The Women Who Say Yes When They Mean No

I’ve just listened to Lily Allen’s new album West End Girl, and wow.

What an exorcism of truth - an unflinching confession of marriage infidelity disguised as “open relating.”

This comes right after finishing All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert,  another piece of art that knocked me back with its truth and medicine.

And so, as the themes of relating, attachment, fidelity, and needs swirl through my own life right now, I find myself sitting with what Lily Allen sings about so potently:

Her husband’s request for an open relationship.

Her saying yes, even though every fibre of her body said no.

Her attempt to be the “modern woman,” the cool one, the spiritual one, the one who could handle it.

But as the album reveals, it was all a lie,  a story her husband told to give himself permission to be promiscuous.
To keep her compliant while he acted out his addictions.

Now, what I want to speak about isn’t open relationships themselves.

I know they can work for some, I’ve met people who practice them with deep integrity and love.

What I want to speak about are those of us who say yes when we really mean no.

Who agree to things we’re not ready for - because the modern world tells us that to be “evolved” is to be “cool with that.”

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Due to the nature of my early childhood trauma, I spent most of my life seeking validation through others - especially through men.
And because trauma attracts trauma, I often sought that validation from people who couldn’t give it to me.

People who unknowingly perpetuated my inner child’s belief that she was unwanted, unchosen, unworthy.

Throughout my dating life, I found myself falling again and again for men who wanted to “keep it casual,” “be open,” or “see other people.”

And time after time, I said yes.

“Yes, sure! I can be open. I can be chill. I can be cool.”

But never,  not once,  was I actually okay.

It didn’t matter if they were a fleeting lover or someone I’d known for months.

If I had already developed an attachment, if my heart was hooked - which happens very easily for me, then the moment they were intimate with someone else, I shattered.

And do you know who I blamed?
Myself.

I told myself I wasn’t healed enough.
Too needy. Too much.

Yes, I have needs.

I have always had needs.

But because I was so used to having those needs unmet, I became an expert at self-abandonment,  twisting myself into shapes just to keep the other person close.

Because deep down, I believed that proximity to love was safer than the loneliness of being left.

But it’s not true.

It’s never been true.

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Some of the men I dated were good men, bewildered when the woman who said she was “fine with it” ended up sobbing in the streets of Lisbon.

Others were cruel - men who brought another woman home in front of me “to teach me a lesson.”

It doesn’t matter who they were or what they did.

The pattern was always the same: I was trying to control the uncontrollable.

To shape my behaviour to earn love, when the one I needed to protect all along was my little one.

Again and again and again, I have abandoned her.

_________________________

So what I want to say is this:

While open relating can be sacred and beautiful for some, for those of us with trauma histories, it might never feel safe.

And that gets to be okay.

You get to have needs.

You get to want safety, consistency, devotion.

You get to put yourself, and your little one, first.

And no, I won’t tell you that if you “choose yourself” the right person will come along.

Because that’s just another illusion, another way we make our healing transactional.

If we’re going to choose ourselves, we do it for us.

Not for the outcome.

Not to manifest someone else.

But because our peace, our wholeness, our sanity, are worth it.

The outcome is uncontrollable, because life is uncontrollable.

And maybe some day we’ll truly see that that’s the most beautiful thing of all.

In service of Truth and Love
Chloe