Your victimhood is not romantic

& "i'm broken" is not the bid for connection that you think it is

I’m watching a woman on The Bachelor reduce herself and call it romantic. I’m watching her play a role that I’ve watched myself play before. I’m getting so worked up, I have to pause the TV and rant to my roommate.

We do this often. Reality TV is never just reality tv in a household of women. It’s a confessional. It’s a therapy session. It’s fertile ground for psychoanalyzing other people. Usually, I can safely judge the characters from a distance. Every once in a while, I see past versions of myself in them and I want to scream.

When this happens, I feel so badly that the characters are playing out these versions on television while we judge them. I feel a strong urge to shake them out of a certain slumber. I know I sound high and mighty. That’s fine.

Let’s leave the woman unnamed because I see no reason to bash her. I want her to leave this process more empowered than when she came in and I don’t think that starts with slander written about her online. And let me be clear, that is not what this is meant to be.

It’s nearing the end of the show, which means the trauma dumping has ramped up to an all time high. The Bachelor feeds off of this cycle. You must trauma dump in order to be chosen. I have literally seen people get sent home because they didn’t rip out their insides and lay them bare on the table they’re eating fake dinner at.

The woman is holding back tears and saying how hard it is for her to open up. Then the woman is saying, verbatim, “i’m broken” as she lays out her past. This makes me so viscerally angry, I find myself aggressively saying “no.you’re.not! no.you’re.not!” because I know what comes next.

I know, we’re about to play out the victim/savior dynamic. And I know it must feel very good in the moment. She’s feeling protected and cared for and he’s feeling needed. I also know I’m about to sound very unsympathetic. But here’s the thing.

I’ve done this. I’ve been the girl that identified so fiercely with my victimhood that I led with it. I shrugged into relationships with a helplessness I thought would bring us closer. I thought this was what true vulnerability looked like. I thought:

I should lay it all out there - rip my chest open and place every insecurity on the table for this man. I should be explicit in my hurt. I should leave out no details. It doesn’t need to be earned. It should be freely given. This is what it means to be emotionally available and honest.

But when I actually reflect on why I was telling the other person “i’m broken,” it was because I felt like I needed them to prove to me otherwise. I thought:

If I can tell this person about my brokenness, maybe they can fix it. They can show up for me in the way that all of those fictional lovers do. They can say some magic string of words or have some magic look in their eye or swoop in right when i’m on death’s door because they had some spide-y sense that I was in danger. And this state of concern and care will prove to me once and for all that I am not, in fact, broken.

Spoiler alert: that never happened.

Even after I got the “right” response to my “brokenness,” I was left feeling like something wasn’t quite right. Like this wasn’t a truly safe container and we were both playing out roles we had seen on television.

I’ve had responses that felt like they might fix me in the moment, from multiple people. I’ve had moments that I thought were wildly romantic in my life.

A partner listening to my traumatic story, staring deep into my eyes and holding me as I cried, promising they would never hurt me (A promise that, while it comes from a good place, is ultimately a lie. No one, especially in love, can promise you that.)

A partner standing up for me when I felt like I couldn’t stand up for myself.

A partner taking care of me when I was sick.

A partner guiding my breathing during a panic attack.

And I’m not saying that these things aren’t/can’t be romantic in a certain context. I’m very grateful that I’ve known tender moments of love in my life. But the “romantic” moments that hinged on and amplified my victimhood only left me with a sour pit in my stomach when it was all over.

I’ve had a man tell me that he lied to me habitually because he thought I was too fragile for the truth. This is not romantic. And while I’m not ultimately going to take on fault for his inability to face my hurt, i’m also not going to identify romance based on the metric of my fragility anymore.

The more you think that being saved from your victimhood is romantic, the more you will subconsciously seek out situations that perpetuate your victimhood. That’s my suspicion, anyway. I’m not a licensed professional, who am I to say.

I am not saying we should avoid vulnerability. If you are traumatized, you can and should say that. But please, for the love of all that is good and holy, fight the urge to lean into the damsel in distress archetype. It is a trap.

I know it’s painted as the pinnacle of romance in everything we’ve ever fucking consumed. I can promise you, it’s not. You can invite someone into your life and your mind without positioning yourself as this small, fragile thing in need of saving. I don’t have to build my identity around my pain, and I won’t.

These men cannot save you, they can barely pay their bills or wipe their ass. This applies to you if you’re not dating men too. But like…especially if you’re dating men.