Holly Riordan

You promise yourself you will leave in a week or a month or a year or tomorrow — but it never seems to happen.

Friends will ask you to hand over your phone so they can swipe through Tinder and try to get you matches.

ARIES: You don’t deserve to deal with mixed signals, almosts, and uncertainties.

When your career is your first priority, sleep becomes your second priority.

When you love someone, you shouldn’t hold back your tears in order to seem like you’re fine. You shouldn’t avoid talking about serious topics because you are worried about sparking an argument.

When you stay with someone toxic for longer than they deserve, you develop your own toxic behaviors in order to cope. 

If anyone assumes you are miserable because you haven’t gotten married yet, you don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. You feel sorry for them. You feel sorry they assume the only way to reach happiness is with a man. You feel sorry their worldview is so small. You feel sorry they have a skewed understanding of what a successful woman looks like.

FOMO fools us into believing we are the only ones left who haven’t gotten into a serious relationship in our twenties, who are still swiping on Tinder, who are still living alone (or with our parents).

ARIES: She doesn’t want you to know that, even though she acts like she is unbreakable, she cares deeply and gets her feelings hurt easily. 

Even when you give yourself permission to slow down and take a break, you’re not fully relaxing. Half of your mind is still on your work. You are still checking your email. You are still trying to work out a problem in your head. You are still stressing yourself out. 

If you don’t answer a text or a phone call quick enough, they will accuse you of cheating on them — even if you are at work, even if you are driving, even if you have fallen asleep.

Find a woman who is putting as much effort into self-care as she is putting into your relationship.

It does not mean she is happy about leaving you.

I hate how quickly my good mood can be ruined. I can read a single sentence, scroll past a single photo, be struck with a single thought and my whole day will go downhill.

You aren’t supposed to text your ex to meet up with them. You aren’t supposed to log back onto Tinder. You aren’t supposed to hit on the first person who catches your eye at the bar.

You are brave for choosing to get in touch with your feelings instead of running away from them, instead of raising your walls and locking your heart in a cage.

You are labeled as clingy unless you wait weeks between texts. You are labeled as overemotional unless you pretend nothing bothers you. You are labeled as psycho unless you let other people stomp all over your heart without saying a word.

A relationship is not going to make you love yourself. A relationship is not going to cure your anxiety or depression.