Love, identity, and the art of not disappearing
British Vogue, and more specifically columnist Chanté Joseph, recently asked the explosive question on the top of every 20-something girl’s mind: “Is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend now?” It was the kind of headline designed to detonate across timelines - half provocation, half performance and the internet did what it does best: argue. Some called it feminist clickbait, others called it liberation. But beneath the chaos, there’s a quieter truth worth pulling at.
It’s not embarrassing to be in love.
It’s embarrassing to disappear inside it.
Image credit: Emmanuel Torres via Dupe
There’s a difference between being someone’s partner and becoming their shadow. Between having a relationship and making it your entire identity. We don’t really talk about the way that shift happens - slowly, quietly, like a hem unraveling. One day you’re an individual with her own rhythm, her own orbit. The next, your sentences start with we.
As someone who was single for four years until very recently, lately I’ve been catching myself doing exactly that - starting sentences with we instead of I. “We love that place,” “We’re thinking of going,” “We’ve been so busy.” It’s harmless, really… until it isn’t. Until I realise I’m editing my individuality out of my own life.
For so long, women were taught that romance was the end goal - the prize for being desirable, soft, accommodating. We still carry that blueprint somewhere deep, even when we swear we don’t. The modern version just looks different: you’re ‘the chill girlfriend’, the supportive one, the one who moulds herself to his schedule, his music taste, his friend group. It feels mature. Grown-up. But somewhere in the bending, you forget how to stand up straight
And then there’s the performance of it all - the curated couple selfies, the matching playlists, the mutual ‘soft launch’ into digital existence. Sometimes it feels like the relationship is happening for the feed as much as it is for the two people in it. The irony is that this performance of intimacy often creates the opposite: distance from yourself.
To be clear, love isn’t the enemy here. Real love - the kind that expands you rather than edits you - is never embarrassing. It’s human. What’s embarrassing is contorting yourself to fit into someone else’s outline. What’s embarrassing is calling that compromise ‘connection’.
The truth is, the healthiest relationships are the ones that make you more you. The ones where you still chase your own curiosities, your own joy, your own voice. Where your ‘we’ doesn’t erase your ‘I’.
Maybe it’s time we stop treating love as a costume we put on to be palatable, and start seeing it as something we wear over who we already are - transparent, light, and ours to take off at any time.
So no, it’s not embarrassing to have a boyfriend.
It’s not embarrassing to want one, to adore one, to build something beautiful together.
But it is embarrassing - and a little (a lot) tragic - to let him water down your brilliance.
To lose the sound of your own voice because his is louder.
To forget that you were already whole before anyone tried to love you.
