I have a lot of friends, and to be honest…a lot of them have had a lot of sex). I grew less patient of anyone whose political views did not match my own. I became comfortable being alone. I found a lot to like about my single life, a lot to miss when I gave it up.
I knew people found love at any age, but I began to wonder if I’d gotten unlucky with timing. As a woman coming of age in the 21st century, I had been taught not to give up any part of myself for a man. I didn’t spend my 20s learning and growing only to have a man come in ungrow me!!! It was a problem of personality. Not good personalities or bad personalities—just too much personality. There was more to all of us, which meant there was so much more to dislike. More flaws to accept. Or refuse to accept.
To say I had almost “given up” sounds depressing. By my early 30s, I had almost come to accept that I could be happy alone; that a big, adventurous, exciting life awaited me whether or not I had a partner.
Then, I met someone. Isn’t that how it always goes? I’ve had an LSAT test prep book sitting on my coffee table for about six years, but if I ever become instantly famous, I’m telling everyone I was “just about to quit.” The relationship was so easy, in the beginning, because he didn’t seem hung up on anyone. Maybe we were in the clear. Maybe he was emotionally whole, or at least, relatively so. Maybe there were no secret detested exes dictating his relationship preferences. Maybe it would be easy.
But I was wrong. Obviously. Our first big fight put a crack in my plans; this wasn't going to be seamless. It was a fight about whether or not we’d be able to meld our lives into one, which seemed like a daunting task, as our lives were bigger than they’d been ten years ago. Relationships are impossible in our 30s, I thought.
As the fight wore on, the idea of breaking up seemed easy, logistically. I had a breakup routine down by then. I knew what brand of ice cream I needed, I knew where to pick up in Gilmore Girls, I knew all the words to Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album. This is what I was comfortable with—relationships that ended. It was easier to walk away than try to fit two lives together.
My high school teacher’s words came back to me. Wait until you're 24 and your personality is developed. I understood her point. In theory, I want to be exactly who I am, and find a partner who loves me unconditionally for me. But who is me? I’m a moving target—how could anyone even figure me out enough to love me, especially when I’m becoming more “me” every day? Besides, what even is a “developed” personality? Are any of us finished? And doesn’t time just create more baggage to sort through?
So, maybe the trick wasn’t to wait until 24 to start a relationship. Maybe the trick was to only start a relationship before 24. Maybe relationships were so impossible that the only viable strategy was to find someone when you were still too young to not think too deeply about any of it. Maybe by the time your personality was developed, it was too late. I was easier to get along with, once. I used to accommodate more. Besides, if I had found my life partner in my early 20s and they changed my personality, how could I regret it? I’d be an entirely different person. Alternative timelines don’t regret the version of us they don’t have access to. I felt jealous of people who found love in their early 20s. I should have done that.
We reconvened a few days later. It seemed futile to keep trying. “All you know is relationships that have ended,” he pointed out. “If you’re looking for reasons to believe it’s doomed to fail, you’ll find one.” Now, it seemed, my damage was overtaking his.
So, we gave it another shot. As we put our fractured relationship back together, I felt grateful, for the very first time, to be in my 30s. For my years and years of failed romances. It had grown easy for me to walk away from something bad; I knew another bad relationship was just around the corner. But by the same logic, it was almost impossible for me to walk away from something good. I knew another relationship like ours was not just around the corner, because I’d checked all those corners already. And while baggage was inevitable—more accumulating every year—acting on that baggage wasn’t. So, maybe my history teacher had a point. I’m glad I met him when I was older than 24. When I’d lived enough life to know that.
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