I'm Tired of Being a Cool Girl: Avoidance is Exhausting
“Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.” - Amy Dunne, Gone Girl, Cool Girl Monologue (from the book).
I’m a Cool Girl. I’m easy-going and unbothered. I like to be above it all, I’m low maintenance and Not Like Other Girls. No date planned? That’s cool, we can just hang out at yours and play video games. I pretend to be above getting flowers and exclaim loudly how Valentines Day is a capitalist crapfest, even though secretly, I really did want roses on the 14th (what girl doesn’t?). My USP hinges on the fact that I want less to do with you, than you do with me.
My childhood taught me very early on in life that safety means suppressing your feelings. That, coupled with having to live independently from the age of sixteen, has brewed a cocktail of hyper-independence and a horrifying fear of emotional intimacy. The classic avoidant pipeline.
I have a misplaced pride for the mangled way I navigate relationships, grateful I have a built-in protection mechanism. But it leaves me emotionally crippled, struggling to form deeper romantic connections that I so desperately crave, stuck in a cycle of rejecting people before they reject me so my worst fear doesn’t come true: that I’m unlovable. It’s a lonely place to be.
Modern dating seems to be a race to the bottom of who can care less. In a sea of TikTok dating advice for anxiously attached women, being emotionally avoidant feels like a superpower in today’s dating climate. Ghost me? I’ll ghost you harder. You have a roster? Mine’s probably double. It’s fun in a way, to beat these men at their own game.
There have been times where I’ve slipped. And by that I mean, caught feelings. I’ve found myself asking men, “Tell me how you feel and I’ll adjust my feelings to that.”. I used to be proud of how I could train my feelings to fall in line with what a man wanted, so I could keep pursuing something that was ultimately, not good for me.
Two years ago, I fell deeply for someone, who for various reasons, could not love me back in the way I wanted to be loved. It destroyed me. I couldn’t eat or sleep, I flinched every time my phone buzzed, praying it was a text message from him when really it was Uber eats offering me 20% off if I ordered groceries from Waitrose right this second. I’d call my best friend at all hours of the day (and night), sobbing about how I’d never ever find anyone like this, listening to Taylor Swift’s Reputation on repeat (she was deffo in some sort of situationship during that album), posting copious amounts of Instagram stories in hope of a response. But every time he’d text, the Cool Girl responded. Eventually I moved on, only to walk into another relationship that unravelled like a slow-motion car crash.
Recently, over dinner in a dimly lit trendy restaurant, drunk on too many glasses of expensive wine, I opened up to him about that time. And he was surprised. He told me he didn’t really feel like I was that invested, that he knew I was dating around and that he was more of a footnote. In reality, I was dating around to fill the void he’d created, getting under to get over. The avoidant inside me was proud that I didn’t lose face, that suffering in silence had paid off. Where it did confirm that hiding my feelings allowed me to keep him in my life instead of crashing out (even if I did ghost him for a year whilst I was in another relationship), being vulnerable with him brought us closer.
When dating feels like a Cold War, liking someone feels like losing leverage. Breadcrumbing, half-interest and calculated silences are the greatest weapons in your arsenal. Honesty feels like a losing tactic: deploy once and regret forever. Detachment is the only way through with minimal casualties. We stifle our feelings and emotions in the name of being cool. And it’s fucking exhausting.
We’ve come so far from what dating originally was: two people who share a mutual attraction and affection for each other, getting to know each other. It now feels like the opposite, where we’re scared to express genuine feelings, so therefore, we aren’t being our authentic selves with the people we date. Vulnerability feels embarrassing. Instead of transparency, we navigate these connections in a haze of ambiguity, dancing around the truth, waiting for the other to fold.
I curse myself to casual only, pulling away before they can pull back, dooming myself to surface level fucking with no real intimacy. I have a habit of picking inappropriate lovers so if it doesn’t work out, it’s because the conditions weren’t right, the timing was off, something better came along. Not because I’m unlovable. Not because I actually wanted more from the relationship. And certainly not because of the dozen red flags I ignored on the way to his bed… Always close enough to feel something (please, God, make feel something!), but not close enough to lose.
Authentic connection feels hard to come by nowadays. So no wonder I started tweaking out over a guy who actually understood me. I took the bold step of expressing my enthusiastic sensibilities (whilst intoxicated, so all bets were off), but my expectation did not align with the reality of his feelings. Where I would’ve normally ghosted and exited the situation entirely, over a hungover breakfast the next day I asked for clarity (my therapist was proud). For one, I valued this person a lot and wanted to keep them in my life instead of my signature exit, but also, because I can no longer go down the road of shrinking my feelings to keep the peace. And again, where giving in to my avoidance would’ve averted this uncomfortable situation entirely, being able to be emotionally vulnerable was much more rewarding.
I beat myself up for weeks after, humiliated that I’d stooped so low as to liking someone (again). That I’d cracked my untouchable Cool Girl veneer in a moment of weakness. It was a huge milestone in terms of my avoidance, the first time I full frontally liked someone and admitted it. Not for their material assets or their potential, but because of where they met me as a person, how they made me feel seen in a way I’d never experienced before.
Taunted by this inexplicable feeling for weeks, unable to put my finger on it; I remember how powerful it felt when my therapist pointed it out: you like him. How it was truly that simple. I just couldn’t recognise the feeling because I had simply, never liked someone for who they were before.
The rejection made my avoidant walls come back up, for a while I defaulted back to detachment. My safety net, diving head first into meaningless flings and emotionally unavailable lovers. I joked with friends that I’d never have a crush ever again.
But who am I kidding? I know I’ll like someone again.
It’s one of the beautiful things about being a human, the intensity of feelings and how fleeting they are. I know I’m growing: I had fun revelling in the rare state of infatuation I found myself in, rather than running away from it like I usually would.
Maybe one day, someone will like me back. The way I want.
