Perché sono sempre una riserva e mai una fidanzata?

In my 28 years and a lot of dating, I have never had a serious relationship. Somehow I always ended up being something in between—not a one-night-stand, not a short fling, but definitely not a labeled girlfriend.

I believe I would be a great catch because I have always been faithful, I am a hard-working person, people say I am funny and smart, and I am relatively pretty (if that is really important), but all of my “boyfriends” replaced me with their “vanilla” girlfriends whom they labeled immediately and gave them everything I always wanted.

In realtà, mi sarei accontentata anche di meno di quello che hanno dato alle loro eventuali fidanzate, ma non hanno mai nemmeno provato a darmi qualcosa.

Being something undefined is the worst thing because you don’t have the right to object to him about anything since you are not a real girlfriend of his. When people ask you if you have anyone, you don’t know how to reply to that, and the worst part is that you always live in fear.

È la paura di perdere quella persona e di non essere in grado di mostrare le proprie emozioni dopo, perché tutti, anche i tuoi migliori amici, te lo diranno: “Well, he was never your boyfriend, so technically he did not cheat on you; he had an absolute right to do that.”

Your friends—especially the ones who were never in that situation and who always had long-term relationships, labeled from the beginning—will never understand that this hurts sometimes even more because you are left with the eternal questioning: “If we had been together properly, things might have been different now. He might have realized how great I was, and he might have even proposed to me already.”

Another thing that always kept me seriously questioning myself was: “What did this new girl do exactly to make him commit?”

“What were her techniques? She is not that much prettier, and I have heard that she is not that much smarter or funnier than me, according to his friends who actually liked me.”

Oh, il costante confronto che mi faceva impazzire. Continuavo a pensare e ripensare a ogni mia mossa e a ogni mia parola. Ho anche perseguitato lei e lui, e in realtà ho persino finto di essere lei e che lui mi avrebbe trattato come aveva trattato lei.

The day I decided it needed to stop was actually a really long time after that—a year and a half to be exact.

Mi sono resa conto che tutto ciò che faceva era probabilmente mettere se stessa al primo posto e non pensare troppo a tutto. Avevo questo schema; ce l'ho ancora. Ogni volta che incontro qualcuno, continuo a chiedermi: “When is he going to leave me for another one who is smarter and maybe even sneakier in her plans than me?”
E mi sembrava quasi che quegli uomini avessero fiutato la mia paura e quindi mi avessero abbandonato.

I don’t care anymore if someone is going to leave and not commit to me anymore. I am done with it. I am turning myself over to my inner self. I want to become successful, and I no longer want to overthink and plan everything when it comes to men.

I am not pleasing anyone anymore, and I am not settling for breadcrumbs anymore. I would rather be alone and sleep tight because those “relationships” before always left great fear in me.

Non ho mai dormito bene. E se qualcuno mi dice ancora che devo fare un piano, essere un passo avanti, e che gli uomini sono in realtà facili da capire, che ogni donna può avere qualsiasi uomo che vuole se solo pianifica le cose con attenzione, beh, gli chiudo la bocca.

I don’t want to be tactical about anything. I want to be a complete person with myself, and if someone shows up along the road, I want things straight and clear and honest from the beginning.