Women can’t fall in love

Why I’ve relinquished romance

Lately I have been normalizing the idea of a life without romance. 

This is not a melodramatic revelation induced by some failed talking stage. No, this comes after a lifetime of carefully contrasting my inclinations to cultural expectations and realizing, I simply cannot be the beautiful, meticulously manicured bride of my family's dreams. 

Throughout my reflections on this I’ve realized that really, I could. I don’t have to love a man to marry him. If it was so important that I wed and gave birth, I could find a way there. But in all my time thinking about this I can’t help but see that no matter how this goes for me, it will be painfully female. 

Only daughters marry against their own self interest. Only daughters relinquish love in the name of familial peace. At what point in my female socialization did my humanity fade away in order to make space for the maintenance of group dynamics? 

When a man, old and saggy, who’s maybe rich or maybe an asshole, is about to die, the only consistent thing beside him is a woman. He enters the world and is grasped by his mother, then dies grasped by his daughter. In all his quests, in all his self actualization, a woman has been there to ensure his clothes are clean and he’s well fed. Someone told that man to go out there and find himself, someone told his mother and daughter to take care of him. 

My birth has suspended me to the latter. So no amount of faraway callings can pull me from my duty. My role as the world's caretaker is an irrevocable one. 

Maybe one day I'll live in a suburban single-family home. Having accepted a small moissanite engagement ring and hosted a mid-budget mediterranean inspired wedding a few years prior. I’ll be pregnant and doing laundry, matching my husband's right sock to their left one. I will look within and find not happiness but a sense of accomplishment. I’d be totally and entirely woman, a holy trifecta of perfect daughter, wife and mother.

Really, I don’t resent my fate. Not any more than the sun resents shining. There are my romantic aspirations then there are the aspirations of those around me. I can only fulfill one and as soon as I was born a girl the case was closed. So why be angry? Anger happens when freedom is owed. I can not be entitled to something that was never offered to me.