Stop Making Your Relationship Your Entire Personality

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With almost ninety-thousand followers on Tiktok, I’m what the kids call a “micro-influencer.” As a result, I spend countless hours a day scrolling through dating-related content to use as discussion material for my own page.

Last week, a young woman who’d recently begun dating someone checked in after spending a weekend with her new man. Across three videos, she managed to use the phrase “my boyfriend” at least seven times. 

“The whole weekend my boyfriend kept making fun of me because…”

“My boyfriend decided to make me dinner.”

“My boyfriend and I watched House of Dragons.”

There don’t appear to be privacy concerns as she’d already revealed his name and photo. She’d even soft-launched them on Instagram. So then why not just refer to him by his name? Why not say, “We had dinner” or “We watched House of Dragons”? After a certain point, those kinds of repeated unnecessary mentions become tedious.

And hurtful.

Before I go any further, I’ll state for those wondering: Yes. I’m in a long-term relationship. This pet peeve is not borne from jealousy. It’s one I developed after watching my sister get her heart ripped from her chest by an ex-boyfriend.

My sister and I were about ten years apart. We were also the only two of five daughters that didn’t marry and have children. I was very unlucky when it came to dating. Years of unresolved trauma had me pursuing and obsessing over unavailable men. My sister and I spoke on the phone regularly. We mostly talked about television and celebrity gossip. She spent her nights home alone watching The Golden Girls or Veep. She was long-term single, a result of having her heart shattered one Christmas Eve years earlier by a man named Michael.

Silent Night

Michael had promised to propose the night at our holiday family get-together. The afternoon of the party, my sister went to get her nails done. When we got home, she pressed the Play button on her answering machine (it was the early nineties) to hear her soon-to-be fiance tell her he’d see her later and that he had a special gift for her. My sister’s face beamed while my stomach pitched. 

There was something about his tone of voice — a slight catch— that set off an alarm in my head. I went home to my Dad’s house later and told both him and my older sister something about Michael’s message wasn’t right. 

I stood at the countertop watching my sister make my father a sandwich. He sat at the table next to her reading The Boston Globe.

“He’s not going to show,” I said. “Michael isn’t going to show up.”

My sister spun around, glaring at me. “You are so negative,” she said. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have someone.”

My cheeks burned at her accusation. She knew I’d never had a boyfriend and how inadequate I felt because of it. 

My father looked up from his paper. “Why do you say that?” he asked. He wore an inscrutable expression but the concern in his voice was unmistakable.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. Tears brimmed in my eyes from my sister’s hurtful comment. “I just know.”

My father and I shared many traits. One in particular: We could sense the slightest shifts in someone’s energy. We both excelled at identifying and reading micro-expressions. We often couldn’t quantify it, leading both of us to keep our observations to ourselves. This one I couldn’t keep a secret.

That night at the party, I watched my sister go from cousin to cousin telling them how she was getting engaged that night.

My cousin Angela rolled her eyes. “Oh, Pamela,” she said with fake concern. “Don’t get your hopes up like that.” 

My sister stood there, speechless, her jaw hanging on its hinge. She looked like a child who’d just been told Santa didn’t exist.

I stood behind my sister, my stare boring a hole in Angela’s face. “You don’t have to be such an asshole,” I snapped. “You’re not even a cousin. You’re an in-law. Remember that.”

I hustled my sister into the back room to prevent her from telling more people about her impending engagement. It was nine o’clock. Her boyfriend was to arrive at any minute. Every time she heard the doorbell, she jumped from her seat, her face buoyant. Then she’d hear someone welcome another relative and sit back down. This went on for a half-an-hour. She’d pop up and plop down. The light in her eyes dimmed each time. 

By ten o’clock and with no phone call explaining his lateness the reality began to set in. He wasn’t coming. The sister who’d scolded me earlier and I exchanged glances. This was no time to brag that my Oracle-like prediction was coming true. In that moment, we were both focused on our crestfallen sister. 

It was days before her cowardly boyfriend contacted her to apologize. It didn’t matter. The damage to her self-esteem was done. He’d not just broken her heart but humiliated her. She was never the same.

Thank You For Being A Friend

In the decades after, she and I would sit on the phone and chat. Every now and then she’d ask if I were dating anyone. I’d tell her no. She’d change the subject. It’s my belief my sister took comfort in the both of us being alone. I think it made the shame she carried since that fateful Christmas Eve a little lighter.

Four years ago, I met my boyfriend on OkCupid. (Yes, dating apps do work.) Things with us chugged along nicely, a departure from the drama-filled toxic relationships of my past. When things became serious, I told my sister.

“I’m glad you’re happy, honey,” she’d said, her voice trailing off. “Maybe I’ll meet someone, too. It’s not too late, right?”

She was sixty with a myriad of mental and physical health problems and rarely left her apartment. 

“Right,” I said. “It’s never too late.” I believed that then and I believe it now.

From then on, I rarely brought up my relationship when speaking to her. She’d developed a habit of taking things he’d said or done and twisting them to be more nefarious than they were. I didn’t have to ask her why she was doing that. I knew.

I was the Dorothy to her Rose and I was slipping away. Now she was the only sister without a relationship. Hearing me happy was a reminder of the events that led her to hide away in her apartment to watch reruns of classic eighties sitcoms. From time to time, she’d bring up the prospect of finding someone to marry. There was still a glimmer of hope in her heart. 

This past January, my sister died unexpectedly. She left behind an unrequited wish to find love. A few weeks after her death, a neighbor in her complex wrote a comment in the online guestbook at her funeral.

I became friends with Pam after meeting her at the pool in our complex last summer. I immediately liked her attitude and sense of humor. She was truly a wonderful lady and I am happy to have been her friend for even a short time. I am so sorry for your loss and I miss her very much.

Could he have been Her Person? I’ll never know. I am, however, grateful she had people in her life that saw her as the personable and kind woman she was.

Know Your Audience

Repeatedly injecting mentions of your partner when you could as easily say their name or leave them out entirely comes off as smug. Like you’re rubbing other people’s faces in your happiness. To be clear, I’m not talking about someone who occasionally brings up something they did with their partner or who shares details of their relationship with friends. Nor am I directing this as people in the throes of new love. That’s when you’re supposed to gush. Gush away!

With this piece, I’m speaking to the person who makes their relationship their entire personality. They can’t post anything without sledgehammering “my wife” or “my boyfriend” into their updates. They tell stories that aren’t stories at all but rather opportunities to remind their audience they are no longer single.

While this behavior can be exhibited by men, it’s more prevalent among women. We’re groomed to seek male validation. Being able to say a man picked us still comes with a certain cache. Regularly, I feel the compulsion to throw a mention of my relationship into a Tiktok or essay. As someone who’s supposed to be an expert of sorts, it helps to have social proof your advice works. Doing it gives me an icky feeling I’m letting the patriarchy dictate what makes me and my words valuable.

I’m very careful about how and in what context I discuss my love life. I’m superstitious. I spent years writing about my dating failures. That decision proved to be a form of self-sabotage. I wasn’t ready to be a healthy partner. (Chronic oversharing about your love life will keep you single. I promise you that.) I don’t want to tempt fate. Moreover, I do not want to unwittingly scratch open another person’s scab. 

By all means, be excited when you meet someone new. Today’s dating culture is trash. If you can find someone that treats you the way you deserve to be treated, you’ve earned the right to brag a little. 

Just read the room first.