A recent British Vogue article titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” has gone viral and elicited a very important dialogue across social media. Chanté Joseph’s opinion piece explored the nuance of heterosexual relationships in modern times, with more and more women hiding their partners online amid a shift in viewing singlehood as more empowering.
While it was once a woman’s highest achievement to be in a relationship, the social stigma has done a complete 180. It’s almost a bummer to learn that a woman is in a relationship, as those who are single tend to carry a much more enticing allure. They’re choosing a life of independence, of total self-pursuit, while women in partnerships are viewed as settling for antiquated traditions, as if they’re dimming the full potential of themselves.
In response, many referenced dating as a “humiliation ritual,” citing that they live much more confident and colorful lives being single. However, as the discourse continues to be had, one could argue that having a boyfriend isn’t embarrassing if you aren’t boring.
What Makes Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing
There’s a lot of truth to be extracted from everything Joseph’s article exposed. Many women who are single tend to lead vibrant, creative, and explorative lives in comparison to those who aren’t. However, it’s important to recognize the choice made within that. Any woman, partnered or not, has the opportunity to invest in her hobbies, to push her boundaries stylistically, to go on soul-expanding solo trips, and to tend to her female friendships with intention and presence. It just so happens that many women in relationships don’t necessarily make that choice, and there lies the problem.
Being in a loving, healthy relationship is nothing near embarrassing. If being in your partnership brings stability, joy, expansion, and vitality into your life, that is objectively something to be celebrated. However, if you are losing yourself and the outline of who you are outside of your relationship, that’s when the comfort can become your poison.
Being in love is an intoxicating feeling. You can want your partner to be part of every waking moment. Why solo travel when it can be a baecation? Why cut your hair when your boyfriend fell in love with you looking a certain way? Why go out and hang with the girls when you’re so cozy cuddled on the couch together? Why sign up for that class when it takes time away from being with your partner? It’s when you get lazy about nurturing your autonomy and interrogating who you are, what you want and why you want it that your relationship can eat at your womanhood. Suddenly, your entire social media grid becomes a parade of images of you and your partner. Suddenly, your entire identity is consumed by your relationship. While you disappear into your union, it can seem like the women around you who aren’t in relationships are shapeshifting through expressions of self and dancing in the playground of life. However, that’s not just because they choose not to be partnered; it’s because they still choose to be the center of their universe.
Two Whole People
Relationships shouldn’t be about splitting yourselves in half, but rather, arriving as two whole, entire beings and continuing to remold yourselves alongside one another. Sure, building a home with someone elicits change and compromise. But that should never be at the expense of you leading an independent life. If you’ve chosen a boyfriend who is in full support of you being the loudest expression of yourself, there’s nothing embarrassing about that. It’s your choice to make sure that who you are as a girlfriend does not overshadow who you are as a creative, as a daughter, as a friend, as a woman navigating earth for the first time with limitless potential.
Joseph’s Vogue piece brought to the forefront a conversation most certainly worth having, though it’s much more nuanced than that. It isn’t embarrassing to be in a relationship; it’s embarrassing if you think that relationship is all that matters.