Porque é que sou sempre um apoio e nunca uma namorada?

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.

Na verdade, eu ter-me-ia contentado com menos do que eles deram às suas eventuais namoradas, mas eles nunca tentaram dar-me nada.

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.

É o medo de perder essa pessoa e não ser capaz de mostrar as suas emoções depois, porque toda a gente, mesmo os seus melhores amigos, lhe vão dizer: “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, a comparação constante que me deixava louca. Estava sempre a pensar e a pensar demasiado em cada movimento que fazia e em cada palavra que dizia. Também a perseguia a ela e a ele, e cheguei mesmo a fingir que era ela e que ele me trataria como a tratava a ela.

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

Apercebi-me de que tudo o que ela fazia era provavelmente pôr-se em primeiro lugar e não pensar demasiado em tudo. Eu tinha este padrão; ainda tenho. Sempre que conheço alguém, pergunto-me: “When is he going to leave me for another one who is smarter and maybe even sneakier in her plans than me?”
E quase senti que aqueles homens podiam ter sentido o cheiro do meu medo e, por isso, deixaram-me.

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.

Nunca dormi bem. E se alguém me disser outra vez que tenho de fazer um plano, estar um passo à frente, e que os homens são realmente fáceis de compreender, que todas as mulheres podem ter o homem que quiserem se planearem as coisas com cuidado, bem, vou calar essa boca.

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.