The hypocrisy of the modern, independent woman

On love, power, and paying for your own pizza.

I want to acknowledge that I have abandoned this piece of the internet for the past 6 months as I dedicated my time to new entrepreneurial ventures. I promised myself; if one of your precious souls would even notice the absence of my thought experiment in your inbox, I would start again. Turns out, three of you reached out, so here I am. Ready to commit again for the simple love of writing. Thanks for allowing me into your overflowing inbox. Here’s a bit of a different piece this time, on love and independence. Enjoy, it feels wonderful to be back.

Damn, looking good, I say to the antique brown mirror in my living room.

I look casual enough with sneakers, a simple white crop shirt, and loose-fit pink pants with hints of glitter, throwing in just the right amount of feminine, while clearly not trying too hard.

Wow, dates are exhausting.

I get into my electric ID.3, crank up my most empowering Afrobeats, trying not to pay too much attention to the degrading lyrics about butts and breasts.

I feel strong, sexy, and sure of myself as I arrive on the premises of my Feeld date.

The lucky candidate is already seated, clearly took the casual dress theme by heart, hair still moist from the recent surf. A surf he asked to postpone the date for by 3 hours (!), because well, the waves looked superb that morning.

Part of me wanted to ask him if he effing realized that my time is clearly more precious than the breaking of the waves, that I am not even usually on dating apps, EVER. He was incredibly lucky I even swiped at all.

Being the low maintenance, casual, and independent woman that I am though, I said I was totally cool with postponing. Gotta love a man with a strong passion, right?

Conversation is surprisingly interesting, I can tell he enjoys our existential talk about the state of the world that we somehow ventured into, the matching intellect, me holding myself in wordly discussion.

He has been unemployed for two years, does some tech consulting on the side, it’s not an easy time for him. We take turns getting and paying for drinks (lemonade for me). He asks if I want to go for pizza. We head to the closest sourdough pizza joint, and I practically run to the counter and proudly announce that I shall be paying for my own pizza. I can see the sense of relief on his face; the sagging shoulders, surely his prolonged state of unemployment left a mark on his wallet.

Inside, I notice I’m disappointed, though. My mind steps in: This is never going to work. He could’ve, at the bare minimum, offered to pay for my sourdough pizza. Huge buzz kill for my recently acquired abundance vibes.

Welcome to the hypocrisy of the modern independent woman.

Independence, how I prided myself on it throughout my adult life. While I was in a committed relationship for the majority of my adult badass woman decade, I saw it all around me. Women in their 30s, brilliant, smart, full-blown careers, money invested in crypto and index funds, retreats in Spain, cacao circles and full moon rituals on the weekends, desperately calling in love and a partner that could meet them where they’re at.

To love well, you have to stand for love, to say it out loud. In doing so, you become a person, who in some ways, is dependent on others. I do not believe we can be fully self-contained, perfectly independent, and in an equal partnership all at once.

There’s a part of us, conditioned by generations of women who had to fight for the very independence we now enjoy, that whispers caution. Our independence is sacred, hard-earned, and never guaranteed. It is also trauma-informed: built as much on resilience as on survival. We wonder whether love is worth giving up our perfectly constructed boundaries of existence for. The beautiful predictability of a Friday night alone, the quiet satisfaction of waking up early on a Monday, coffee in hand, the whole week laid out like a well-oiled plan. Why risk our heart, end up hurt, emotionally unregulated, and god forbid, potentially out of control?

Is it perhaps easier to not love at all, and enjoy the fruits of our independence instead? Or is there a version of love where we don’t have to be so vulnerable, and risk losing the safe ground we so carefully constructed?

Love doesn’t, and certainly shouldn’t, live on either of the extremes of (in)dependence.

[Love also certainly didn’t fit the context of this Feeld Date. I mean, it’s Feeld. But that’s beside the point.]

It took me a few more date candidates, and a new love, to realize that what we need for love to thrive for the ‘accomplished, modern’ woman, is a healthy dose of interdependence instead.

I lean on you, you lean on me, but I’m not emotionally or financially dependent on you. I feel comfortable and safe enough in my own skin to be willing to open my heart to love you and let you love me, even risk exposing myself to pain. But I’m not dependent on your love for my happiness.

Instead of asking ourselves what we lose by stepping unarmed into the battlefield of love, perhaps the right question is; what do we lose by holding on so tight to the perfection of our intentionally designed life? What do we lose by having it all under control?

We lose never exposing the full truth of ourselves, never being deeply witnessed by another human, never experiencing the full spectrum of our emotions, our heart’s capacity to love, beyond ourselves.

Is love worth ‘giving up’ our independence for?

Absolutely. Especially if you love sourdough pizza 🍕

Love, Valerie

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This Substack is a personal thought experiment shaped by my experience as a privileged white woman that grew up in Germany and Belgium, and now lives between the mountains and the sea in Portugal. Read more here. I acknowledge there are many other perspectives on living a soft(er) life, and I hope to invite diverse voices into this space as it grows.