Lately I’ve been sitting with a sentence that keeps repeating itself in different forms, offered as advice, framed as wisdom, delivered with certainty: relationships are supposed to be reciprocal. Equal effort. Match energy. Don’t over-give. Meet people where they are, even if that means stepping back, going quiet, or cutting contact altogether. On the surface, none of that sounds unreasonable. It makes intuitive sense. And yet the more I’ve tried to apply it cleanly, the mor

High school was starting, and I was a mess. All I could think about back then was finding a soulmate. I met my first real girlfriend, let's call her Squeak, and I loved her endlessly, regardless of her actions. I was convinced she was cheating on me, and decades later I would learn that maybe it was true. I also found out that two people, my first “friends,” were paying her on a dare to date me. She broke my heart, and that heartbreak led me straight to my first psych ward st